Alright so I am getting Oblivion, but I am not sure if I should download it off steam or buy a hardcopy. I heard all mods work for the steam copy from a friend, but I am a bit skeptical. I am open to opinions and suggestions as long as you provide why. Thanks in advance.

Personally I like having a hard copy as you get a cool Cyrodiil map with it. Also, if you plan on doing any mod'ing you may have to reinstall a few times until you weed out the destructive mods. I had to reinstall like 4 times before I had all the mod sin place I'm using now, and I wouldn't want to dl it on Steam every time.

I was skeptical at first, but I started using Steam about 1 year ago when there was a really good package deal for Fallout GOTY, Morrowind and Oblivion, plus 20 or 30 other games IIRC. Ultimately, I found it to be a godsend. I've changed laptops several times during this period (4 or 5 different laptops), and after using Steam's installation process, I will never go back to hardcopy games.

Everything is permanently stored in your library list and you can download and install any game from your library at any time, on any computer. The download speed is excellent and Steam automatically updates all of your games with any patches for you. No more manually checking to see if you have the most current patch, etc.

Also, while playing you can press Shift+Tab to join one of Steam's chat rooms for whichever game you are playing, very helpful if you get stuck and need some pointers.

Steam installation saved me a tremendous amount of time when switching laptops, to the extent that if a game is not available on Steam, I may be less inclined to buy it.

I have had no problems at all using mods for Oblivion, FO3, FNV and Civ5, all of which were purchased via Steam.

All of the above is true, but Steam ALSO AUTOMATICALLY UPDATES ALL YOUR GAMES FOR YOU!!! :banghead:

Which, if you have mods installed, can f*** up your game completely as mods don't automatically update. Now in this case there probably won't be any more updates to install so you should be fine, but for new games I would never use Steam. You can probably turn it off, but to me Steam is a mess and I don't have the patience to go through all their menus and submenus etc.

I say hardcopy. Less troubles with OBSE, my friends who have the steam version cannot get it working, and yes, they installed the steam related components. Easier to do a complete reinstall. With steam, you can use the uninstall option, but when you try to reinstall, all the mods you had come back. And if you are reinstalling to fix a massive conflict, it does nothing to fix it. And with Oblivion, as long as you have the disk, you can also install it to any computer. And it takes a lot less time to install.

There are some problems with Steam, though.

Steam makes it a right nightmare to manage multiple Oblivion installs, which can be very helpful if you are playing a modded game, and particularly for Total Conversions (example: Nehrim). This is because Steam is very anol about only allowing the game to run if it is in the directory where it was downloaded; try to run it anywhere else, and Steam will slap your wrists and refuse to launch. It is possible to manage multiple installs, but it's quite a clunky process.

Oh, and on that topic, Steam does not allow for installation outside of the Steam directory, which will cause HUGE problems for users of WinVista/7 who put Steam into the Program Files directory due to UAC.

If you are willing to deal with those limitations (I switched to hardcopy, myself, to make it easier to manage multiple installs), then Steam is a great service.

EDIT: Oh, yes, and the auto-update service is both a blessing and a curse, as Steam is notorious for forcing people to update against their will. Many people don't like it when the decision to update their game is made for them, they prefer to make it themselves, and thus consider Steam's auto-update system as undermining their desires.

Think about this. Could they ever decide to remove your game by auto-updating it to not start? Do you really "own" a game in those circumstances?

If you had the ability to clone the download and run from the protected copy, it would be as good as the disk, but the way they restrict it, they have full control of whether you may run the game, and can take it away any time they like.

Thanks everyone. I am going to go with hardcopy, thanks to your reasons and due to the fact that my internet is satellite, steam is just not a feasible option. Thanks again.

Hardcopy. I don't need babysitting or a third-party looking over my PC's shoulder. If Steam wants to provide updates, patches, new mods or other games, I'll buy and download them, if I don't have to download their entire, intrusive, ad-pushing, PC monitoring program.

This alone is enough reason for me to absolutely loathe Steam, and is why I remove it as soon as I can whenever I install a game that uses it (like FO3).

It sounds like the OP has good reason to go with hardcopy.

The decision to go with Steam, in my case at least, has a bit to do with the number of games I own and the fact that for a few heavily anticipated games, I wanted to be able to play them as soon as they were released. In the case of Oblivion I have only installed a few mods so far and I'm very interested in trying some of the larger mods like OOO and FCOM, as well as some of the survival mods that require eating/drinking/sleeping and some mods for improving the textures, graphics and beauty. I hope these are all ok to use with the most recent patch of Oblivion. Does anyone know if I will run into problems?

I hope I will be able to continue using Steam for Oblivion without any trouble, as I have 14 games currently installed on my laptop (12 of them from Steam, the other two are DA:O and DA:A from the EA Store) and over the past couple of years I have probably installed 30-40 games. I also have another 20-30 games in my Steam library that I have not even downloaded yet (due to capitalizing on some of the crazy package deals they have offered). I have installed a relatively large number of mods for FO3 and FNV and a couple modpacks for Civ5 - so far none of them have conflicted with the patches distributed by Steam.

I don't think I could deal with messing around with discs and packaging for all of those roughly 50-70 games, not to mention countless DLC and the massive PITA involved in installing, uninstalling, etc., from so many discs, which eventually get scratched or corrupted in some way. I suppose I may have an irrational hatred of hardcopy discs of any software in general. I don't buy music CDs or DVDs, I use iTunes, Netflix, etc., and I purchase all my apps and games via digital download. I have very little space for all the work-related discs and computer peripherals I already use on a regular basis. I also travel frequently and usually buy a new laptop each year (although this past year I went through several different laptops that were RMA'd) which works out much easier with Steam. And for a couple games (FNV and Civ5) it was nice to be able to pre-install them from Steam and have them magically unlock on the release date.

I only like Steam for multiplayer games and games that simply don't have a big modding community outside of a third party game. For example, Portal doesn't have that big of a modding community outside of GMod so that's okay but Oblivion has this HUGE community of modders so Hardcopy. Games like Call of Duty or Team Fortress 2 are great for Steam as it gives the PC players the "XBOX Live" or "PSN" for PC.

But other than that, I simply don't like singleplayer games on Steam. No real point.

Hard Copy for me. I prefer to get games on steam that are multiplayer or are very linear. Open ended games I'd rather have a disc.

If you don't like to reinstall you could make a snapshot of your hard drive and restore this to your new computer. Google drive snapshot or similar and there are a lot of solutions for this.

This is incorrect. I have the Deluxe Steam version of Oblivion GOTY, and although I originally installed Steam into my C:\Program Files directory, I was able to move the entire directory tree very easily, after reading help on the Steam site. Here's the procedure:

• Exit the Steam client application.
  
• Browse to the Steam installation folder for the Steam installation you would like to move (C:\Program Files\Steam by default).
  
• Delete all of the files and folders except the SteamApps folder and Steam.exe
  
• Cut and paste the whole Steam folder to the new location, for example: D:\Games\Steam\
  
• Launch Steam and log into your account.
  
• Steam will briefly update and then you will be ready to play. All future game content will be downloaded to the new folder (D:\Games\Steam\SteamApps\ in this example)

I followed these steps and it worked perfectly for me.

Edit: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129.

hardcopy. I don't remember what exactly was wrong with steam, but there was mods problem or something like that.

I have the Deluxe version of the Steam Oblivion GOTY edition, and have several other mods including OBSE 19b and OBMM, and the only problem I've encountered is the crash when exiting the game, which I solved by installing a plugin for OBSE. I start the game through the Steam client, as well.

The .exe is encrypted, meaning access is difficult for OBSE, which works by injecting stuff into the .exe upon launch, and is used by virtually every script-based mod, which happens to be pretty much the gameplay-related mods, which means no extra capabilities, only extra eye candy.

tl;dr can't use Oblivion Stutter Remover with it.

OBSE includes several DLLs specifically for use with Steam, and a readme that explains their use. I think you just drop them in the Oblivion directory. I'm using the latest version, 19b, and it works fine and the mods that use it work fine.

Erm... you seem to be injecting extra meaning into a quote where it doesn't belong. I never said that it was not possible to move Steam out of the Program Files directory and never debated the possibility of doing so, I said that so long as it is in there, UAC will hound your modding experience. Steam does not allow ANY flexibility as to where it puts your games, and newbies might not realize that you need to move the entire Steam directory, they might try to move just the game, at which point Steam will yell at them, then they get mad and post rants about how Steam is so terrible.

The Steam exe isn't encrypted - you're thinking of Direct2Drive. You can't use OBSE at all with the D2D version. I prefer hardcopy for big games, Oblivion included. I'll use Steam or other download versions (not D2D anymore though) for little games like adventure games.

Well, quite a few people in this thread are saying how terrible Steam is with Oblivion. I am merely stating that it works fine for me, mods and all. I actually didn't have any problem with the mods while it was in the C:\Program Files folder, this is on Windows 7 64-bit. I only moved it out of that directory in order for Wrye Bash to work, however that package has other issues that make it difficult to work in a Windows 64-bit environment.

No, Steam is NOT terrible, and many of the people who think it is have not done much more than dragged themselves down the slippery slope (or a variation of it) I set up last post. I've been using it for a while on Oblivion with very few problems, I switched to a hardcopy because it would make it less of a hassle to play total conversions (that and a gift card from Amazon.com).

I have nothing against Steam as I will continue to use it for multiplayer games (not single player, though, as some people have stated, it's a bit pointless), and I'm trying to be as impartial as I can here. At least they let you mod at all. :unsure2:

I'm interested to know why many feel that Steam is pointless for single player games?

Once in a while I play Civ5 MP, but for the most part my use of Steam is strictly single player games.

Thanks, Thomas, for clarifying, and I'm sorry if I came across as critical of your comments.

One reason that I play Steam for single-player games, is simply the availability of classics like Fallout 1 and 2, and the ease of buying versions of a game that have ALL the DLC available (and not just what came with the GOTY edition).