except Fallout: New Vegas

Just to allay some of your concerns as I agree that an online game and dial up is not fun:

• Being activated by Steam does not mean this is an online game.
  
• The Steam Download is 1.5MB and once you activate the game, you need never have to go online again to play the game.
  
• Your phone line will not be tied up at any time after activation by playing the game. Just tell Steam to play the game in Off-Line Mode. I am not sure if Steam would even need to be running, as the activation flag probably is stored locally.
  
• The activation data transfer is small, so that will take just a couple of minutes.
  
• None of your data or presence or information or achievements will ever be known.
  
• Nothing needs to be stored on the web for this game.

The cool thing is, you don't ever have to put a disk in to play, that way you can play your music CDs while fragging mutants. Early Guns and Roses I think would be good.


Edit I would reccomend if you do decide to get the game, that you set up your Steam account before release day or when your going to get it. That way you are just installing from the disk, quick activation, and your off to see Doc Mitchell.

1.5MB plus all the client updates.

Also, the retail version of Mafia II uses Steam, and when I installed it, it downloaded a 100MB patch. Might happen with New Vegas.

You can tell it to not patch games, right?

Well, updates automatically start downloading if there is any for a game you don't have installed, I think.

Obviously, yes. That would be the best option, but it isn't an option with New Vegas, so we are just trying to explain why that isn't the end of the world.


You can burn a back-up disc of your games from Steam as well and keep that so the original doesn't get damaged, or you wish to install it again in the future without internet access. You can do all that and still keep your hard copy collector's edition disc in the original wrapping. That's something good for you.


As I've said above, this even isn't an issue or concern. Valve would announce ahead of time they were going under and you could burn back-up discs of every game you have on Steam. Or if you are really paranoid, just go ahead and create a back-up disc from Steam now as you download each game, since that functionality exists right now.


Not just because it makes games more secure from pirates (yes, preventing piracy is impossible), but it also soothes investors and shareholders, and saves the developers and publishers money on stamping CDs, packaging, storage, and shipping. It is a tri-fecta of win for the game companies, so digital is indeed the future. The money points the way.

And if all games do go digital only, we may finally get substantial cuts to the prices of games because publishers won't have to worry about brick and mortar retailers refusing to stock their games if their profit cut isn't big enough to justify the shelf-space. Speaking of shelf-space, digital distribution increases the lifespan of games on the market. How hard is it to find old games, or even PC titles a year or six months old at retail stores? Unless they were the absolute best-sellers, impossible. Steam and sites like GOG.com mean players can once again play FO1 and FO2 without resorting to piracy or ridiculous prices on Ebay.

Finally, if distribution becomes all digital, some developers can do away with publishers all together. Certainly the strangle hold the publishers have on the industry will be lessened.


Yes, you can even tell the game not to update before you begin downloading or installing it, ensuring if you are on a dial-up connection you won't have to sit and wait for a 100MB patch to install.


And saying Steam sales svck or are all for bad games is either ignorant or just plain bitter. I guess the Company of Heroes sale they have going on right now, where you get all the games in the series for only $12.50, is crap, huh? You should have the right to play your single player game you bought a hard copy of without having to go through an online authentication, I agree with you. But if you want New Vegas, you can't do that. And attacking Steam just because it is the delivery system for your bitter medicine is avoiding the real issue at hand that bothers you.

well...... GFWL i find personally bad...... also steam has achievements like GFWL......

Bioshock, & Dues Ex do svck. Never played KOTOR, & why would I need the deals on HL, HL2, Morrowind & TES IV, when I already own them?

Wat? Do you mean What? Is it really saving you that much time by not typing the one extra letter?

I would much rather have GFWL over Steam any day. GFWL doesn't force you to use it.

You already owning them doesn't make the fact that they have good sales on good games any less true. I haven't seen you give one concrete reason for not liking Steam other than "It's crap". Why don't you like it? What did it do to you? Did it murder your family and kill your dog? I just don't get it.

I would rather have Steam then LIVE

You do realize that gamesas games (Obliv, FO3, presumably FO:NV) have absolutely huge saves, right? And that you really should make multiple saves and not just rely on auto/quick-save?


Thinking about using Steam Cloud for my FO saves seems nuts to me - my latest FO3 game, the saves are over 5mb each now, and since I keep a rotating set, I probably write 10+ saves per session. 50+ mb upload every time I shut the game off? Nah, that's crazy. It's annoying enough with Torchlight, and that's only a few hundred k.

(I'm guessing there's an option to turn that off, even if it's available for a big-save game like FO:NV....)

I think that he knows. He once told me that he was a save-a-holic, that he had over 5 gigabytes in Dragon Age: Origins saves. :blink:

That said, I didn't even know that Steam had that function. It can back up saves in it's "cloud"? That's kind of neat, but I think that I'd rather use my handy-dandy USB stick that I keep all my saves on.

I don't think it has that function. Backing up saves in the Steam cloud has been an oft requested feature, but at least as of a couple of months ago, such a thing wasn't implemented or used. As you say, save file size quickly becomes a problem. Game settings can be stored in a few KB, but expecting it to keep up with hundreds of MB of save file data? Not realistic. Think of it having to back up the saves of every game you own on Steam. They would have to store GB of extra data per user. I don't see it happening.

I know the Steam Cloud feature works for some games - it does it for my Torchlight saves. But, then again, they're small. I can see them not wanting to enable the feature for specific games with very large save files.

Shuffling 5MB+ Sized files is not something I would think anyone would want to impose upon people. Make it an option? Sure. In fact, anyone who has installed Fallout 3 from Steam can chime in and tell us if this is an option or how it works. I bet it will be similar in New Vegas.

That being said:

My Fallout 3 Saves folder is currently 1 GB. I don't think Steam wants to store this for me and the million or so others that would have that much. Sure, millions would probably have just a few saves, but even that adds up at approx 25 to 50 MB for those folks.

While for some, being able to play the save anywhere or have on line storage is good , for most it is not an issue or a need. Plus, once you add mods to the mix, either yours or some other install, then this gets real messy real fast if you want to go back and forth with the Save.

Okay, now that I think about it, there's no way Valve would back up the saves, unless they allowed only a specific amount.

They wouldn't back up GBs of saves from me. Like SimpsonFly said, I made 5GB of DAO saves with one character...

No, Steam versions of Fallout 3 or Oblivion do not have Steam Cloud functionality, saves are stored as in the disc version. Vegas might be different since it has Steam integrated to it earlier in deveploment (also the reason why Steamless version is propably not happening).

And my save folders are hundrends of megabytes (thanks to Wrye Bash's character profiles), i really don't want that sort of data moving on my connection. Even though it's a limitless high-speed (well not really, only 1Mbps) broadband.

Humor. Good luck in trying Steam to NOT automaticly update your game(s). :laugh: :laugh:


Valve has a different philosophy regarding updating games. "Do not automaticly update this game" means to them "we simply shove it down your throat, wetter you like it or not". One of the smaller reasons why I decided not to use Steam anymore . . .