I have been using Steam since 2004 when VALVe released Half-Life 2 for sale.

I purchased the physical boxed version of Half-Life 2 from a Fry's Electronics.

I haven't had many problems with Steam only two that I know of.

One of which in 2005 the download of Half-Life 2 would restart which got fixed.

Then this Offline Mode get set to Online Mode when I'm connected to the internet which only started happening to me in 2010.

Both Fallout: New Vegas and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Legendary Edition have been leaked in gog.com's API. Since then though a gog.com employee made it hidden.

It was on a gog.com forum members leak named SPCM. So far everything on his leak has been released for sale on gog.com so far.

There are still more video games from his leak to be released for sale on gog.com. Of which Fallout: New Vegas and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Legendary Edition are listed.

Then there was a leak by another person who said The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will be released for sale on gog.com, but I think this persons leak so far is fake?

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion should be released for sale on gog.com though if Fallout: New Vegas and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Legendary Edition will be released for sale on gog.com.

Even Doom 3, Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, Quake IV, and Fallout 3 should be released for sale on gog.com as well. Possibly even BRINk, Hunted: The Demon's Forge, and RAGE and Dishonored.

Well, "arbitrary" isn't the right word. It is just how the recruiting works. The team pride is usually if that person went to that university, like myself, or some family member went there. Of course, some people just pick a team that is sort of close to them (or not even that) just because they are good, which I personally find annoying. In some cases, a roster can be made up almost all, if not completely, of players from the state (you definitely won't have everyone from the same city, for various reasons).

Anyway, I was just using that as a comparison for the oft-repeated indie vs. AAA developer argument. College players are basically the indie developer, and pro players are basically the AAA developer, according to the argument. Many college players play for their school, pride, whatever, just like some indie developers do make games because they love games. But there are also plenty of college players that just focus on getting to the NFL as quickly as possible, and plenty of indie developers just looking to make a quick buck or to get noticed by big companies. Plenty of professional players and AAA developers do what they do for money, but plenty also do it because they love what they do. But wanting to make money and loving what you do don't have to be mutually exclusive (unless you are someone who thinks indie developers are infallible, and AAA developers are evil and just all-around svck, I guess). The one-size-fits-all argument is pretty flawed, is what I was trying to get at.

I agree. Morrowind is there already, so I think it would make sense to offer Oblivion there too. I know I would buy another copy of Oblivion from Gog.com, just to show my support for the idea.

I was referring to the NFL when I said that, not college football (or is college football part of the NFL? I don't even know). I know this is super off topic, your anology was a good one anyway.

Oh, haha. Sorry, my bad. Yeah, college football is not part of the NFL. I guess NFL fandom is kind of arbitrary (doesn't stop me from getting worked up about sports, haha), but people have all sorts of different reasons for why they root for whichever team they do.

Thanks for the endorsemant of my anology.

At this point, I guess it would make sense to put Oblivion on there. It did just celebrate its tenth anniversary. I don't know if I'd say it should be there, but yeah, I'd buy it just for the support too.

So those who do have a problem should just shut the [censored] up, is that what you're trying to say?

So it was a feature after all. Anyway, configuring the game to not update automatically will certainly solve the issue of unwanted DLCs reactivating. However, this just opens up a few other cans of worms. One, it begs the question of why does wanting your game to stay up to date automatically also mean completely optional DLC gets downloaded and installed as well, even after you get rid of it? That just absurd. And two, when the game is configured to update automatically, it's inconsistent about when it reinstalls unchecked DLC. Sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't, which only goes to show there's a bug involved here.

Furthermore, your anecdote isn't really disproving my point. If you wanted your copy of Oblivion to be fully patched and with the bells and whistles you liked included, you still had to download everything, including the Horse Armor you wanted nothing to do with. Yes, you could remove it easily enough, but you still had to download it in the first place. Steam doesn't give you a choice to pick and choose what goes on your computer until after the fact; it's either all or nothing. Now, in both our situations, it's not really a big deal; crap like Horse Armor in Oblivion and the Arcane Assassin Pack in Dishonored are small and inoffensive. But with bigger expansions, it's a whole other story. If, for the sake of argument, you didn't like Shivering Isles and intended on giving it the same treatment as Horse Armor, you're still going to be stuck with the inflated wait every time you want to download and install the game. And maybe that's not a big deal to you either, in which case, more power to you. But for a lot of people, it most certainly can be.

Uh..the steam version of Oblivion does not include horse armor..

He was using it as an example, his actual example was some other game with some expansion called Arcane Assasins or something that gave a massive advantage that was basically a cheat and he couldn't NOT install it, he could only install it first and THEN remove it.

Perhaps the blame doesn't lie wholly with Steam ill intentions, but with the way the DLC are packaged and sold - and that might be partially on the publisher pulling old versions and bringing them back as one package. Take a closer look at Bethesda games.

• Skyrim does have a DLC tab in its settings, you can pick and choose which one you want to install. Each DLC is still sold separately.
• Oblivion, strangely, also has a DLC tab, but with only one entry (at least in my case): "Oblivion Game of the Year DLC". That is, I suspect, because there are two versions of Oblivion sold, so Steam has an ID for the base game and two different DLC packages added to it.
• Morrowind doesn't have a DLC tab at all. The GOTY version is the only one sold. As with Oblivion, you can't buy DLC separately.

Going through my library, it seems that every time the DLC are no longer - or never have been - offered for sale separately, they're baked in the base game ID and there's no DLC tab. I noticed this happening with DXHR. I still have the old game with two optional DLC packs + the Missing Link in my library, but I also have the Director's Cut which doesn't let me choose what to install.

Steamworks DRM isn't mandatory, by the way. There's a long list of games which don't use it, for example all of Paradox's in-house games. You still need to use Steam to install them, but after that they work as standalones (at least in single player).

The Deluxe Edition does.

"Due to certain games that we’ll be launching in the future, we added some explanations about the legal requirements surrounding virtual item purchases."


Gog about changing their ToS. Any theories about this? AAA games with micro transactions?