So run of the mill threads have a limit of 10 pages eh? Will the poll (in that other thread) continue to collect data? Or does that stop working once it gets locked.

I want to thank everyone in this thread, and the other one that is linked in my sig for engaging in a civil, and I think very constructive debate about the merits of Steam being the exclusive form of distribution/activation/validation for Skyrim. All too often you see these threads degenerate into sophomoric Us vs. Them arguments. I think that is shame. We are all gamers, and the more options we as consumers and gamers have the better. If nothing else, I hope that these discussions help us, both "Steamophobes" like me (no I'm not really "afraid" of Steam, nor do I "hate" Steam; but I'm reluctant to use it because it is required for some singleplayer games) or "Steamophiles" to understand one another. I hope most of us can agree, there are perfectly legitimate and reasonable reasons for any individual gamer to be deeply involved in Steam, to the point of buying nearly all her/his games there; there are also perfectly legitimate and reasonable reasons for any individual to eschew use of Steam. Once we as communitie(s) can stop disagreeing about this fundamental point, I believe we will have empowered ourselves to express our collective sentiments to the makers of the games in such a way that the best possible 'solutions' are achieved.

The way I see it, it is not a zero sum game. It does not have to be done in such a way that either the Steamophobes lose but the Steamophiles win, nor vice versa. We can ALL win. There is no reason, apart from perhaps costs, that a game cannot be provided in more than one form of distribution/activation/validation. Mount&Blade Warband shows that clearly to me. In the interest of promoting our common love of the games, I hope more of us can see that it is in all our best interests to encourage the developers and publishers, and indeed Valve too, that Steam optional is the best path.

Where I live we usually get physical opies of games mach later than the release date, so I definately going to have a digital copy of Skyrim. Now about Steam; I use it a lot lately. It is a trusted service, so I have no problem with it whatsoever.

ADDIT: @JdeRau : I wanted to add, that article to which you linked is very impressive, and well done. It provides a wealth of basic information. But I'm not so sure that the data used to reach conclusions about the impact of DRM on piracy is as vaild as it needs to be to warrante\ the conclusions reached by the author.

What the data presented in that article do not address is the degree of correlation between "popularity" and incidence of piracy. Noting that the top ten most pirated games tended to be very popular tells us nothing about the incidence of piracy among the most popular games. To address that question, we would need a sample of games selected at random, and in which each case in the sample was independent of the others. We would then need, a measure of its popularity, and a measure of its victimization by piracy. These measures would have to be comparable (meaning, we could not use pre-release indicators of "popularity" for some games, but then use Gold Edition cumulative sales numbers for others). The other thing is that this data does it tell us anything about the rate of popularity among games as a function of (i) their "popularity" (whatever that might mean); and (ii) their reputation among consumers. That is the key point I'm focusing on. I would not be surprised if some measure of "popularity" such as pre-orders or total sales did indeed correlate with victimization by piracy. But what I'm hypothesizing is that there is likely to be a separate and significant effect (and potentially more important effect) resulting from the reputation of the developer/publisher/distributor. That is what Wardell has argued: if you are beloved you are less likely to be pirated. Not to mention that, if someone is going to pirate you, is there ANYTHING you can actually do that will make them more likely to buy the game? He seems to think not.



Relatively high incidence of piracy in games that use less intrusive forms of DRM does not stand as proof that "intrusive DRM appears not to increase piracy of a game." All it shows is that, at minimum, there is not a perfectly correlation between DRM and piracy.

ADDIT*2: Herein is I believe the fundamental issue at stake (bolded terms added by me for emphasis)



Here I believe the author has contradicted himself, at least implicitly. He notes that actual shrinkage of revenue from "piracy" is potential, or hypothetical. This is exactly the point reflected by Wardell when he says
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/46282/Brad-Wardell-Interview



Wardell sounds like a smart business man to me. Respectful, reasonable, and gracious too.

. . . Then are noting that the shrinkage from piracy is merely a "potential," (which Wardell scoffs at) the author says that what it _means_ is that some pirates would have bought the game.

While that may be the hypothesis, as far as I'm aware, we have no proof of this. Indeed, proving it would seem to be a VERY tricky business of consumer psychological research. If there were actual RISKS involved in being a cyber "pirate" as there are with say, breaking into someone's house or pick pocketing someone, then I would be far less skeptical of this hypothesis. However, because it is effectively risk-free to pirate digital versions of intellectual property like games, we have to ask ourselves very seriously WOULD those pirates have actually bought the thing in the first place.

Addressing piracy, promoting our gamer sub-culture, improving the games, and promoting our consumer rights as gamers, all hinge entirely on this point.

We must effect a transformation of our sub-culture in which would-be pirates perceive risk, if not from legal forces, then from social forces manifest within our sub-culture. That is the only real and viable solution to this epidemic (short of dramatic new legal developments in enforcement and prosecution). These efforts by the publishers to impose on US law-abiding consumers with software-locks-and-keys that do not actually reduce piracy in the first place is in one sense unconscionable because it fails to accomplish what it claims to be setting out to do. But I have to acknowledge, what they are doing, is hassling us, putting pressure on US, the law-abiding gamers, to change our sub-culture.

Maybe it is actually beyond our capacity to sufficiently vilify piracy that it becomes a pariah like status, but I believe if we gamers really want to promote our hobby, that is what we need to be thinking about accomplishing as a community.

It is of course bad form to quote oneself, and esp. being as I just made the last post in the thread. However, I wanted to elaborate on this point above just a bit.

I do not "hate" Steam. I'm not "opposed" to Steam. I'm not "afraid" of Steam, or digitial download. I do not believe "Steam is evil." I am not a paranoid luddite locked in the 1990s. I buy many games via digital distribution, and I understand and welcome the role that DD will play in the future of gaming. I am not even totally opposed to more elaborate copyright protection that go beyond the simple serial key method, though there, I believe we as consumers need to be quite careful in what we agree to.

Steam's strategy IS brilliant, and I have to say, I admire their business accumen. Their system promotes brand loyalty and is probably a big reason why they are the dominant force in digitial distribution.

However, I draw the line when I am expected to agree to their EULA and patronize them as a precondition to play a game that otherwise does not require their online services. You could shorthand that to be: being "forced" to use Steam to play singleplayer games.

That is my beef almost entirely. As I said, if Steam was OPTIONAL, not required by virtue of it being exclusive means of distribution, I'd probably give Steam a try. It does sound like it has a lot of useful features.

But when I'm REQUIRED to use a 3rd party application/distributor for game(s) that otherwise should not require that 3rd party, I draw the line. I will not participate, and I want to encourage everyone else to think carefullly about that.

Actually, the primary motive for creating Steam in the first place was Valve's desire to create a platform for their community to make playing their own multiplayer games an easier and better experience for PC users whilst trying to find a way to tackle the issues of cheating and piracy.

They approached Microsoft and several other big name publishers first asking them to do it and were turned away, before deciding to provide the service themselves.

The Store, awesome sale deals and everything else has grown from that, and they have certainly become much more sophisticated with their marketing in the last few years, but at it's heart it is a platform created by PC gamers for PC gamers, meant to facillitate PC multiplayer and co-op gaming with a superb, easy to use community service.

I can fully understand your desire not to have to use a third party application for a single player game, however with more and more publishers requiring some kind of online activation at launch for all of their games regardless, I personally would much prefer they use Steam than any other drm, or service.

Steam is about to get a lot more users.

Buy Portal 2 for PS3 and Valve is giving you a copy on PC for free if you link your PS3 and Steam accounts for cross-platform co-op play.

Obviously, Valve has a large interest in pushing people toward using Steam, so presumably they know doing so will increase their business in the long run.

Sounds like the first round of Steam attempting to dominate the console markets to me.

this course of action potentially could end valve's control of Steam as a whole if it's deemed a monopoly

They're giving you an extra version for free, and you have to buy the PS3 version to get the free PC version, not the other way around.

That does not scream "domination" or "monopoly" to me.

It's a further attempt by Steam to kill the secondhand market in used games by tying PS3 games to your Steam account and thus killing the resale value of console games. It stinks, in my opinion.

Actually, the PSN account is linked to your Steam account. Whether your copy of Portal 2 is tied to your PSN account, I don't know, but I doubt it.

Perhaps the Steam version of Portal 2 will disappear if you unlink the accounts, but I don't see how this can tie your PS3 copy to your Steam account.

edit: I guess they'll have to have some way to know you bought Portal 2 and still own it, so it might tie things together somehow. Still be your choice to link the accounts though, assuming you want the free copy.

I hate being forced to use any software, i like to run my machine as lean as possible, give me a DVD, please.

Realizing, of course, that if the DVD installs a DRM software on your computer it will still be running regardless of whether you can see it or not?

Showler, I think that you know what he meant. He is requesting a simple disk check as DRM, as opposed to something like Steam always running in the background.

I know what he means. I don't think it exists any more.

DRM is almost always a low-level root kit like program that you have no control over, or an online activation from a central server using unique keys.

personally, I'd be fine with that choice

I might sound unpop for this but... I want games for windows live, I really liked it in fallout

I don't even know what GFWL did for Fallout 3. I guess it had it's version of achievements, and it was the means of distributing the DLCs.

One advantage seemed to be that the DLCs came out at the same time as on Xbox.

Still seems weird, though, to think that the biggest advantage of a system was the ease with which you could get rid of it.

GFWL was a tool used by the devil to cause thousand of people to lose them save games in all the games it was implemented

I don't even remember any DRM in the Fallout that I bought. All I recall was: order off Beth store. Wait for CD to arrive. Install, fiddle with some sort of serial key or something, activate, PLAY!

Did they sell different versions?

Steam rules and together with OnLive they pretty much represent the future of PC gaming

I don't know about the original Fallout 3, but Fallout 3 GotY edition (disk version) only had a disk check. It came with GFWL, but it was only optional. You could install and play the game, along with the bundled DLC, without ever going online. In my opinion, that's a good model for Skyrim.

Not if we refuse to let them takeover.



+1 Make Steam and online stuff optional = win a broader segment of the community.

My beef with steam is the need to have it constantly running, updated and on the internet. It is a pain that is just unnecessary. My internet is horrible and it takes steam about two days to update any game or.. whatever it is that its doing. And call me old fashioned... but I love having the hard copy of a game, I like displaying the box on my shelf with the other boxes... and whatever awesome extras they put in a Collector's Edition.. I like the physical game over a digital copy any day.

Some games are ok on steam... but not for Elder Scrolls. It works best for games like Dawn of War, or something with multiplayer, and there will hopefully be none of that with Skyrim.

After the initial online activation of your game, open the steam client, go to Steam - top left corner, and select Settings from the dropdown list. In the 'Interface' tab make sure that 'Run Steam when my computer starts' is unchecked. In the 'Account' tab also make sure that 'Don't save account credentials on this computer is unchecked. Then go back to the Steam dropdown list and select 'Go Offline'. Lastly, if you intend to still use the internet while using Steam, disconnect it before starting the client then reconnect after the client is up and running as sometimes Steam will try to update if it detects an active internet connection when it starts.



I currently have over 90 games in my Steam library - the thought of trying to find shelf space for that many games makes me shudder.

I think Steam is going to be a big help to the modding community, all of you who enjoyed modding on Oblivion will be glad about how Steam has treated us thus far (which is very good). Steam didn't have to cooperate with us at all, but they opened Steam up to support NVSE (New Vegas's OBSE), which means they would do so again for Skyrim - and OBSE support will be Critical if the binary is encrypted as New Vegas's was.

If the binary is encrypted and we have no OBSE support in Steam, the modding community will take a painful hit. The only way to get around the encryption (assuming it's done similar to New Vegas, also a Bethesda Steam game) is to work With Steam/Bethesda and get their support. Last year I would think this was impossible, but today I am a very happy Steam user for exactly this reason.

DRM is a reality, there is no way we will get around it from here on out. At least with Steam, the modding community has a sympathetic ear. I can't imagine the other DRM dealers being so generous.

Miax