So I bought a copy of Fallout New Vegas from Gamestop. I went to install it, and it tries doing it through Steam. I'm confused as hell, and look closely at the case to see if it says anything about this. The thing says in small print on the back that it requires a Steam account and internet connection!!
Is this normal? Steam copies shouldn't even be sold in boxes! The whole reason I got this for the PC was so that I could mod it, and Steam copies get in the way of that, don't they? I don't even have a Steam account.

Well:

1) Steam accounts are free

2) You can still mod NV

3) ???

4) Profit!

But really don't worry about it, Steam is just Steam, it's nothing that holds a gun to your head

Oh and you don't really need the internet to play NV, just play it while Steam is offline, you cannot just get achievements and stuff I don't think

And Mako speaks the truth, ALOT of big class A games you can find for like 50% off and all. They have crazy deals, so crazy I dont see how companies say "ok" to it :rofl:

Steam doesn't get in the way of mods, and Steam accounts are free, welcome to the Steam community, land of good folks and crazy low prices.

All versions of NV, regardless of where purchased requires Steam (Nothing new BTW. Half Life 2, Homefront, CIV 5 all required Steam. On the other side of the coin, Red Faction: Guerilla, GTA4 and Batman: AA all required GFWL)

Best bet is to set up a Steam account AND install Steam without the NV disk anywhere near the computer. With luck, this will then let you put the disk in, register the game with Steam and install it from disk without it trying to download the entire game from Steam. (Not having Steam installed prior to trying to install from disk seems to make it then download the game for some people)

As for mods, Steam is very mod friendly these days. Valve worked with the script extender teams a little to help them get FOSE and OBSE working with Steam versions of Fallout 3 and Oblvion respectively and I can testify that the NV script extender works fine too.

edit: and as mentioned, Steam accounts are free and they have some great deals on games. In fact, you just missed the summer Camp sale.

Awesome, thanks everyone. I installed Steam, and I'm installing the game now.

Its ridiculous, but that's how it is.

Steam in in this case, does not affect asset modding; and I thought I had heard that someone from Steam (or a couple someones) helped with getting the script extender working. I dunno, but it also works as far as I am aware.