I can't vote in this thread, due to the lack of "honestly couldn't give a damn" option for the third question. With regards to the other questions, it goes:

Good for most things
Never had a strong opinion
Don't give a damn
Will buy it regardless.


If it uses Steam, then fine. I have it installed already for other things, so it wouldn't bother me at all. If it doesn't use Steam, then fine. Just so long as it doesn't use something else more obtrusive.

There have been multiple reports in the New Vegas forums of the option switching back to auto-update mode. Sometimes it seems to be because Steam itself updated, sometimes it seems to be at random. Nobody has been able to find a particular thing these people are doing wrong, and the reports come from elsewhere as well, so the best guess is that the function still has flaws that cause it to not "stick" properly for some people.

This is compounded by the fact that once Steam starts downloading a new patch, the game is unplayable until Steam finishes the patch. So simply cancelling out is apparently not an option.

which is also compounded by the fact that there is really no way to go back to a previous version, especially one prior to installation.

When you exit any Steam game while Steam is running in the background, a Steam splash screen appears advertising recommended games or discount sales.

Another perspective on why publishers go with Steam...
http://www.mcvuk.com/features/808/OPINION-Retail-vs-Steam

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/07/05/how-steam-stopped-me-from-pirating-games-and-enjoy-the-sweet-drm-kool-aid/

http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_100721.html

Only if you leave that option turned on.

It's in the UI section of the preferences, near the bottom "notify me with Steam instant messages...."

It's not Steam that is a problem for me, it's any form of online activation for singleplayer games.

I'd take Steam over Windows Live any day. Steam FTW.

though the online activation wasn't bad in "Earth 2160" (disc version) it didn't force any updates or clients to be used. it's what Steam should have been IMO.

An option needs to be added to the poll about purchasing the game on the XBox. I voted that NO I will not purchase the game if steam is involved, and I won't. However, I will be buying it for the XBox regardless.

I will buy the game for the PC as well ONLY if Steam is not involved. If it is, I won't be purchasing the PC version.

Steam will never see the light of day on my computer ever again.

I really like Steam. Only ever had one problem with it though; bought Risen in the sale and they somehow ran out of keys?? As in they ran out of something that only exists on a server somewhere . And the steam employees were not helpful, and I couldn't play Risen until Monday .

Sad times.

As long as they don't somehow out of Skyrim, I'll be fine

Hardly Steam's fault. The company that makes Risen generates the keys and clearly didn't account for how popular the sale would be.

It's happened a few times, actually.

I see. The company that makes Risen is terrible then. I still don't understand how they can run out of what is essentially just a bunch of hexadecimal characters :shrug:

I like to think there is a big red button somewhere in their offices that is called "Key Generation".

It shouldn't be too hard to just code it so that when the game needs a key the server just generates one there and then.

The key is copy protection. The activation server needs to know what keys are valid, so new keys need to be generated as needed, but can't just do it every time a game is being installed. How would they know the game itself is a valid one?

It's not that easy, bub. You'd have to generate the keys, register them with activation servers so everyone knows they are taken, and only then you can send them out.
Plus, weekend?

*Sees this as an opportunity to make me some monies*

Basically, instead of pre-generating a bunch of keys, when the game needs to be activated, the game connects to the server, and it gets its own key, and then obviously that key is no longer valid. I haven't looked into the specifics of the activation, and even if I looked I doubt I would find, but I don't think it should be too hard to automate it. And even it's not possible to do it on the fly per game, then it should definitely be possible to just write a program so that when the server that generates the keys runs out of keys, it makes its self some new ones

Bethesda will want to sell DLC and want them to be at least somewhat protected. In Oblivion, the protection was a joke, you just had to get the files from somewhere. In Fallout 3 the DLC required you to register a GFWLive account and it was HORRIBLE. In FONV it goes through Steam and just works without all the pains we had in Fallout 3.



From that experience, expect Skyrim to be a Steamworks integrated game so that there is some working "copy protection" on the DLC.

What do you feel are the Pros and Cons of Steam?

Achievements = Pro rather than just screaming yippie when you slay the final boss, now you can brag with it.

Automatic Updates = Both Pro and Cons, my personal experience is that Updates take much much longer to be released on steam rather than the regular versions, also some broken updates have been posted on steam in the past.
Cloud Savegames (assume they work) = Pro and Con. I like the idea that if the Console / PC is toasted i can continue my progress undesturbed and perhaps even being able to multiplatform play the game with the same save is definately a pro. on the otherhand the cloud saves have been having some problems so not beeing able to save my progres after several hours spendt is absolutely a con.

Mac Support:= Either i dont have mac.

Monopolistic Business Model.= Pro against piracy. cons being forced to be online.

Multiple Computer Use= Pros all the way

Multiple Downloads = Pros all the way

No need for a disk = Pros all the way

Offline Mode = Pro absolutely, for a game as massive as this offline gaming is a must.

Online Activation = Pros for me personal Pro against piracy, but with countries with limited internet connectivity this could be a problem, however the main purchasing power and revenue for the game is most likely to be found in countries where online activation is not an issue.

Personal Gameplay Statistics= Pro. I like to be able to track my statistics it also shows i spend to much time gaming ohhh.

Sales and Bundled Deals = Pro not having to buy games on absolute release for some games and then being able to get the game + expansion of sort for cheaper ammount always speaks to a consumers wallet.

Steam Client. = Neither Pro or con. well steam is steam isn′t it.

Steam Community = Cons i prefer the official game community for information / discussion / help.

Steam Overlay. = Con there should not be a Steam lanch prior to game launch, i dint like the launching of eg. warhammer 40.000 : II

Steamworks (forced registration) = Con No thanks steam is not to decide wether to register my game or not also should i decide to sell my game at a later time at eg. GameShop to trade for a new / game of the year / collector edittion Steam is not to ruin that option. I bought the game therefor i own the game, and no one else is to decide weather to make a game disk invaluable to me. Pro : on the other hand to prevent piracy and produce income for the developper its ok by me.

Terms of Service = Irrelevant

Title Exclusivity = A Game this caliber would never be platform exclusive, you wouldn′t miss out on the multi platform profits now would you ?

I bought my Fallout and DLC retail, and I never had to fiddle with G4WL at all. In fact I ended up using the G4WL disabler, when I wasn't using FOSE. G4WL was appealing compared to Steam, and I wasn't exactly happy with it either.

But as I have said in the past, Steam has gotten the last of my money, and that's all there is to it. I don't care if the Elder Scrolls series becomes Steam-only from here out, I simply won't buy the damn games. Steam causes me immeasurable grief because I have dialup (I have 56k, and I weep for Starwulf. No one should have to feel his pain) and Steam can't seem to stay in offline mode once the game is updated. I turned off all the fluff features I could, and the only thing that ever showed on my list was my games, so it's not like I was clicking random buttons.

But at least twice a week Steam would jump into online mode, make me wait ten minutes just for it to be responsive, and then I have to fight my way back into Offline mode. Then it's trying to update what feels like all the time. The frustration isn't worth it. I'll play Minecraft for eternity if I have to, but I'll never buy another steam game.

Strange, I have never had any problems when I use offline mode - I do make a habit of starting up the Steam client before connecting to the internet when I am visiting family who don't have a good connection, as yes, if steam hasn't been updated for a while it will occaisionally try to update when the client starts up if it detects an active internet connection.



I find this a Pro but then, I do already spend alot of time on the Steam forums, I very much enjoy the great chat client, friends list, groups and history features of the Steam community, and the ability to invite a friend to a game or join a friend with a game with just one click when playing multiplayer is great (it won't apply with Skyrim of course but it's still a great community feature of the client.)



Start the steam client, go to Steam on the top row in the left corner, select 'Settings' from the dropdown list and in the 'In-Game' tab uncheck 'Enable Steam community in game' and you will never be bothered by the Steam overlay again - you can also change the bound shortcut keys that bring up and close the overlay there. Personally I love being able to bring up the friends list, browse online and chat without having to alt-tab out of the game first, especially as there are several games in my library that don't allow you to alt-tab out of the game in the first place, but again that's my preferance

There's a lot of assumptions being made by the people you are responding to.
Being pre-generated or generated at the time you activate: generating a key takes no time, picking the next available from a set of pre-made keys takes even less time. As for who generates the key, you'd need to actually know why is this key being generated, as in what it opens, before saying who's fault is it that it doesn't work. If Steam is being used for DRM, wouldn't it follow it'd be a Steam key of some sort? Honestly, I don't know, and I doubt anyone on this forum knows for sure.

In the case of Risen running out of keys during it's sale a few months ago I do know what actually happened, as one of the guys who works for their publisher posted to apologise and explain about the issue on the Steam Risen forum.

Risen uses Tages with limited activations for drm and because of this, it's one of the few games you can buy through steam that can be played without the Steam client being open at all. They ran out of keys for the game because they did not anticipate the response to the sale - they sold more copies of the game that weekend than they had sold in just over a year since the game's release.

Everyone had to wait untill after the weekend because more keys needed to be generated by the people who run the Tages system - and they weren't back at work untill Monday, the new keys then had to be added to the Steam servers, and again that had to wait untill Steam employees were back at work on the Monday.

You can read the whole thread which is still on the Steam Risen forum where they discussed the issue here - http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1586866

I see, it all makes sense now. Thanks for the link.

Either way I still see a way to make some money for somebody by making it so that if Steam emails the Risen people for more keys, then it gets forwarded to the TAGES people, who then don't need to do anything because of the internet, and the fact that everything that can be done by a person sitting at a computer can also be done by a computer program made by a person sitting at a computer

Amusingly, if Risen had used Steamworks DRM instead of the Tages system, this would never have been an issue and you could have played the game right away.

Technically, this isn't correct. I can guarantee that the EULA for every single piece of software you have installed on your PC (even free software) has a term which states that you don't own the software you have installed. Rather, what you own is a license to use that software. For example, this is from the Steam Subscriber Agreement (section D):




Have these people tried contacting Steam's support and telling them about the problem? The more people that complain about this problem, the more likely/sooner it will be fixed.



...Overall, you do make a good point and your theory does make sense. It's just that I don't see anything in the Steam client that screams "Attempted Marketing" (except maybe the News panel, but that can be turned off). Also, I don't believe that this would be their only reason for implementing DRM (in particular, piracy definitely plays a role).



Most likely a case of, "I have the facilities to buy games through Steam, therefore Steam is the easiest way for me to acquire games."



Very well, where is the evidence which proves that most pirates forgo pirating popular games in favour of pirating games that are unpopular? In the meantime, http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html basically proves the opposite. In fact, page 4 contains a table of the 10 most pirated games of 2008 created by a popular pro-piracy website and then makes an anolysis of it. The author basically concludes:

Another notable fact about that table is that even Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 made the top 10 list even though they were released less than 2 months before the table was created, they are very popular games (especially FO3) and they both use only basic disc checks for DRM.



The article I linked to already deals with both the Spore controversy and SecuRom issues adequately, so I'll just recommend that you read the article rather than copy-paste stuff here.



The article also deals with day-zero piracy and a game's popularity's effect on piracy.

I've never used Steam, but I will have to consider it if it's absolutely necessary (for Skyrim or any other game I absolutely want to play).