In business, no competent IT professional would accept forced patching of their software.

The freedom to decide when to patch is fundamental. Typically, only those with an urgent need for the patch features become "early adopters". The rest of us wait to see what problems they have (if any).

The adoption of Steam for Skyrim is yet another attack on the freedom of the consumer by an increasingly authoritarian games industry.

Now, some people will say that a company is entitled to do whatever it likes to its customers, but that argument wears thin when there are few competitive products to buy on more favourable terms.

Sadly, the industry seems to have adopted a siege mentality, where repression is seen as a better response than listening to customers.

For now, all we can do is work around this.

I've been told that patching can be by-passed by renaming the game folder before going online. I'll try that, unless anyone here has better information.

*edit*

People who go on about using the 'Do not auto-update' feature in Steam should really start realizing that it is a (Steam) common knowledge that it does not work, never did work and probably will never work.

There are only two ways to not be forced to download a patch for a Steam game. One is to be offline but that is not a solution for people who have multiple games on Steam, or just want to be online and the second is to not use Steam at all, which means playing the you-know-what version.

Oh, ok thanks. It's a longstanding issue. If I'd known, I never would have voiced discontent about it.

Wait, so the game forces you into downloading the patch no matter what? Couldn't this cause a problem for certain mods if the mod has an incompatibility with the most recent official patch?

Yeah, but don't worry, it's a common Steam problem that everyone knows about. We just have to learn to accept it.

Once the Construction Set comes out, I would expect Bethesda to slow down their patching of Skyrim. Eventually they would move on, and the modders would move in and realise an "unofficial patch" for everything Bethesda overlooked. But yeah, what you described can happen for the next few years.

This is what the industry fail to grasp. A lot of people is forced to use workarounds for a bugged product they bought. At least in the EU there's a consumer protection legislation in place that could be used to enforce Steam or Bethesda to take action or provide a refund. But since nobody is wasting time and money filing a suit for a 60€ game, the industry once again can get away with this.

What's the big deal? Oblivion you had to have the latest patch to use any mods or OBSE. Maybe Bethesda is catching up with the rest of the industry and is tired of reading about old bugs on their forums because only 10% of the players are smart enough to figure out where to get the patch and how to install it. Auto updates are awesome.

Anyhow I'm not sure what your complaining about, there's only 1000 threads on how to roll back to previous versions, it's not like your stuck with it if you don't want to run it.

Oh, I can roll back to 1.1 easily as I am on PC. But what about the Console customers who outnumber PC gamers 7 to 1?

Console gamers used to be able to revert to an older patch. Now, they can't. All thanks to DRM-protection.

Auto updates are awesome. I do not dispute that. But the difficulty to refuse it and/or the difficulty to revert it is not awesome. It's like trying to sell a fast car with no handle breaks.

Very annoying, didn't much care about the patch problems until a ascendent mage one shot my lvl 45 character with 100% resists to her magic type.

I actually had to download a "non-steam" version of v1.1 in order to play the game I paid for. How crazy is that? (I must admit, it is nice not having to go through that godawful steam client now.)

I can use the 1.1 exe. Furthermore I have the old, unpatched BSA. I am sure if I use the old exe and the old BSA I have no more 1.2 files and can use Skyrim without the patch.
edit: Of copurse, consoles are stuck. :sadvaultboy:

That's the perks of being a PC gamer. We have some control.

But have some pity for the Xbox and PS3 owners. They are stuck. And they are seven out of eight Skyrim players.

The fact that Steam force updates something that has a large chance of being game breaking is definitely disturbing. Saying that you shouldn't care that Steam can do this since it's a known issue is beyond stupid.

What's worse is that Steam KNEW that the patch was not working yet they still chose to force it on their customers. It was on their news page yesterday BEFORE the patch was released.

I firmly believe that Steam is in breach of EU consumer and competition rules. Remember Microsoft were heavily fined for forcing consumers to use their software. They need to be challenged in court, but who's gonna take them on over a €50 game?

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edited for typos

I had exactly that.

I got in from work, booted up and jumped on it right away to set that option - that DID block the patch. Being a paranoid little fellow, I alt-tabbed out mid game to check again and it was back on automatically update the game. I turned it off again. THAT seemed to stick, but I kicked steam into offline, just in case.

I don't really understand why they even bother with DRM. The game has already been cracked. I've been reading the comments made after the 28th and people are still able to get it to work, even with all the DRM patches.

I'm never buying another game with overly excessive DRM again.