Last year, I had no internet at home, due to budgetary reasons. If I didn't have a laptop and access to the campus wi-fi, I would have been screwed.

@cf_nz: Try looking up the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) some time and then tell me I'm paranoid.

A little!!

If I were to jump on the other side of the fence of a minute... Having a physical disc would be nice to play without needing to go online and use a thrid party program. I just don't like disc checks and having to have the disc in the drive. To meet somewhere in the middle would have to do it F:NV style... but allow a disc check in place of Steam authentication.

If I remember correctly, but I could be wrong, didn't NV require steam authentication? I think I remember a lot ofangry gamers who bought the disk but couldn't install the game right away because they didn't have the keys on the internet yet, or something like that?
I didn't purchase New Vegas, not a particular Fallout fan.

Yes, it required Steam. But if they implemented and either/or strategy that would work. I do recall a few very similar threads about the same thing though while waiting for Vegas.

They ran out of keys with... Risen? I think. But I don't recall any key issue with Vegas.

Not intentional, though I see now that it can be taken as such.

What I mean is, someone like me, who built their computer from the ground up. I take great pride in my beast, and I don't want to be told that I HAVE to have something just to run something else, unless it is completely justified, like video codecs for different formats, or the nif plugin for Blender to make custom models for Oblivion or Fallout. In the case of something like New Vegas, Steam is completely irrelevant and unnecessary. I want it shut down when I don't need it. It is my computer, my privacy, and having Valves hand there when playing my game is like the hand from the Adams Family trying to catch a feel of my privates when I'm not looking.

The idea is simple and has been said countless times. All we ask for is making it optional. I don't mind Steam when I choose to use it. I have many games on Steam, but that is because I made the choice to buy them through steam. (Normally cus of good deals, like Supreme Commander 2 for $3.79 and Bad Company 2 for $6

I guess I can see why you'd want specific games on a certain hard drive (open-world games on an SSD for ex), so I'll give this one to you.

The most recent update took me about 10 seconds to install, and Steam downloaded it while I was just browsing. I've also never had to update more than once a month.

In a game like Fallout/Oblivion where an update can break mods, sure, I can see how that would frustrate some people, but there's never been a time that I've decided mod>patch. I'd rather have a bug-free game than one with extra content.

No. According to task manager, Steam is only consuming 10MB of my RAM, and my CPU usage is at 0%. My Open Office launcher is using 13MB and it's not even open.

why all the hate for steam? its really good. I hope its on steam

What the hell is Steam? I looked it up on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_%28software%29 and I still don't get what it is. Does it make games look better or something?

Then how are you posting on here?

edit: crud, I didn't realize this was in the same thread. Perhaps a moderator can merge this post with my previous one. That's what I would do if I was a moderator. But I guess the moderators on here don't moderate that much. Betcha anything my two consecutive posts stay up here.

Ro.: "Betcha anything my two consecutive posts stay up here." Wrong, we read everything, Bet lost.

It's a company started by the guys who made Portal that offers a wide range of games (including competitor products) for digital download. At this point, it is said that Steam has 70% share of the digital download market.

It also provides a DRM solution called Steamworks that publishers sometimes use on the retail boxed PC versions of their games to combat piracy (and installation before street date).

Without a doubt, Skyrim will be available for digital download purchase on Steam. I have purchased around 50-60 games on Steam (sometimes they have crazy sales where you get 20-30 games for $50 or so), and I plan to pre-order the Steam version of Skyrim as soon as it becomes available. (I dislike fiddling around with physical discs.)

However, it is not yet clear exactly what sort of DRM solution Skyrim will use. It may or may not require Steamworks activation, even for the retail boxed PC versions.

Try running a game. It ramps up to around 70-90MB usage and about 2-3% CPU usage.


Basically a digital game store application that alos provides chat services, achevement tracking, DRM, and in game web browsing of the steme store. Basically everything I personally don't want with Skyrim.

You can do it. NTFS and many other file systems have some neat features. For Windows they are just hidden in command line operations by default. Thankfully there are handy things like this:
http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

All you do is install the game and then after it is done close Steam out entirely. Right click the directory name under for example:
D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\gamename (you're right click "gamename" in the tree) and click cut. Then you'd paste it where you want it on the SSD. Then you right click the directory on the SSD and choose "Pick Link Source." After doing that in a blank spot inside the common directory or on the common directory in the tree list click "Drop as..." and then "Junction."

What this will do is effectively allow Steam to use that directory on the HDD but it will point to the actual directory on the SSD. Steam will not know the difference. You can do this with any other directory you want too, such as the data directory for Oblivion, etc.

Hard Links allow a single file to exist in multiple places in the same file system, without taking up multiple places on the disk. That is a feature that would not really help with your desire here though since hard links only work within the same partition. A symbolic link can link a file on one drive to a location on another drive, but for your purposes a junction is the best solution.

You can also change the default location of the various Windows directory settings:
http://www.vista4beginners.com/Move-user-files-folders-to-another-partition
http://benosullivan.co.uk/windows/how-to-move-the-program-files-and-user-folders-in-windows-7-to-a-different-drive/

There are advanced ways to configure those directories by configuring a custom (perfectly legal I must add) Windows installation ISO for use on a DVD or other bootable device/network drive as well.

The junction thing alone would solve your install location issue with Steam though.


You can turn off the in game Steam UI integration. That said, it does use about 30MB for me. I still far prefer it to other DRM options though.

It says Games for Windows, not Games for Windows Live, Live is the thing people like to complain about. As far as I understand it, "Games for Windows" just means the game can be played on Windows, and I don't think I've gotten a PC game that isn't marked with that logo in a long time.



I have nothing against Steam in itself, what I resent is being forced to use Steam whether I want to or not, and no matter how much you like Steam, it should be enough for you if there's just a Steam version of the game. I fail to see how the fact that you like it constitutes a reason why those who don't want to use it should have it forced on them. There's really no reason why I should have to use Steam if I get the retail version of the game, except as a form of DRM, which is pretty clearly the reason why it's used, there's no other logical reason why it should be forced on players whether they want it or not.

No, no, no. Just no. NO MANDATORY STEAM ON RETAIL COPIES!
Pirates will bypass that, legit customers will be screwed by being forced to use that horrible "service'.

Don't FORCE people to use Steam. :down:

If you have a small SSD disk as system disk you don't want a game who easy eat 12GB unpacked on it, with mod it's worse, Oblivion is 16 GB on my computer.

Agreed 100%.

That's the most stupid feature ever invented by Microsoft exclusive to Windows Seven. Windows thinks Steam is a phone application because it listens to the microphone and so Windows will reduce the volume of the whole system except Steam at times. Turn it of in your Sound control panel and you'll be fine.

Steam has a huge benefit for game developers, they takes care of DRM, so they are able to patch it if it get problems. Loads of older games get problems with new OS versions because of drm solutions.

Steam also offer direct download, it's takes away the group who pirate a game as they can not find it in a store, very nice for older games. Morrowind got lots of players who played Oblivion first.

And unfortunately it'll just keep on inflating over time. I wonder how much it'll actually grow over the next nine months?

Half the ragging on steam in this thread is pure misinformation.

If you'd actually do some research you'd find that Steam is entirely customizable to however intrusive you want it to be.

I mean seriously, half this non-sense in here against Steam is just that. Non-sense.

If moving games exclusively to online DRM protections, like Steam, encourages developers to start making great games again, then I am all for it. There is no doubt that at this point that piracy has hurt the industry.

Can't change install path

You can extend your Steam file to multiple HDDs.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1138731


Frequent mandatory updates of the client that not only take upwards of 5 minutes to complete, but they never tell you what they do.

You can game decently on a PC that is so slow it takes 5 minutes to update Steam?


Auto-updating, which frankly pisses some players off.

Rightt Click the game in your Steam Library -> Properties -> Updates > Choose "Do not automatically update this game"


Additional hard drive memory and CPU footprint.

100MB with the UI isn't much. People should have 4GB [...if not more] in their rigs if that rig is meant for gaming.

Your steam is using 100MB's?

:blink:

Even right now, while installing a game, mine is only using ~40MB's. Only ever seen it go up to a tops of 80MB's personally.

What happens if a while after you`ve played your steam activated retail game and you want to sell it on Amazon or Ebay. Steam are a bunch of unhelpful [censored]s in this regard.
I bought Empire Total War from Play.com a while back and couldn`t get into it. Selling it on Amazon was no problem. The real problem was that the lovely Steam chaps wouldn`t transfer the CD Key to my Buyers Steam account, even when I explained I had sold it to him. I ended up giving the Buyer my Steam account as it was the only way he would be able to play his game. If I am bored with a game I will often trade it in, thats not an option for Steam games obviously (I`m talking physical retail versions here).

Now that`s not BS and is FACT, so sorry, but those of us who hate Steam are within our rights not to want this controlling crap. Never bought another Steam activated product since.

Some posts have gone away, advocating piracy is a real bad idea and discussing cracks to circumvent the disc check is not permitted. It all leads to moderator contact via PM which you won't like.

I guess that's understandable, but honestly, reselling PC games isn't a huge market, and really isn't even possible with many games.

Personally, I never sell games I've bought. A. I don't buy games without thoroughly researching them. B. You lose money.