Response bias is always taken into account, assuming the person reading the poll knows enough about statistics. Considering the people at beth all went to college, and its a required course for many degrees, I imagine they would know to take it into account.

It also only represents this population, but if you add up the means of each sample and then average those means you should get the mean of the population.
There is of course bias, sample size could be better, and it could be a simple random sample (thats hard for this poll).

however the sample size of 300 is large enough to minimize the effect of outliers (pranksters).

The real proportion could be 1/10, but that doesn't matter much. What does matter is that if they made it steam exlusive they would alienate a large portion of their consumer base. 10% is still a lot of consumers to lose. And even with bias, this isn't here to prove that 1/3rd of the PC population considering buying Skyrim will refuse to buy it, its here to prove that they would alienate a significant portion of their consumers, which is bad no matter what. Its just to help Bethesda to rethink their decisions.

The only problem I would have with the game requiring steam, is the fact that not everyone who wants to play the game on a PC has internet connection, or they live in an area that only has dial-up available and it is very very slow. Where I live in Ohio, up until about 2 years ago, that was my situation, I have DSL now. Is it fair for them to make a game that not everyone that wants to play it can? That is why the disc check version is the best for everyone, at least consumers anyway, maybe not the best for the developers, but ultimately without the consumer then there is no developer.

That being said, I would still buy it if it required steam, but I would not particularly care for it having it.

Of course I'll buy it, New Vegas and my other Steam games are rock solid, I haven't experienced Steam related problems at all.

But let's admit it, it will revolt TES fans who have problems with Steam.

I get most of just about all my games on steam, gog is the only other one I use.

Passed on F:NV, passed on Civ 5. Both because they require Steam. Skyrim however is making me really REALLY upset over the potential involvement of a company that doesn't give a rip about me getting to decide if and when I can play a game that has no actual business needing a multi-player oriented service driving it. I am very deeply considering NOT buying the game at all if Steam is required to play.

I'm also not buying for one second that the 30 million users Valve claims Steam has are all 100% happy and chose to be there of their own free will. I'd wager at least half got dragged in kicking and screaming by some game they badly wanted to play that made them hold their nose while gagging it down. I'd also wager that easily 10x as many gamers don't know about Steam and/or want absolutely nothing to do with it.

I'd be the one out celebrating in the streets the day Valve gets sued into bankruptcy for fraud after banning people who paid for products they can no longer legally use. It will happen. It's only a matter of time.

as a bigger Fallout fan I passed up on New Vegas just because of the "Steam exclusivity"

So true, not all of us are "Happily Steamed" I don't like being forced into it because of my experience with it.


while I would feel sorry for all the valve/Steam fans, I think I would feel bit better about getting games again

Is there a reason to suppose that Steam will be required?

Fallout New Vegas, another Bethesda title released a year or so ago cannot be played without installing and using Steam. Not to mention that there are an increasing number of titles from the big publishers which are released Steam exclusive.

Dismiss the survey if you will; it certainly is not ideal. But it is better than speculation and it suggests a significant chunk of would-be Skyrim buyers will not be happy if the game requires Steam.

A simple solution would seem to be readily at hand: do what Paradox/Taleworlds did and make Skyrim Steam optional (like Mount&Blade Warband; as well as Dragnon Age 2 whose publisher I do not know of).

Me personally, if the game requires Steam I won't buy it. If more and more games continue to require Steam, I guess I'll just stick with the oldies but goodies or just phase out the gaming slowly.

Slightly off topic here, But steam was optional with warband? you sure? because i got the feeling it was mandatory when i bought my retail copy of warband home, I dont remember a skip button when it asked me for my steam activation code.

Back on topic, i have no beef with steam, i already use it for several games, so it wont affect me really, since FO:NV seems to be moddable whilst having steam, i see no problem myself.

Both the tec support for steam and the fallout Vegas support people cannot fix my issue. They are now pointing fingers at each other. I got 16 hours of Fallout Vegas before it stop working. This is with No mods and clean install of steam AND the fall out Vegas game. After over a week of corresponded with the Tec support (such as it is ) The only thing left to do is to reinstall windows 7 from a reformat of my hard drive. That might fix the issue, but after paying $50 for the game I do not feel like I should have to do that. I would need to spend 3 days to do that and I could loss data. If steam would either give me a refund (they know if I am playing it or not) or if they would NOT force an update for the first install of the game (the previous version of the game worked fine for me) I would be playing fall out Vegas instead of writing this post.

If I am forced to use steam for Skyrim, I will send a "donation" check for $100 to Bethesda and once it clears I will then use "arrrrrrr me matey bay" to play the game.

BTW: I am serious about that, I have way more money than I have patient's for stupidity. I have purchased thousands of dollars in games over my lifetime. I believe in financially supporting companies that make good programs. But I am not rich enough to just give money to a game company without getting my product in return.

I was one that got dragged in because of half life 2..... I feel like I paid a [censored] for six. My own decision and my own fault. I feel like a jerk for doing it.

Once some congress man's gammer son gets "slapped" by steam things will change.

Heh. Well, they couldn't even entice me in by GIVING a game away - I've been somewhat interested in playing Portal, so when I heard it was being promo'd for free awhile back I went to go get it. Soon as I saw "Steam required" my reaction was "oh, well, that svcks" and I moved on.



Most likely.

I find it highly amusing that people on the DA2 forums are excoriating EA over *ONE* person who got banned from the forums - and then EA banned his gaming account too. There's dozens of threads about it now. Over a single solitary person. Yet, these very same people are sycophants for Valve because they defend Valve for doing this to thousands of users on a regular basis. One of those thousands is bound to fight back and sue over being cut off from a large collection of legally purchased games. When that happens, it's going to go class action before anyone knows what happened. That's when things get interesting.

Steam will hold no influence over my decision to purchase, that will be solely determined by gameplay. In some ways Steamworks would be beneficial for me.

I wish there was some way I could pay you to do that for me. Or pay Bethesda to do THAT for me....

I would pay DOUBLE the retail price NOT to use steam!

Bethesda, please offer that as an option (So we can pay 2 times as much NOT to use steam) if you can, I will take that deal that in a heart beat.

Don't throw that out there, cus if they weren't planning non requiring steam, they could decide to just to take advantage of such a deal.

Id prefer to pay normal price and not use steam then double.

I probably wouldn't buy it it if it required steam and dont get me wrong ,i love steam ,its just that when i want to go play say civ 3 (which i bought off of steam) and my internet is down im screwd if steam wants to update. Besides lets take this into situation into consideration

So im a Random TES fan ,and i heard Skyrim is coming out, so i wait till the release date buy a hard copy, drive home and go to install the game, but wait i can't because i happen to not have a internet connection so i cant download steam.

OR

My familys poor ,but we saved up for a nice computer this year, so i hear skyrim coming out and i'm ecstatic ,so i wait till Christmas and get it, then go to install and i cant cause i dont have internet and my family also cant afford it

This is the big issue and anyone who says that person can just go buy internet. let me me remind that some people live in places that aren't cities and internet might not even be available , I live in a gorge, it also happens to get REALLY windy here
(where like one of the best windsurfing spots in the world) And boom internets down and steam wants to update. Now i can't play a $60 SINGLEPLAYER game cause steam is being finicky and wants to show me adds.

I enjoy steam but it shouldn't be required to play my games i bought at the store

A great service for Multiplayer games ,but pretty useless for singleplayer ones

By the way i'm still getting it for Xbox

I'd pay triple if that option was available, in a heartbeat.

*cough*Obsidian*cough*

But yeah, I would not be happy if Skyrim was steam exclusive. And this comes from someone who uses steam a lot for other games. If your internet goes down you can’t play. If you don’t have an internet connection you can’t play. Granted there are good sides to steam but the elder scrolls series has always been independent. I can’t explain my last argument; I will just be disappointed if another great game was forced to only work with Steam.

Are you absolutely sure that's not just because you downloaded it from Steam? Because I know for a fact that many (if not most) games available via Steam, do not generally require steam at all. They just require it if you DL them from there - e.g. TES Oblivion.

Oblivion didn't need anything, neither did Fallout 3. I also think you're wrong about Fallout New Vegas (if you buy the box in the store) and I highly doubt that Skyrim will be any different. Skyrim is, like Oblivion, primarily GFWL - an optional online account that collects special achivements etc and - afaik - a direct competitor to Steam.

Kinda meaningless feature, if you ask me, because in my opinion those achievements should be in-game and not on some server. Being able to show off your achievements may sound nice to someone who doesn't think it through, but not everyone has an internet connection just because Internet is "available" to 99% of the population. Something that certain marketers don't seem to understand AT ALL. In fact, I would argue that most people DON'T have internet connection - they don't need it, because they get to surf at the workplace, library, malls, internet cafés and so on. But you can't usually install games at those places, cause you'll likely get kicked out or fired.

Ok, I'm sidetracking a bit here, so back to Skyrim and Steam, hihi

Now that may have been a bit silly, passing on all those great games, no?
What I don' think you understand is that Steam has an offline mode, and if the game is installed on your computer you can play it anyway, theres so DRM like Ubisoft, or banning for conrtroversial forum post like EA.

A lot of people got introduced to steam by a game, yes, and many kept using it because... guess what? Its a good service!

Also, I think you're all taking this WAY out of proportion. Almost all of the games of steam have a boxed retail version, and Bethedsa is a big enough developer to be able to distribute more than one way.

Valve is run by good people, they would definitely make arrangements that no such attack on our liberty to use their products and services would happen (both as humans and PAYING CUSTOMERS)

Its another way of getting files from developer to your computer, not some conspiracy, cheer up haha

On a point of interest, would I find a lot of people with the "itneedsSTEAM?OMGbethedsaiwontbuyitkthxbai" are also resistant to ANY change? Such as the morrowind hardcoe? And those that are throwing the empty threat of "not" buying skyrim?

I did a poll on Giant Bomb to see how many people refuse to buy games that require Steam.
Right now 150 people have voted
0.7% refuse to use Steam
96% don't refuse to use Steam
3.3% don't play PC games

I think the Steam haters are just a very loud minority.

Yes, the server that I used might have been busy or slow, but I just did a speed test and I got a F+ for my connection 1.32mbs/down - 0.32mbs/up, so for gaming - bad! If you only need to verify and download patches, then the Steam model will most liley be o.k.

Jimc

The only valid complaint about Steam is that it requires internet connection, but that's not a very strong reason either because if it's not Steam, then it's something else that requires internet to install, verify or play it.

Retail copies of Fallout:New Vegas required activation on steam to play. After the one time activation one can play off line from then on.

I would have purchased both if they did not require Steam. I still have not bought either one. Now it looks like Steam saved me from the abomination that Civ 5 turned out to be so for that I'm thankful. But I would still like to get New Vegas someday. But only if they release a version that doesn't require Steam.