I don't care, I'll buy it regardless.

Gunnmaster95, I keep hearing people who use Steam say things like "You can just set your game to 'offline mode' . . ." with the implication that, once you do that once, you can effectively NEVER have to do all that waiting and networking again? Also, supposedly you can set it so that it doesn't even try to gain connectivity nor require it to start the game. But then I see lots of guys complaining that these 'offline functions' don't work, or that they are problematic.

Have you tried using the offline mode features? Is is just somewhat complicated to get it set right? Does it not work as well and finally as some guys suggest?

All offline mode does is runs steam without connecting steam to the steam servers. You still have to boot steam up which takes a while. (even without the 'connecting to steam account' part) Its just SO much more convenient and quick to not have to worry about steam and have that be a separate program from the game.

What kind of hardware are you using? I'm surprised that it takes so long.

In my case, steam is part of my startup process and loads when Windows starts. My entire boot time for my laptop from off to desktop including all startup processes is about 12-14 seconds. I do have an SSD, but it shouldn't take that much longer for traditional platter hard drive.

When I launch any steam game it starts loading immediately; there is no waiting time for any steam loading process. Vanilla Oblivion load time is around 2-3 seconds and another 1-2 seconds for loading savegames. Interior/exterior transitions are almost instantaneous. With a crap ton of mods the load time is closer to 30-40 seconds, but it starts loading immediately without waiting for any steam loading process.

And I have had days when my internet was down, I was prompted to switch to offline mode. Again, while in offline mode there was no extra loading time for steam, just the regular game loading time.

EDIT: I usually have steam running the background because it loads when Windows starts. In this situation, the games start loading immediately. However, I just tried exiting Steam and then loading a Steam game. There is a wait of about 5 seconds while it says "connecting to xxxx account." Then the game starts loading.

I tried running steam at start-up and it causes my computer to freeze (like I have no icons onthe desktop at all) for an additional minute or so. Normal boot time is under 30 seconds for me, with steam it can take up to 3-4 minutes to be fully ready to go and 'fast'. Even then it mucks up several things. All my friends that use steam have the same issues with it, across various machine types, including laptops, desktops, 64-bit, 32-bit, windows 7, vista, and xp. We all also have various types of hardware, so I figure its just steam being bad. While once steam is on and running it only takes about 10 seconds from me clicking a game and saying play to it actually running the game, its mainly the opening of steam and its ill-effect on my computer I dont like. If it sat quietly in the backround, opening quickly, and ran games smoothy, I wouldnt mind at all.

Also, and this is a stupid point, I'd rather have the hardcopy of a game, and I think having to take your hardcopy and varify with a program is stupid. If you have your hardcopy you should enter the code on the manual and your done. Not to mention there are all those people who dont have access to internet who are messed up. I will still buy Skyrim if they use steam like with NV, but I will lose a huge chunk of respect for them, because I think they could find better ways to use DRM.

Wow, that really blows! it sounds like something is seriously wrong with your Steam installation or some other software on your computer or your registry.

I can certainly understand why you would be hoping steamworks activation is not required.

Java is a different beast. It is not that you need a program to run another: Java allows developers to create programs that run on multiple platforms. To you, the regular PC user, who uses Windows for gaming, email, web, etc., I agree it can be a pain. But, from an enterprise perspective, when you are dealing with Windows, Solaris, any of the Linux-based operating systems, AIX, HPUX, etc and you need applications that would function across platforms, Java is a great tool.

Fans are generally going to say that they want more options, yes. The problem is that the option they're chosing isn't actually a realistic one. If Bethesda doesn't implement Steamworks in the retail version then it's a foregone conclusion that they won't use it in the Steam version either, and if Bethesda uses Steamworks then it's a foregone conclusion that the retail version will include it.


Fans who post on forums are almost invariably far more passionate than fans in general, and threads/polls like this that actually require users to actively decide to navigate into them are far more likely to attract and therefore be answered by the minority who are strongly for or against Steam than to attract the vast (and I mean really, really, really vast, at least from what I've seen) majority of people who are indifferent about it.

Long story short: the fact that you tried to use statistical jargon in your post and then went on to claim that a clearly non-representative sample represents a non-trivial proportion of TES fans (it definitely doesn't - it's pretty much impossible for any poll done on these forums to actually do that) is extremely confusing to me, to use generous terms.

Well, I'd say, unless one is privy to their balance sheets, I don't think one can say they are financially stable. Just because they "sell a lot of stuff" of "have this many clients" , that doesn't mean they are financially stable.

I see a lot of posts where people ask about Steam "going down", as in bankrupt, but that's only one scenario; of course whether any of these occur sometime in the future, is anyone's guess...

What about changing policies? Companies change their policies at the drop of a hat to benefit them. Credit card companies raise your rates, and simply bury the information in a pamphlet they send you in the mail. What happens if Steam decides to "go Ubisoft" and starts requiring a connection to the internet all the time and saving one's games on "cloud" servers (boy have they over-used that term in resent times, but I digress...) Hey, AC2 sold very well even with that system in place... maybe Valve would like some more control, and the new generation of gamers don't seem to mind the control...

What about buyouts/mergers/hostile takeovers? Not the first time a seemingly successful company has been bought then its policies/level of service changed radically (see "going Ubisoft" above), or it was systematically run to the ground, or just bought for the infrastructure then the buyer changed the purpose of said infrastructure?

As for the belief that Valve would release a key to unlock all games in case of bankruptcy|shutdown: I guess people think Valve has this magical key stored in some computer under someone's desk at Valve's headquarters. But my guess is that all of their consumer-facing servers belong to someone else, and they are contracting hosting services. What happens if the hosting center unplugs them for lack of payment? Then, where do you get your key?

.. again, whether any of these scenarios will come to pass, no one knows. But there is always these possibilities are always there, for any company, no matter what the markets look like.

Rabish, your post belies an attitude that I think is unfortunately all too common among highly successful brands: dismissal of 'fans' as being either not representative of the total market potential, else so captivated by their brand loyalty that satisfying the largest possible fraction of them by providing the options they want is too much trouble.

These forum polls do not have to be ideal surveys of the target markets for them to suggest risks involved in not positioning the product to satisfy consumer wants.

Moreover, fans, as people deeply immersed in the culture of the product, are in some cases more likely to be able to explicate what most consumers will prefer, not the opposite as you imply.


An overwhelming majority of respondents to this poll are saying they would prefer Steam distbitution to be optional. Dismissing the preferences of consumers in general, or fans in particular in the interest of an unproven method of reducing shrinkage is foolish.

You seem to be missing the point entirely. I'm not saying that polls here should be entirely ignored. What I'm saying is that a forum poll here is going to have such inherent bias, in so many horribly obvious ways, that acting like it provides a representative image of the overall fanbase and market for the game makes no sense. Whether or not fans are representative of the total market potential (when dealing specifically with the kinds of fans that come to forums like this they very often aren't - forum-using fans of games are extremely vocal about things like copy protection in almost all cases, but that's an area where the vast majority of the market absolutely does not care) doesn't change the fact that you reached a conclusion that doesn't follow from the evidence that you have at hand because of several forms of bias involved. You picked the fact that I noted that it was only the most dedicated group of fans that would access these forums, but in doing so you completely ignored the fact that people who are indifferent about Steam (again, the majority) aren't likely to so much as click on this thread, let alone vote in the poll, whether or not they happen to be fans and happen to be browsing this forum.

If you're going to speak using statistical jargon and try to carry yourself as though you're doing a reasonable statistical anolysis, you can't ignore gigantic sources of bias and absolutely all forms of scientific procedure and just declare whatever you like from whatever information you've got at hand.

Proof?

If you want, I'll go retrive a ew online stories about the negative reaction evident in sales and piracy stats in reaction to DRM.



What bias? Are you referring to the point you made above about how most consumers don't care at all about copy protection, whereas fans do? If you have any actual evidence to that effect, I'd love to see it. I'd be very suprised to learn that brand-loyal consumers of intellectual property showed less tolerance of hassle in order to consume a product than did a naive, ambivalent or new users.

The real reason game developers do this is because of piracy, if you have to get it from a place like Steam and connect to their servers at least once to be able to play, this severly limits the ways to pirate their software not to mention they don't have to pay as much to box the merchandise when it is just a download. Also Steam patches all of its games automatically as soon as a patch is released so that is all seamless to the end user which I am certain eliminates some support problems. Digital distribution is the way it will be for all software so we may as well get used to it, we might like to have the discs there in front of us and I can understand that, but those days are gone. One thing I like about Steam is my games are always there ready to be downloaded and installed and I don't have to go look for manuals, keycodes, or anything else, steam keeps track of all of that for me....

The only thing that bothers me is I keep thinking that one day I will turn on my PC and find out that Valve sold Steam to someone else and now the rules have changed and now I have to pay some sort of rental fee on my games, or Valve just closes up and takes most of my games library away when they do....

Another thing I find very useful with Steam is the fact that they have a lot of older games that you just can not find any where else, like Morrowind, Titan Quest, The Longest Journey, to name few. I love playing those old classics and they are usually very cheap to buy especially if you wait for a sale.

I have yet to see a single game's sales impacted by any sort of DRM, and I do track those sales as a hobby. If you can show me otherwise then feel free to go right ahead.


And not one of them will be legitimate. Generally they amount to things like "Spore was one of the most pirated games of the year because of the DRM"... but that simply isn't true. Spore was one of the most pirated games of the year it was release, but that's because it was one of the most popular games of the year it was released.


What I said is that fans are more vocal than the majority about copy protection, not that they care about it. The two aren't synonymous. There's a reason http://www.gossipgamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/boycottmw2-590x491.jpg - fans of titles tend to be more vocal about issues like this, but those issues hardly seem to have much impact (if any at all) on their actual purchasing decisions. And again, feel free to show me evidence of a game actually having its sales impacted by DRM, because I have yet to see it happen (even in extreme cases - Ubisoft's more recent DRM scheme is the absolute worst to ever grace gaming, but it doesn't seem to have slowed sales of their games in the least despite the fact that, on multiple occasions, it's outright completely obstructed the ability of their paying customers to play their purchased games) despite the constant and extremely vocal objections of the various fanbases dedicated to those games.

But again, that's really besides the point. You can't take a voluntary poll nested within a forum like this that's taken from an extremely small and very specific group as representative of the market as a whole. That should really go without saying - the very first class I ever had in the very first statistics course I ever took, the instructor went out of his way to drill that fact into my head as hard as humanly possible (which is why, again, I find the fact that you're trying to claim this poll as being representative of anything within the overall market, and at this point actively arguing for that being the case, all after having gone out of your way to use jargon that you could only have learned from that kind of course, extremely confusing).


Then you're ignoring the exact nature of the naivety that you've mentioned. Most users, as far as I can tell, aren't aware of copy protection at all, or at least aren't aware of it to a degree that would have any actual impact on their decisions to buy or play their games. So long as their products work (which is going to be the case pretty universally with most DRM schemes - even the ones that require online authentication aren't going to influence most gamers, given that a gigantic majority of them are connected to the internet anyways) they don't seem to put a whole lot of thought into what goes into them.

I'd rather have skyrim without having to use it trough steam. Steam is ok but i'd rather not use it.

I would assume so, because there is no way that steam just svcks. They would fix it if it was a steam issue. Its just I have tried reinstalling it from scratch like 4 times, and all my friends that use steam (its like almost 10 of em) have the exact same issue. So I just think overall it would be a wiser choice on their part and less troublesome for many if they don't use steam.

That is not proof. It is anecdote. Even less valuable than a poll in a population that may not be representative of the entire market.



You assume that popularity of a game predicts its rate of piracy. Again, I'd like to see proof of that. I would not dispute they are correlated, but I doubt that popularity accounts for in excess of 30% of the variance in piracy.




But what you seem to be implying is that fans preferences are likely to be different, if not opposite to those of a significant silent majority. This is like arguing that high fraction of NFL fans expressing a preference for fewer commericals during the SuperBowl is a spurious basis on which to hypothesize that SuperBowl watchers in general, or TV watchers in general would NOT also prefer fewer commercials because the fans are so passionate and outspoken. Not a logical argument in my estimation. If you can formulate either a reasonable theory about why more casual prospective buyers of TES V would be more tolerant of the hassle of additional steps during installation than fans would else some sort of empirical evidence to that effect, I'd be happy to hear it.



Well first of all, who is talking boycott here, besides you? Secondly, the same thing I said before but, you seem to have a rather dismissive view of both the legitimacy and power of consumer choice. If you actually work in a consumer product or service field I would say that you are foolish to discount the risks of dismissing the consumer as you seem to do.

If you are attempting to undermine my arguments because you love Steam and want Skyrim to be available only via Steam, then I would ask, why? Assuming that you are a steamophile, why exactly would it be better for you if Skyrim is only available via Steam?



So do you have proof that it doesn't? You said that following these matters is a "hobby," and yet you are asking me to do the leg work to "go find proof?" And this in the context of a forum poll with readily available proportions of respondents? Add to this that you already seem to have decided that any evidence I might provide is illegitimate



Well, you'll excuse me if I'm not predisposed to worry about your dismissal of the facts in front of your face.



I have never heard of an involuntary poll. If you think that a sample of 300 is "extremely small" I fear you might be shocked at how much of social science is based on samples of ~30.



I think what your professor may have failed to convey to you is that 'representativeness' of a sample for any given population is more a matter of reasoning than it is a matter of sample size. A very small sample, from a small community can often be perfectly adequate for representing a much larger population. On the other hand, a good-size sample from many different settings might not be so representative of a particular population; it depends entirely on the identity of those samples and the populations about which those samples are being used to make inferences.

I can think of no reason why the proportion of respondents who prefer not to use Steam to play Skyrim would differ among TES V forum members and the broader population of consumers who might by the game. I'll leave it to you to explain why you think such a difference would exist, and the hypothesized nature of such a difference.

Certainly, the proportion of Steam users might differ dramatically, however even there, I would speculate that, a survey of current Steam users might reveal a non-trivial segment of them would prefer not to have to use the 'service' in every way that they are forced to use it.



So getting them to buy it and set up a Steam account is the single most important thing eh? Pathetic example of exploitative business philosophy IMO. A brand loyal customer is a bird in the hand, and the single best indicator of what the 'average' consumer is likely to prefer as well.

In the absence of any clear proof that Steam's DRM is any more effective at reducing piracy than other less intrusive means, this kind of thining strikes me as both arrogant and foolish from a business perspective.



Indeed, the results of this poll confirm your claim. Most gamers, perhaps something like 58%?, are likely to buy the game if it requires Steam or not.

However, the evidence we have readily at hand here indicates that another 21% will feel somewhat putout by having no other option, and another 21% will not buy because of having no other options.

The publishers may have the numbers to be able to say "Pah. We don't need those 21%" but I doubt it. To dismiss an indication that such a sizeable fraction of a prospective market might reject a product because of an effectively optional security scheme with questionable benefits would seem to be the height of folly.

Like someone once said: "that one's funny right there, I don't care who you are".

First of all, I will start my post off with a customary declaration that the only reason Steam's DRM features (and indeed DRM in general) exists is because of piracy. It makes no business sense to implement systems that cost money and negative PR just for the fun of it. Similarly, it makes no business sense to implement systems that cost money and negative PR if that system doesn't ultimately increase the amount of money the business earns. With that said, I recommend that people read http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html as it is, IMO, the highest-quality article dealing with the subject of piracy and DRM.

As for the topic at hand, this is what I voted in the poll:


As for rating the pros, cons and indifferences:


And lastly:

It is common sense to assume that most pirates would not want to have anything to do with games that get low ratings. Similarly, it is equally logical to assume that the vast majority of pirates will go after games that get are popular. In fact, the article I linked to above provides some evidence which basically proves this very point.

By requiring people to be on their site to play their games, Valve probably experiences a dramatic increase in sales compared to if they did not require people to be on their site. I hypothesize the the primary motive for Steam's online accounts and game validation system is the cyber-equivalent of 'point of purchase' advertising. It is a brilliant strategy to foster brand loyalty (in this case, the 'brand" being the distributor) and it seems to work. I hear many guys saying they buy ALL their games through Steam.



It is common sense to assume the world is flat but the evidence indicates pretty clearly that it is not. Spore was poorly received, but was evidently intensely pirated. Apparently a large fraction of the lost revenues from piracy are thought to occur during the first 24 hours after a games release, before its actual popularity is established. Thus, the hype or expectations of a games popularity may in fact account for a significant fraction of the variance in piracy, but I still believe that actual popularity would only show a moderate to weak correlation.

All of which is moot however, because it appears that Steam is no less effective at preventing piracy than any other DRM.

How do you feel about Steam in general? Steam will never be loaded on my machine is the closest thing but i wouldn't go as far as saying that i would never use it. Infact, only a few days back, i actually seriously considered the possibility to repurchase a certain game through Steam but once i found out i would be required to be online every single time i wanted to use the game, i quickly changed my mind. But what i never will however, is to let myself be forced on Steam.

Have you changed your mind about Steam? I have never really been particular fond of them. In general, i just don't like digital destribution. still it's better than something like OnLive.

How would you like to see it implemented in Skyrim? People should be free to chose the version they desire so Steamworks version sold through Steam, Non Steamworks version sold everywhere else obviosuly.

Will the inclusion of Steamworks effect your decision to purchase Skyrim? Yes it will. If it use Steam (or any other DRM i am not willing to struggle with) i will definitely not buy the PC version. Instead i will buy the console version.

That sir, is incredibly offensive. You act as though if a person has a slow internet speed(mine is 26.4k as I've mentioned before on this very thread) there is something wrong with how they are living? I like where I live, it's absolutely gorgeous(on top of a mountain with a beautiful scenic view down into the valley). My slow internet is a small price to pay for that kind of beauty.

Because Bethesda patches have a habit of breaking mods and almost always break the script extenders. Being able to choose when you update allows you to continue playing until your mods and the script extender have been updated to match the new version.

This wouldn't be a problem if Steam's function to choose whether or not to auto-update worked reliably for everyone.

That doesn't really explain why games need the Steam client running to run (unless people, by some chance, regularly browse the store after playing a game). To browse the store, you have to physically maximise the Steam client then purposefully click on the "Store" tab. The client, by default, automatically navigates to the "Library" tab. Also, game validation doesn't automatically navigate users to the Store tab. And again, how would Valve associate a game purchase with you as a person if you didn't have an online account? My guess is that the only real reason people do their shopping on the Steam store is because they want to be there to begin with...

I'd actually prefer it to be on Steam but I'll buy it either way.