your quite literate for a negative 4 month old baby, if suffca's suggestion of restarting steam doesn't work then a reboot of the computer should do the trick, it doesn't appear to remember the date you enter (i've had to enter in my birth date for the same game countless times)

Still no confirmation to no steamworks / any other online drm... glad I'm used to dissapiontment by now. If it comes without: Yeah, take my money. If not then not, I do not care that much anymore because of this. :yawn:

i dont really like steam for ES games as they often dont inclde the CS or in skyrims case the CK.... although if they do include the ck i will most likely get it from steam (unless the collectors edition is amazing)

Fallout 3 didn't include the CS either. It's a small download (and free) and not part of the main game, so why would they have to include it?

People who say any form of DRM or DRM like protection is bad becuase you can never stop piracy confuse me. By that logic all laws are fundamentally useless becuase we can never stop people from breaking them in the first place.
We can never stop people from killing other people so should we get rid of the laws sayings its illegal to kill someone?
We can never stop people from drinking and driving so should we get rid of the law that makes that illegal?
(yes i do realize these are terrible examples becuase they are on a level 10000X greater then that of stealing games)

The point is, is that piracy can never be stopped, but that doesn't mean game companies should stop trying to stop it, becuase it would only get worse if game companies said "we don't care about piracy and we wont try to stop it" and gave pirates free reign. Games have always had some form of protection, be it the decoder wheel things included in the really old Lucas Arts games to Steam nowadays. In a perfect world we wouldn't need DRM like Secu-Rom and Steam, but this isn't a perfect world, it never will be, and thinking it should is hopelessly over-idealistic and considering the backlash of hate coming from Securom and GFWL being 100X greater then that of Steam, more and more game companies will choose to go to steam becuase its the least hated option currently available.

If you think that, or hate Steam becuase:

If Valve goes under you wont be able to play your games:
- They already said they would release unlocking tools

Valve can shut you out of your games:
- They won't unless you break the EULA that is included in every game ever or commit some other illegal action. Also there is no reason to assume Valve would ever just stop supporting a game. So you have ZERO reason to be afraid unless you are a hackzor.

Valve collects personal information:
- All Steam surveys are opt-in choices that you can deny and things like play-time are not recorded or stored by Valve in some central mainframe.

Steam has bloatware like Achievements:
- Achievements and Facebook connectivity(if its added) are not forced by Valve and are only added in becuase the game Devs asked for them to be included and things like the Steam screenshot feature don't cause any detriment to your computer's performance.

Steam forces patches:
- Valve only releases patches as they are given them and when the game devs tell them to. If a patch breaks your game it isn't Valve's fault its the game dev's for making a broken patch and telling Valve to release it. Also go into offline mode you cant and wont get patches that way.

Steam takes up your internet:
- Go into offline mode

No, they are terrible examples because laws against murder and drunk driving don't hurt people who don't break them, while DRM does negatively affect the people who buy the game legitimately.

Steam doesn't hurt anyone who buy the game legitimately though. it uses virtually no resources and thus causes no lag or slowdown on computers nor will it prevent you form running your game unless you break the EULA. also as has been shown many times before Valve does have plans in place should steam itself somehow fail.

Yes it does, but I have grown sick and tired of arguing this a long time ago so I'll keep it short.

I don't care how little resources it uses or how user friendly it is. I do not want to be forced to install third party bloatware to use a game that I only play off-line single player, which I bought in an actual physical store and subsequently installed from the disc.

This argument is so flawed I don't even know where to begin. No one is proposing that we make piracy legal. DRM is liking locking everyone out of their own cars because someone might steal them. Your argument has nothing to do with DRM at all.

That said, I'm pretty pissed off with Steam at the moment. It recently decided it needed to update itself, but I lost my internet connection before it could. So, for two days I couldn't play any of my games because every time I tried to open Steam it kept telling me it couldn't update. And now that my internet is online, I wanted to play some of the Witcher 2, only to see that had started to automatically download a 9GB patch for the game. Apparently, rather than actually patching the game, they decided to just make everyone redownload all the files again.

Seriously, what the [censored]?

I don't think you know what bloatware means. Bloatware is a program that uses more system resources than necessary, while providing no benefit in doing so or has large installation footprint. Steam uses almost 0 system resources and is a really small program. It also provides tons of features that game devs and countless people find useful. Its the exact opposite of bloatware.

(on a side note hows Med'an doing?)




As has been shown MANY times before Valve CAN NOT and WILL NOT lock you out of your games unless you break the law by violating the EULA or committing some other illegal action. so no its not like locking you out of your car becuase someone might steal it, its like locking you out of your car becuase you violated the terms of a contract you signed with the car company when you bought it by doing x,Y, and Z when it said don't do X, Y, or Z.

Also its a game companies legal right to make sure the copyrights of their products are not violated. Would be I be mad if Dell or Apple put in a lock out device that shuts down a device of theirs I bought permanently if anyone but them opens it to make sure no one takes their design, nope, as long as there is a sticker on the side saying don't do it then I have no reason to complain.

When you payed 40, 50, or 60 dollars for a game you didn't actually BUY the game you bought the PRIVILEGE to play it. The data of the game is still the sole property of the game dev's and they have every legal right to make sure you use it in the way THEY want. In this day and age when hordes of people are out there trying to steal company's data I see no justification for complaining about companies wanting to keep THEIR PROPERTY safe.

I wouldn't complain if I was borrowing your tractor and you had installed some monitoring stuff in it and then you remotely turned it off becuase you didn't like what I was doing with it. Its your tractor and you have every right to say I cant use it in X way and its your right to use almost whatever means are available to you to make sure I don't use it in a way you don't want.

Steam didn't actually download a 9 gig patch it downloaded a much smaller patch but due to a error caused by your internet going out midway it registered the patch as being the size of the game. The same thing happened to my Portal 2. It didn't actually download 9 gigs worth of stuff.

I don't think you know what http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat means.


I do not wish to use any of Steam's features, so if I'm forced to install it, it is bloatware regardless of its installation footprint.


That's how EA and Activision/Blizzard would want it.

I don't think you'll admit to being wrong, so I'm not going to argue with you. I might go do something more productive, like slamming my head against a brick wall instead. However, while legally they can use whatever DRM they want, that doesn't mean it is right for them to use such intrusive software. However, I will admit Steam is the lesser evil of most forms of DRM.

And that isn't what happening with my patch. It is seriously redownloading every game file, rather than patching regularly. Go see the Steam Witcher 2 forum - everyone is having the same problem. I've already downloaded 2 gigs.

That is how they want it and guess what that IS how it is. YOU will never own most of the things in your house. The data on the game disk will always belong solely to the Devs until said time they say you can do WHATEVER you want with it and until said time they say that they will have every legal right to do with it as they wish. You don't like that make your own games, becuase that's how it is everywhere for just about everything and it isn't going to change until we make magic make-stuff-out-of-thin-air technology and no one has to do work anymore and people can just spawn whatever they want whenever they want.

Since it isn't your game it doesn't matter if you want steam or not it matters if they want you to have steam, it is their product, they made it, they put the work into it and they have every right to control how you use it.. Game devs don't owe anything to you besides whatever they choose to put on the game disk.




Whats legal is whats currently accepted as right. so yes it is right for them to use intrusive software, Though Steam isn't intrusive becuase it doesn't collect any data unless you let it.

I can understand the frustration of people and DRM. They feel like they shouldn't be "punished" becuase a few people feel the need to hack and break copyright laws.

Here's my Question to you:
How do you plan on stopping it? How do you plan on getting rid of all the people in the world who hack and copy data that isn't theirs?
The simple answer is you don't have a plan to stop it becuase there isn't one.

Should games have DRM?
Should I have to fill out mountains of forms to get loans or buy a car?
Should there even need to be a EULA?
Should there be a need for laws in general?
In a perfect world no, becuase in a perfect world everyone would be nice to each other, but this isn't a perfect world. As such we the majority will always be forced to suffer from the BS caused by small groups of people like hackers.

Is it fair? No. But then again life isn't fair, and you cant expect it to be. It isn't fair that you have to get Steam but since game companies can't just read your mind and tell if your going to try to steal their data or not they have to use something that can cover every possible contingency. Steam is the lesser of all the currently existing DRM evils.

Until the day that someone can come up with a plan that ends the need for security like DRM it will continue to exist. That's life, and until YOU Personally can come up with said plan you have no room to complain becuase you have no answer to the problem, and complaining that Steam isn't the answer to the problem when you have no answer yourself is just stupid.

You have the right to protect your home from invaders through security alarms, Game Devs have the right to protect their data from intruders through the same way. And until the day someone can invent the PERFECT security alarm your just gonna have to deal with it, just like all the papers, forms, and security checks on almost everything else of value today. all caused becuase at some point in time one person had to try to cheat the system.

If you have the perfect plan on how to prevent people from stealing data while not affecting anyone else, PLEASE tell the world we would love to hear it.

Okay, you brought up a lot of point and asked some good questions. I'd like to first respond in the form of a question:

What the hell are you talking about??!!?!


I don't see anyone proposing that software piracy be decriminalized, or that all forms of copy protection be outlawed or any of the other strawmen you have mentioned in between. When a film studio releases a DVD they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and recognize only a few dollars per sale, they use nothing more than simple copy protection on their disks. Music CDs are the same way. Contrast that with the hundreds of dollars spent on other forms of software that run on a computer that use simple activation codes. Why is it that game studios alone feel the need to use far more intensive DRM? I don't actually own the rights to the movies, songs or software on those disks either, but I can still use them unhindered by a third party.

The way you cut down on piracy, like with all crimes, is to punish the guilty. Stores know that there are shoplifters in their area, what do they do about it? Well they could do like game companies and hire a team of security guards to accompany each shopper as they go through the store. This would not in any way be illegal and therefore, according to you, not be wrong in any way. If they truly thought like game publishers they would see the subsequent loss of sales as confirmation that more shoplifters exist and there fore they need more stringent security. Fortunately store owners are smarter than that and realize that the best way to combat shoplifting is to put up some cameras and some signs that threaten full prosecution for shoplifters.

Software piracy continues to run rampant because the odds of being caught and prosecuted are minuscule.

Gabe Newell has said repeatedly that Steam exists as a way of making games a service rather than a simple product. Wherever there exists a service there exists the possibility of a denial of service. Steam has the ability to cancel any members service at any time, the member need not have broken any laws to cause this. (I don't know where you got that idea) If a member purchases 100 games and follows the EULA of every one then why should Steam be able to take them all away for reasons that have nothing to do with any of those games? This would be like me getting in the express lane with 21 items instead of 20 and suddenly the store then comes to my hose and takes everything I ever bought from them back.

As to what happens if/when Steam goes away. I've heard time and time again that there is the contingency plan you mentioned, but only from nameless faceless users on forums, boards and blogs. I have never seen anything even remotely official from Valve/Steam. They may in fact have a plan in place, but unless they officially state that it exists and the conditions under which they will enact it, then they are under no obligation to ever use it.

I never said anyone said piracy should be decriminalized, or all forms of copy protection should be outlawed.

Also there's much more hidden background security in DVDs and Music CDs then simple copy protection. There is region locking which is probably the biggest, there's also small programs that detect if you have DVD burner software installed on your computer like Alcohol 100%. I would know I've had to deal with this before, I burn DVDs of stuff I make on my computer and have been told many times when trying to play a music CD or a Movie DVD that I cant because I have legal burner software. Then there's stuff like Itunes. Should I need Itunes to put stuff on my ipod? nope. Should Itunes be collecting my local information? nope but it does. Movie DVDS and Music CDs have just as much stuff in the background working its just less obvious becuase it usually works less often then video game protection.





But there is a different between stores and games. Stores can as you say just hide cameras becuase they own the store. You can't do that in video games becuase DRM installs itself into your PC they may own the game but they don't own your PC. You can't hide DRM, doing so causes a lot of legal problems. One of the main reasons EA got sued over Securom is becuase they tired to hide it then when people found out that there was this hidden background program that installed itself into your OS they flipped. DRM will be this visible annoyance becuase making it invisible causes more legal problems then making it visible.

As you said software piracy continues to run rampant becuase the odds of getting caught are small. That's why we need things like Steam. When faced with the possibility that illegally downloading games might cause you to lose access to your other games, people are less inclined to do it.





I know of a lot of people who have gotten banned form Steam and the only reason they got banned was because they hacked, or broke the EULA and if they got banned becuase someone hacked them and then used their account to hack all they had to do was tell Valve and they reactivated their accounts. Now If like Activision-Blizzard was running Steam I would see this as a issue, but Valve, a privately owned company who does everything in their power to get prices cut for customers, fights for free-content across platforms, and whose know to be fair and just in their dealings I don't see the problem.

With any form of protection from Disk checking to Online Validation to Steam there always exists the possibility of someone just shutting down your ability to play the game. If game companies used a Periodic Disk Checker Program or Online Validation Program to make sure your game was legit they could one day set those programs to deny your disk if they so chose to. Could Valve just shut you out one day for no reason, yes. Would they, no. As long as you play the games and don't break rules they have no more reason to just shut you off as Bethesda would to have just randomly change the online authentication tool on a non-steam game to do it also. Also considering the legal [censored]storm they could get into it probably wouldn't happen. That's not so much a problem with Steam as it is a problem with all form of DRM but does that mean DRM in general is bad. No. it just means it has a flaw like everything else in existence.

Everything in existence can be abused. Does that mean everything is abused? No. As long as you have the right people behind it you have no reason to fear it and considering what choices we got, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Valve. I would say we got the best choice.





As for the "official" quote were Valve talked about their plans in case of a failure, I cant remember where I saw it since it was back in 2006 when they talked about this, however moderators on the Steam forums who are picked by Valve themselves have said they would just switch Steam as a whole into the offline mode that's already built into the system that you can use yourself right now. You would still have full access to your games, that's why offline mode was put in in the first place so if you cant connect to the internet or steam servers for any reason you can still play your games. Ive gone entire weeks in offline and played my games like no end and had no restrictions placed on them.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=870603&page=2

I'd prefer a DVD/CD that does not require any kind of third party DRM software. I'm old school. I like having a disk.

I have a disk for FO:NV but it's more of a coaster since it still had to be DLed and installed and played via Steam.

But since that is not likely to happen sticking with Steam seems to me to be the lesser of evils. I've had no issues with Steam..

it doesn't HAVE to be DLd from steam you can install from the disk.
The first time you put it in it will activate on steam then if you take it out and put it back in you can install from the disk.

I dont mind varifying though steam, but at least let me turn steam off. And not just the online part. I want Steam OFF when i play FNV

I've got programs like that as well, but I've never had any CD/DVD give me any hassles because of it. I did one time have a CD that I put into my computer, at the time my PC was the center of my surround sound entertainment system, and a window popped up telling me the CD was only for CD players and could not be played on a computer. That was over 10 years ago, and I have never seen anything like that ever again.



Or they may just decide that if leagally bought games can be taken away without warning they might as well just get them all illegally?
Just saying.



Hence the reason that I prefer Disc Check to Online Activation. A verification site can be shut down by a large number of groups for a wide variety of reasons and thus make the software I bought completely useless. But I have never heard of any software that would allow a publisher to alter the disk check in the launcher installed on my offline machine that would tell it to not let me play the game even if I have the disc in the tray.



Note the title of "Volunteer Moderator".

I don't care about Offline Mode, for single player games where there should be no Online Mode to begin with. I care about being able to install and play the game 10 or more years from now. I pay money to have a copy of the game that I can legally install and play at the time and place of my choosing, because a PC game is a product.

Here's a problem that developers need to think about and any steam lovers, what if someone doesn't have internet. If I want to play a video game, I don't want to be required to have an internet connection just to play a single player game. Whether steam is good or bad, why should the consumer be forced to get internet just to play a game.

some people may not have internet for good reason. like

Cost
the area you live in.

You can save up to buy a game, but you really can't save up to get internet. Some ISP require contract to have the service. Also some people can't get internet at all because of where they live.

Oh for the person that said it was crazy for developer to create more then one version of a game. I have 2 versions of command and conquer tiberium wars on my computer. One is steam and the other does not need steam.

Also some gamers don't care about achievements or any of that other stuff that steam offers. It just isn't important to them.

It doesn't even have to be "No internet", dial-up users have it rough with Steam games (including those on physical media) .

And IMHO it's not crazy to include gamers that are outside of the Steam/digital distro markets as potential customers, that's one form of mainstream I do want in my games.

I have no problem with offline DRM like Oblivion or FO3 had (I bought the latter even twice. One regular and later the big all-inclusive Pack). I do not have a problem that Steam users can buy/dl these games there. I DO have a problem with Steam in the end being the ONLY option, regardles how and where you buy that game (hence no FNV from me). And I do think thats the problem all those opposing Steam have. Nobody would have a problem with Steam being just an option.

edit: The murder/drink&drive comparison are so wrong on so many levels :down:

Steam is preferable, however, to GFWL that Fallout 3 had. Infact it is the preferable option to many alternatives out there, like SecuRom and other less scrupulous DRM "solutions".

In that sense, I don't mind it being the only option, since it always ends up being the best option.

Not for me, the GFWL that Fallout 3 had was a good application of that system (as flawed as GFWL is), With Steam being the only option, the best option for me is not to get the game,