Hey that's cool man. FNV sales on Steam were pretty high last year. Bethesda did quite well. If you're rather not enjoy the PC version because of one little thing, that's fine.

The other side of it, if they use any other type of DRM, there are going to be a flood of threads about that as well with similar arguments.

Yes and I'm very happy about this fact - I love Steam.

New Vegas was awesome for how patches and updates are handled, how I can get news about them, tools, etc.

Most importantly for modders - Steam will support OBSE (or SKSE?), as they did so with New Vegas (NVSE) - which is Absolutely Critical for modders. Games for Windows live and other DRM sites wouldn't give a crap about modders as there is no money in it, and none for Steam either. They did so anyway, and won my vote for most-favored DRM.

We cannot escape DRM anymore, every AAA game in the future is likely to utilize it and when I settled down and figured it out, I was pleasantly surprised.

So I'm guessing you don't buy any games with DRM?? Seeing as all DRM doesn't actually do anything apart from "accuse you of being a thief". I'm guessing you don't go to shops that have security guards or security scanner either, in case, you know, they accuse you of being a thief?? Nor do you go on holiday I imagine, for fear of being accused of being a terrosit at the security gate,

No, that is the kind of person who is too lazy to inform themselves and import an uncut copy, activate it on Steam and never have their game cut. Since Bethesda isn't as dumb and uncaring about their customers as Activision to limit this.

if it has to be any form of DRM then i prefer STEAM. hell of alot better than ubisofts stupid system or tages or securom etc.

The evil of Activision has No Limits.

I think a mine-field de-miner has a longer career span than an Activision game dev.

I'm very sure the devs did not decide that a huge part of their fanbase should not play the game in the way they intended it to be played. That's just a higher-up decision to limit German customers to German versions, which means they'll have to pay much more money than they would for an import version. Oh well.

There are a few reasons why I dislike Steam or would prefer not to have it as a requirement to play the game:

1. I don't like the idea of being FORCED to install some 3rd party stuff just to be able to use what I payed my money for and what I really want.

2. I've heard very bad things about Steam and mods concerning Oblivion.

3. I just want Skyrim and nothing else. That's what I payed to get and that's what I expect to receive and only have in return.

4. I don't like the idea of this full chatting community on Steam. There are forums here and on many other fan-sites that seem to do a better job imo (but I can be wrong, so don't take this for granted by me...)

5. I assume it drains some resources as you're forced to start it in order to play Skyrim. Resources while playing could be very important while playing a heavily modded game or maxed out settings.

6. According to Wikipedia (with sources to support it) concerning regional restrictions and pricing:

Steam allows developers and publishers to change prices and restrict game availability depending on the user's location. This can cause some games to cost more than retail prices, despite digital distribution removing the costs of manufacturing, packaging, design, and logistics.

Valve also restricts game registration and playability to the buyer's country of residence. One example of this regional restriction can be seen where Valve uses Steam's authentication to prevent boxed versions of their games sold in Russia and Thailand, which are priced significantly lower than elsewhere, from being used outside those territories.

Steam offers products in three currencies: US Dollar, Euro and Pound Sterling. The currency is selected automatically based on the user's location, and cannot be changed. Steam has been heavily criticized by European users for converting dollar amounts equally between US Dollars and Euros, despite Euros being worth more.

While I got nothing against steam, it seems that all games purchased through steam get laggy videos/cutscenes.. I rather have a CD-case on my desk than a digital version in my steam.

2 is invalid, steam support worked closely with the OBSE team to get OBSE running on steam copies of oblivion, and nothing else has ever posed an issue.
4 is invalid, just don't add anybody on your friends list and nobody can talk to you.
5 is invalid, all used RAM can be paged out as if it was never there at all.

The other 3 are valid opinions/concerns, though.

Technically 1 is also invalid then. Since other DRM is considered 3rd party software that installs on your computer. Although smaller than Steam, it's still there, and forced.

i guarantee you that there are processes running on you computer right now that use more resources than STEAM that you dont need. STEAM is not going to affect anything on a computer with 8GB of RAM and im assuming a decent CPU. you sound like i did when i was always turning my windows settings on low and didnt use a background cause i wanted to save that few extre KB of memory. at some point that stuff just doesnt matter any more.

in fact a poorly designed game engine like GAMEBRYO is going to waste more resources than steam will. are you going to stop playing games?

1. What game in the last five years did not do that?
2. Has been resolved ages ago, the script runs without any trouble today.
3. Fair point
4. You can disable the ingame community, but you'll really not be bothered by anyone if you don't put them on your friend list. What this "full chatting community" is supposed to be about, you'd have to explain.
5. Steam uses 40MB of RAM right now, the highest I had it go ever was just over 100. My windows explorer usually uses more RAM than Steam. Given that Skyrim won't even be large adress aware out of the box, this is really not a problem anyway.

Point 6 is the big problem right now. But it's still more than a decade until retail games disappear. Before this can happen, digital distribution stores will need more direct competition anyway - just to keep the market alive.
The regional restriction is more of a concern though.

People outside of Germany can gift you the uncensored version as I recall.

What about CPU-usage. Anybody that has Steam installed and can check it out?
Also, 40MB of RAM sounds pretty much to have in the background all the time...

Also, I don't really like the community as a whole in steam. I haven't had stem yet so I can't be 100% sure about it. But from what I've read on wikipedia about what the steam community is like, I don't like it.
I'm not forced to use it yes, but it's still a big part of what steam is and therefore my point stands.

I have 4GB of RAM. I imagine most have at least 2GB. 40MB is not a lot at all. I've had Oblivion both non-steam and Steam, and I've noticed absolutely no performance difference between the two.

I 'THINK' this is 1 of 2 valid points. I cannot confirm this, but Steam knows where you're located, and it will most likely only allow you the version intended for said location. So I can't really see the gifting thing working.

The other valid point is about different prices and exchange rates.

Yeah, and I know a ton of people outside of Germany who I would trust with my money. If I buy a game, I expect it to be playable. Just one example: If you imported a UK version of CODMW2 and tried to install it, Steam would not let you because of some weird german laws. I hate being treated like a child.

Me having an Irish account and credit card, I hand out games to friends here pretty often. None of those games ever were cut after gifted, despite me locking in under what's a German IP.
And, as already stated, you can buy an uncut retail version of the game protected by Steamworks, tie it to your Steam account, and it will stay that way.

This isn't steam's fault, it's germany's ridiculous treatment of video games'. Because of how steam works, they can't be legally shown to allow it. If you hate being treated like a child, it's your own government forcing this upon companies.

Why does everyone hate Steam? I personally think Steam is one of the best things to happen to gaming.

This.

Steam is absolutely awesome and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't understand what it is and refuses to give it a chance.

It's not some cheap DRM system hog or something, it's what is keeping PC gaming alive. Something like 87% of PC game sales are digital, most of those are from Steam.

I don't hate Steam per se, I like steam for games like Audiosurf and such. But in this case I would not buy the game if it required Steam. I dont really like the idea of having to be part of an online platform or community for a singleplayer game. If was some onetime online activation thingy like Bad Company 2, which is even optional, I'd be fine with it. But having to start up said comunity and it being all in my face all the time and me having to work around it to have the greatest possible gaming experience for myself, thats just not what I would want for an Elder Scrolls game.

I completely agree.
I had no big problems with Steam for Counter-strike, but I wouldn't like it for Elder-Scrolls.

I'd rather have a PC game use Steam than GFWL, securom, starforce, or soildshield. :shrug: