Nothing you can say will change how I feel now that I've made up my mind.
I WILL NOT BE SUPPORTING THE STEAM DEPENDENT VERSION OF FONV...PERIOD.

And like I said, sales will determine what stays and what goes.

Steam is 99% reliable. I'll bet any one of you skeptics that any of you who chooses to buy NV that you will be able to login to your Steam account 10 years from now, and everything will still be there.

Beyond ten years, however, it's hard to predict what might happen (Valve may be acquired, etc.). But, look at Battle.Net! It was launched over a decade ago and still runs to this day!

It's certainly not going to go away as long as people cave in an accept it. What if a car manufacturer put online activation in their cars, so that the car wouldn't start unless you went online once a day to verify that you are the owner of that car. That would be a major inconvenience, people wouldn't buy those cars and they'd either go out of business or remove the "feature" that is turning people away.



Disk #1 in the FO3 GotY was the same exact disk as the regular FO3 release. The GotY release included a second disk which patched the game and installed the DLC. I know this because I own both the original release and the GotY. I ran WinDiff on both disks, and they are identical.

If they are going to make a GotY release later without Steamworks, they're going to modify the game code to strip out Steamworks, make a new installer, make a new gold master disk and produce new batches of disks just for that release. All of that will cost a lot of money and time to make a new release without Steamworks. With FO3 GotY they already had the master disk for Fallout 3, the patch and the DLC, so all they had to do was make an installer for it and produce a new disk.

You're hoping that they will release a GotY without Steam, but as most everyone has pointed out, the chances of that happening are small. It may happen, and it may not. Nobody knows, not even you, so why is everyone but your opinion worthless?

I worked for a company that brought you guys internet pipe back then. PSInet, and others, were caught by the dot com bubble burst. Steam has built up slowly over time as the digital distribution business, including revenue from their own games, grew. So, while it is possible that they could come out with clunky games, like the next Left For Dead bombs or something, it seems that digital distribution side of the business is robust. Since that serves many publishers, I think they will be around for a while.

Well that is quite simple, because my opinion is all that matters to me. I'm not actively trying to change your opinion with my opinion, it is yours and you are entitled to it but it is worthless to me because it is not going to have any bearing on my opinion. I don't care what others (as in those that i don't love and care for) think and that makes me strong in an extremely judgmental society.

I have decided to protest Steam by not buying New Vegas at the initial release and that is my choice to make. If Beth wants my money they will patch out Steam a year after release.

Why do you care what I think anyway? I have my opinion and you are trying to change it with your opinion and that is uncool. That's the problem with modern society, everyone is still subconsciously practicing theological conversion in which everyone must think and believe the same thing. Believe what you want and let me believe what I want and stop trying to convert me to your way of thinking with opinions and hearsay. The only data that can sway me is irrefutable fact so keep your opinions out of a debate because they are useless against your opponent.

So, does unlimited activation mean that you can activate it on as many Steam accounts as you want? What does it mean, if not?

It means you can install on as many PCs as you want but once activated it will be permanently tied to the account you activated it on. If that account gets banned then that copy is worthless.

Okay, thanks. Just checking.

Small world Who were you with? The sweet days of fiber cuts

You do understand what I am saying, though, right? I am not saying Steam/Valve will fall, but in this economy, you never know.
Back then, no one thought the .com bubble was going to burst, and it burst huge, just like no one thought Enron was going to implode, or no one thought the mortgage market was going to implode.. one can go on and on with examples of mega-million dll companies which seemed indestructible, yet they fell, and fell hard.

Another thing is technology itself. One day your technology is on top of the world, the next day someone comes out with something better and you are done. Or how about a merger? Look what happened to Nextel after Sprint bought it (that one really hurt as I actually went from PSINet to Nextel). The Nextel service degraded substantially and now Sprint is apparently on the verge of going south, given they keep dropping service prices.

I see buying all games from one Internet source as buying stocks of one company only: something happens to that company, there goes my money, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Sweet! Steam is awesome i think everything should have steamworks, it is the way of the future, streaming digital content to as many people as possible, saves money on shipping, overhead, etc.

I can imagine the possibilities with steam + gamesas = utter amazing content, coming straight from bethesda's studios into your computer, hopefully they do something a bit more interactive like valve does (new content every week like left 4 dead 2), and at least have free content as well as premium content.

I will be supporting this title and any future awesome looking badass titles on steam, like FNV

As long as Windows remains an open platform I am sure this is true. Hell, there will be a Steam-less way to play the game on day two for pirates surely. This is about principle more than function though, for the billionth time.

How come Aussies blow up the Steam forums on a daily basis about how much they are being overcharged?

The point is their DRM could evolve over time. They could go online only, or online required to start Steam, or whatever else if they want to, and someday I could see that being something people accept. Hell, I bet most of the Steam fans who defend the platform from every criticism today would defend it for that as well.

Something similar this reminds me of is Steam ending support for Windows 2000. Now, I am not sure what this means for Windows 2000 users... can they still access Steam? Or just not access it online? Or just not receive new updates and games? It's an interesting thought that Valve could one day change Steam overnight to something your computer does not support, thus blocking you from your games until you upgrade or make the computer more to their liking. What if tomorrow Valve decided Steam will not start if it detects Daemon tools or Process Explorer on your PC? What if 9 out of 10 ISPs join a government program that monitors internet traffic for piracy and Valve will not allow you to connect to Steam if you are one of the people using the 1 ISP that doesn't? Or stops Steam from starting if your ISP flags you for piracy? Or bans your account if you are a known pirate? That could cover anyone who ever downloaded a TV show, song or pormo.

These questions range anywhere from plausible to insanely unlikely, I realize, but the point is your lack of control over your purchases. The point is, Valve could do any of these things if they wanted to, they have control over every game you ever bought with Steam DRM attached to it, retail boxed copy or not. I have No One Lives Forever sitting here to my right because I am replaying it and as I look at it I wonder what it would take to get it to run if I was relying on Fox Interactive's permission to play it. Would I have to pirate it to play the game I legally purchased 10 years ago? If so, will that still be as easy and possible to do in 10 years when who knows what happens to the internet and open platforms?

Call me doom and gloom or make fun of me all you want for worrying about playing New Vegas in 20 years, but it's about principle and not asking permission to use what you bought.

The only thing I can think of is because people in other countries get some games cheaper again than what Steam is offering to us. It doesn't worry me what people in other countries can buy their games for as we have always had to pay more for things like music, DVD's and games. I am just happy that there is now a cheaper alternative.

the only thing good about steam for me is the achivments actully working unlike windows live

Unfortunately this maybe a bad decision by Oblivion/Bethesda/whoever because of the negativity that steam has received. It can be very intrusive at times and as some have pointed out they have had problems with it in the past. Personally I think i'll still get FONV even though it requires activation over steam. If they can do some kind of incorporated Software Development Kit like the Steam SDK Hammer Set then it may work out for the better. Means I can launch it or go through steam and use steam to initialize the updates instead of installing them directly myself having to DL them, unzip them, then install them.

Which is great for all the people who like digital shopping, or have decent internet. But it is, honestly, silly for non-online, single player, bought in a local shop, software.


(It'll be nice when/if the US finally gets a decent broadband network like Japan/Korea or Europe's. Half the price of our current service, and several times the speed and bandwidth. Of course, getting a system like that requires not worshipping at the altar of "unfettered capitalism & competition" and realizing that for some things, government regulation and combined - rather than competitive - effort is the better way. But that's starting to veer a bit off-topic.)

Off-topic, yes. But a wonderland of awesome, none the less.

Windows does not require online activation. It can be activated online but can also be activated over the phone.

Every single PC game should be used with steam because steam is amazing, this choice is outstanding

The problem with those free OSes is that they need a bit more technical know-how to work and that they don't run 95% of games without an emulator of dubious efficacy. Heck, Linux won't run most commercial or personal software unless you specifically buy/download/find linux compatible software, since Microsoft managed to make Windows the industry standard. You are talking Linux and its offspring, right?



How's that any different from requiring online activation in principle?

Of course I am sure that, unlike Valve, Ubisoft had absolutely no clue that implementing a DRM system that forces you to be always online wouldn't be unpopular... and speaking of Valve do you think they decided to implement the regional pricing, with the wonderful 1$ = 1€ conversion, that was because they knew how popular such an idea would be.

Valve is a company, not a bunch of nice guys having fun in their basemant, they will do what make business sense for them and their shareholders and it's true for every company.



Well it's them who implemented the region restriction mechanism in Steam, mechanism that wasn't there in the first Steam versions, but anyway whenever it's Valve "fault" or not is totally irrelevant, the fact is that online activation DRM like Steam make it a lot easier to enforce such ban when they exists, and even make it possible to enforce it retroactively on older games, something absolutely impossible with standard CD-check. And it's even worse with Steam as all your games are linked to a single account, itself often linked to you name and address.

Because you don't have to have an internet connection or even access to one. I've lost both my IC and my phone for a period of 6 months and was able to reinstall my OS with a short walk to a pay phone.

I was referring to what's known as *nix, which includes linux-based OSs ... but the point really was how people just accepted WIndows because it "came with the computer", not because it was one's best choice, trying to draw a parallel with Steam as it "comes with the game" and people who buy the game have to accepted even though there are better choices out there.

Off-topic
People would say using those other OSs require a certain deal of technical knowledge, and that was true some years ago, but the reality is that there are some distributions out there that are very simple to install and use. There's always a learning curve for everything, right? Remember when you started using Windows? You had to learn certain things about the OS , and I'm sure many times you were frustrated with sound drivers, or IRQs, etc, and you didn't know anything about it but you had to go and learn about it... it would be about the same kind of frustrating experience trying to figuring out a *nix

I do find it ironic that Microsoft is trying very hard to make Windows look like KDE (one of the many GUIs you can get with *nixes) with the widgets and the Aero theme, a theme that first appeared for Gnome little less than 10 years ago, and I used it until the release of Windows Vista, after someone asked me if that was what I had in my laptop

So basically because other software company are using online activation it makes it okay and we shouldn't complain about it ? So if tomorrow most game studio decide together to use always an Ubi-like DRM it will also be okay because others are going it too ? Personally when there is something I don't like I think it's more "productive" to complain and try to make it change rather than silently accept it.



Come on, most games gets what, maybe 1 or 2 patch before they are forgotten by their editor, especially single player games, those who continue to patch their games after one or two years are a minority. Unless it's a multiplayer one an Internet access is totally useless for playing most games.

(At the risk of sounding like an old geezer, I would rather have company debugging their games before they release them rather than counting on the Internet to help them correct their mistakes after you pay for them.)



There is a huge difference between having to be online do download a tool/emulator/patch allowing to play the game you once bought and being online hopping that the activation server for a game you bought 5 years ago is still up and running and will still let you reactivate your game. (And given how editor are keen to have you re-buy old stuff over and over again (PSN, Virtual Console, Live, etc..) I wouldn't count too much on it.)



You can get the same from GoG with much better support and no DRM.



You makes it sound like that just because the Internet exists and peoples use it then it's okay for software or media companies to abuse from it any way they want, just because they can doesn't means they should, and even if from a cynical business point of view they "should" it doesn't means that we, as customer, should accept it.

The time will come soon enough, thanks to OnLive and other "cloud" thingy, where fair use and customer rights will be a thing of the past, but let's not make it happen even faster.