I would take Steam as the DRM over the Terrible Game For Windows Live (which is what Fallout 3 had). The game companies today need to have some sort of DRM, or at least they think that they do. I for one was extremely happy to see New Vegas as a Steam game, automatic updates, easy to install DLC, friends lists, steam cloud save/settings, system community tools, and the #1 reason, it's not GFWL!

At least Valve/Steam offers value and incentives to use their DRM system, unlike the other options.

I used to to be on the side of "I really want to have a physical disc of the game", but I've been converted and have over 200 games on Steam. Once you let go of the physical copy way of thinking you'll see that Steam is an incredibly good tool. Not to mention the insane sales they have for holidays where you can get relatively new games for a great price, we're talking 50-80% off.

Anyway I understand people not wanting Steam if they don't have an Internet connection, it's nearly 2011 the unfortunate truth is that you need a connection to get the most out of the game's you're playing.

If you want to have the physical copy of the game, not have to fuss with an internet connection, and just want to play the game without strings, buy a console! The console is the DRM. Let us know how that gamepad is working out for you and a locked 30fps

I am glad to see that I am not the only one that has issues with the Almighty Steam. Steam is like that thing that gets stuck to the bottom of your shoe when you take a nice afternoon walk in the park. You have to stop and scraqe it off and walk thru the grass and water to get rid of the stink afterwards. Any game I have that wants GFWL and/or Steam to operate, I install, activate, then un-install GFWL and Steam. I don't want them on my system, I don't need their constant annoying "servers not available" messages or need to login announcements. I don't care about published acheivements, I don't care or want a social network to play a game by myself on my computer. I have not un-installed Steam since installing FalloutNV yet, but just seeing that stupid icon sitting in my systray is pizzing me off. Unfortunately after looking at the file structure of the NV install, I am not certain that I can un-install steam without killing Fallout NV. Which ultimately just points my anger towards Bethesda for the first time ever. The weeping can be heard in vaults all over the wasteland.

-- an excerpt from the diaries of yet another gamer held hostage by the Steam Overlords --

And for those of you who whine about how they cant trade in their games that are on steam you will soon enough as steam is looking into digital trade ins toward purchases on steam.

Kids and their crazy loud satanic rock music, what happened to the good old Big Band Music.

Welcome to the 21st century, dinosaur-folk. Steam as a platform for DRM and digital distribution is great, and the way of PC gaming's future. Embrace it, or go buy a console.

Steam isn't perfect and I would prefe that more games didn't use it, but they do and that isn't going to change no matter what I want. At the very least it is not GfWL, which if Dead Rising 2 is anything to go by is now going to force registration and activation online before install games just like Steam. The only advantage GfWL has it that any game that uses it has it plastered in fairly big letters on the front of the box so they are easy to avoid. Steam is normally listed in the game requirements in small letters on the back of the box, but a little bit of research will allow you to avoid Steam games. If you are buying PC games without doing some research into the requirements then you can't complain if you get bitten in the [censored].

Could be worse you could of bought it on 360 and PS3 and stuck with the worst possible DRM in the world, Consoles.

I was against Steam when it was first introduced as well, but it's part of the world we live in now. And Steam's method of DRM is actually fairly tame in comparison to other solutions, like GFWL, Securom and UBISoft's Online Services (Fail). In addition to DRM Steam also provides a lot of other cool things, it would just be nice if Cloud actually worked for this game on release, I can't see something giving a worse impression than by eating your save games.

PC gaming is never going to be like it was in the past, just going to the store to buy a CD and just installing it without some means of protection.

Steam has done wonders for the PC gaming industry. There are many, many independent developers' games that would have never seen the light of day if it wasn't for Steam and they had to rely on traditional distribution. Independent developers are what's driving innovation in today's PC games. The days of boxes, discs, and printed manuals are coming to an end. These things are now an unnecessary waste of time, money and resources. Digital distribution and DRM are the future of PC gaming.

People who refuse to use Steam remind me of the elderly people who refuse to use ATMs and online banking and instead prefer to stand in line at the bank.

Hey, you young whipper snapper, I resemble...I mean resent that remark. :laugh:

The problem I have with Steam is that not everybody has high speed internet. I live in an area where dial-up gets me 19k download max. Luckily, I'm able to get satellite internet, but I have a 200mb daily max download. After that, the speed drops drastically. I can buy "tokens" to restore my internet speed...which I had to do in order to install the patch. Basically FONV cost me and extra $10....then I had to wait over an hour (waiting for patch to download) before I could try the game.

I seriously don't get the hate for steam. I do understand being annoyed by having to install 3rd party software, but Steam isn't some sketchy, useless program. I've been using it since 2004 and it is easily the best source for pc gaming.

I'm calling BS on the OP. This post was nothing more than an attempt to start an anti-steam flamewar. I have all of this DLC for FO3... but I have no internet connection for online activation in New Vegas? Come on man... Welcome to 2010, this isn't 1995 anymore. Of all of the rediclous DRM crap out there you should be thanking Steam for a 1 time activation.

This entire forum for technical help is becomeing flooded with bullsh*t like this. Why don't you idiots flame some where else and leave this thread to people trying to solve their game related problems.

Considering that Steam was the single biggest advancement in PC gaming in the last decade I think you are way off base here. There are plenty of games that have far more instrusive DRM than Steam. Limited activations are not an issue with Steam, and if you want to continue PC gaming you will need to embrace services like Steam. Considering the PC isn’t the main market for games eventually as digital distribution gets more popular companies will move away from physical copies of games, and move to platforms like Steam.

BTW you install third party software every time you install a game. Direct X come to mind? .NET framework is another common install that is third party. When you installed Fallout 3 you installed GFWL as well. I applaud Steam for moving away from GFWL and going with a great platform Like Steam. I have been using Steam since it launched and will never look back. If a games isn’t on Steam I won’t purchase it, I will rent the console version.

I bought Fallout 3 GOTY and never once needed to have anything to do with GFWL. I even used FOSE, which disables GFWL completely, and the game ran just fine without it. Not a chance of that happening with Steam though. So which is the more intrusive system then?

And if you're into all that it's fine. But for those of us that don't have any use for any of that, I don't download games, I don't play online, I don't chat, then those features should have been an option, not a requirement. We're getting something shoved down our throats, and frankly I don't like the taste of it. I was dead set against Steam when I first heard about it, but then I changed my attitude to a wait and see one. But after reading the experiences that many people are experiencing with it I'm back to being dead set against it. It's a bad system and I won't touch it with a ten foot pole. Not only are people losing their game saves because of Steam, and sometimes being forced to download the game even though they have a disc, but I'm seeing lots of posts by people who have been trying for 3 days or more to activate it and play. That is totally unacceptable to me. If I buy a game at the store, I expect to be able to play as soon as it's installed.

That's simply not true. While I need to have the GFWL utility installed on my system, I never had to go online for any sort of activations. This is with the GOTY edition. There was no online activation of any sort required for Fallout 3 GOTY.

Correct, it was a Securom CD check for Fallout 3.

I must say, I'm not exactly enamoured of the tone of many of the responses on this thread. Many posters seem to assume that there is no legitimate reason why a person might be unwilling or unable to use Steam, and that the concerns of those users are worthless.

The retail packaging states that to activate the game the user requires an internet connection, a Steam installation and a Steam account. Several posters on this thread have repeated this as though it were some form of mantra, but the trouble is, it is not true - or at least, not complete. What a user in fact requires is an internet connection, a Steam installation, a Steam account AND the ability to connect to that account through the arcane means demanded by the software. This last point is the killer. I know for a fact that there are users in significant numbers who meet the first three requirements but cannot, for reasons for which they have no responsibility whatsoever, meet the last. I know this because I am one. I am currently residing in a property with a fixed broadband connection sitting behind the firewall of a university, with no other means of connecting to the internet, and the ports required by the Steam software to connect with the account are blocked. My game DVD is, therefore, nothing but an expensive optical drinks mat.

I am not, as I say, alone in this situation, but even if I were it is not meet that a large transnational software publisher should be selling products some of their customers are unable to operate, because of limitations they themselves have imposed. I have no doubt that if and when I am able to install this game I shall enjoy it very much, but to date my customer experience has been terrible, with over half a day wasted in the vain search for a solution. It is not beyond the power of Bethesda or Valve to alter this situation without compromising the reasons for their requirement to use Steam, either. Why not allow users who are technically incapable of activating their software through the standard Steam mechanism to do so via the web, or over the telephone? Such a system would surely cost less than the lost business of customers behind university firewalls and with other non-standard internet connections the world over, whom they themselves have rendered unable to do business with them.

It seems obvious to me, even though it apparently escapes the awareness of many of the previous posters, that this situation cannot endure. I am totally within my rights to demand a refund for my purchase, but have no wish to do so because, surprisingly enough since I bought the game, I actually want to play it. (Listen, Bethesda! This is a customer speaking! I want to use your product, and you won't let me! Let me!) Absent any legitimate solution my only alternative will be to wait until I can download a cracked non-Steam copy. It would be easy enough for the administrators to track me down through the details I've given, so if they feel like taking me to court over that remark I should be delighted to see them there, since it's about blasted time a legal precedent was set to end this nonsense.

this is true, i wasent logged in to gfwl for a second with my fallout 3 goty, it's NOT necessary!
the copy protection is securom, gfwl was only needed with standard fallout for downloading dlc, thats all.

And a completely useless one at that, there was a pirate version available for New Vegas a day after release. The only thing Steam has managed to do is make things more inconvenient for the honest user who doesn't mind paying full price for a game. It certainly hasn't prevented piracy at all it's just become another nuisance for the average user, and a down right PITA for some people who are encountering problems.

This.

Maybe because Steam is causing many of the game related problems.

What you need is an interent connection, a Steam installaion, a Steam Account... period. Then if you have reason that you cannot stay connected to the internet you run Steam in offline mode.

BethesdaFanBoi -Whine, Whine, *****, Whine, Moan, Groan, I hate Steam because it requires me to create an account so as to activate my product and purchase DLC from!!!!!


Logical Users Response - Register your retail serial with Steam, Shut down Steam, Install from Disc, Set Steam to offline mode and never have to deal with being online again until you want to download a patch or purchase DLC.

BethesdaFanBoi - You're stupid, I hate Steam, it's a personal preference so get over it! People shouldn't be forced to use third party software


Logical Users Response - So then consoles shouldn't have Xbox Live, Playstation Network or WiiWare/DSWare and Fallout 3 (PC) should never have used GFWL either based on your logic :facepalm:

BethesdaFanBoi - You're still an idiot, you just don't get it, I am immune to logic, reasoning and the changing of times!!!!


Logical Users Response - :violin:

I have played FO3 without GFWL for a long while, When i had to DL it for DoW2 then it started working for fallout. Never really had a problem with it either but your right Steam is better.