I personally live in a university dorm with internet access severely limited. When I wanted to install Civilization V, I had to look to a wireless internet work through the city. I wouldn't mind if it didn't require special ports opened. Also I would like to know what is the need to employ it anyway. All pirate versions of games that used Steam became available on the internet near the release date anyway (such as Civ 5, Empire Total War, etc..), so Anti-Piracy is certainly not an excuse, I believe that it has already been shown by all forms and means that fighting it is a lost cause (perhaps convincing people to support the companies by buying the games is the only way to counter it to some degree, which only work for people with income).

:sigh:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1148714-steam/

Really, how many of these do we need?

No kidding. For the record though, I seriously don't mind Steam. They have fantastic deals, unlimited redownloads of a game, and are probably the least intrusive DRM you can find. All you need to do is keep steam on your computer and activate each game once. Beat's Ubi's way of doing it.

I would've used it anyway, so I like it. I love steam, I use steam for the greater majority of my game purchases, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. When people are adamantly against using it, I get the same dumbfounded expression I get when someone inexplicably refuses to use OBSE.

I'm not a fan of being forced to use a 3rd party in order to play my product that I bought.

Don't care.
Never had a problem with it, but understand everyone has not got a good or reliable connection for it.

I have been corresponding with Tec support to try to get my Fallout Vegas to work for a WEEK now.
Over 7 hours of my playtime wasted on troubleshooting this.

The game CTD right after the intro, with NO mods, on a NEW install for both steam and the game with both savegames and new start up game.

This happen right after their last update to the game. All my other steam games work, so it is NOT a PC issue.
Game has been reloaded from scratch as well as steam, all files validated, all drivers updated EVEN MY MOTHERBORD, and many other "attempts" to fix this per the forums and the tech support all week.

There is no way to prevent the update that caused this as it is forced on me from steam, off line will not prevent this because the game will not start until it gets update after the first install.

The game worked for 16 hours after I loaded it from the RETAIL disk a few months ago. I stopped playing to mod Oblivion.
Came back to the game last weekend. STEAM forced an update on me and the rest is a weeks worth of frustration and wishing I had not spent my money on this mess.

If not for steam I could play it as was off the previous rev. This could be solved if Steam would allow you to turn off the forced update for disk installs. They do not!
After the first install from the retail disks that I paid for the update is forced, THEN you are able to reset the update settings for the game.
But until the first update right after the install you do not have that option.

Lets say that I am one in the billion that has some fluke on my PC, OK then return my money, go ahead and mark my account in steam as a "fallout Vegas return" so steam will never allow me to play the game again..... but no I cannot even get my money back for this so I can use that money to buy Skyrim or Portal 2.

(But I bet the first time this happens to a US senator or his/her kids this will be changed by law in the same way credit card company have been regulated. I am a libertarian and hate big government, but that is how it works here in the US unfortunately.)


I pay for the game and cannot play it without steam interference. And I see on youtube that Pirates can steal it and play it with no steam interference.
I WANT TO SUPPORT THE GAME DEV but I am not rich enough to just give them money.

I finally gave up and am trying to accept that I only got 16 hours of play for my $50.

I really hope Skyrim is not steam requeired...God I hope so...
Just give me my game,the one I paid for I did not steal it... retail disks... with out steam please.

For the love of all that is holy, do we seriously need another thread about Steam? Go use http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1148714-steam/.

It is an issue that many people appear to care about. I do wonder just how long the thread would be if combined into one. I just want to add that some people consider an internet enabled application that must be running in the background and can force updates on you very intrusive. I understand that simple disk checks have their issues as well, but exactly how long does Steam's protection last? Also, Steam can get lazy about less popular games (patches a month late), and as a result I really don't want to give them my blind support.

You have no proof regarding steam being required to play Skyrim.
And if you have a problem with it, if it DOES get confirmed, buy it on the 360/PS3.

And if it were a Steam issue more people who used Steam would have the same problem. It is either a corrupted install issue or a PC issue. I have many games on Steam, including NV. No bugs with my copy and I play on a semi decent laptop.

With the game dev and steam being two separate companies and yet both must work to play, this means TWICE the chance that
unresolvable issue could pop up and then you have both companies telling you to go to the other company for Tec support.

Here is what steam could do:

1. Allow the user to turn off the updates before the first install and not only after the first install.

2. Allow returns for unresolvable issue like almost all other products do, mark the account in steam as a "product return" so steam will never allow you to play the non working game again.

This would bring back my confidence in this large of a purchase $ for a product made of 1s and 0s.

Again: It is NOT Steam's fault that your game won't work. It is Obsidian's fault - they created the patch that is causing your game to crash.

Also, what other digital distribution services offer product returns? D2D doesn't, at least not without some serious conditions attached:
(Source: D2D support website).

Has there been any "Anti-Steam" threads that worked, for any game, in the last few years? I can't really think of any myself where mandatory use of steam was dropped due to threadnoughts by the user-base.

There is already a Steam topic, we really don't need another.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1167976-is-it-comfirmed-that-steam-must-be-used/