The short form:

Will there ever be a version of Fallout New Vegas that does not require Steam?



The long form:

I've been a fan of Bethesda's games for years and currently own Call of Cthulhu, Morrowind GOTY, Oblivion Collectors Edition, Knights of the Nine, The Shivering Isles and Fallout 3 GOTY, all for the PC. Today I bought Fallout New Vegas Collectors edition. Now I'd known I was going to buy it from the moment it was announced, so I didn't really pay much attention to the news about it. I was greatly surprised and disappointed, therefore to see that it requires Steam!

I tried Steam once for a copy of Half-Life 1 Anthology and found that my fears about Steam came true: playing without a stable Internet connection was impossible because of the automatic updates, and reinstallation of the game at a later date required intervention by Steam support and stern warnings about piracy (because if you ever reinstall your PC you are a pirate, I guess.)

I also have to wonder if I'll be able to install New Vegas 10 years from now. This is really my main concern. Will Steam still be around? If it is, will I have to buy another copy of the game to work with some updated version of Steam? Neither option is acceptable to me. Good games are something I keep forever. I still have games from 15 years ago and longer. I was playing Ultima 8 (from 1994) just 3 months ago, and the oldest game I still have is Infocom's Starcross from 1982!

One of the reasons I have loved Bethesda's games over the years is that they have such enormous replayability. When you throw the Construction Sets into the mix, there is no reason these games cannot continue to be played for years to come. I still have a list of Morrowind mods I'm working though, for example. Requiring Steam jeopardizes the future playability of New Vegas and gives me serious doubts about Bethesdas future games.

At this point I'm sure I will be blasted be Steam fans - I've never asked about a non-Steam version of a game without being flamed, so I've no reason to expect it won't happen this time. Oh well. Will I still play New Vegas? You bet I will! But it's going to be a pain. To guard against the future I'm going to have to repartition my hard drive, create a second installation of Windows, install New Vegas as the only thing on that drive, install all updates, and make a backup to an external drive so that I have a preinstalled copy to restore from for the future.

Very. Annoying.

And if Skyrim requires Steam it may be the first Bethesda game in years that I choose not to play.

Moriel

If the company decides there is an advantage to Bethesda/ZeniMax, yes.

Otherwise, no.

edit: And most of your concerns are outdated, or are based on assumptions about the future. Installation is easy, updates happen infrequently, offline mode works fine, and Steam doesn't appear to be going anywhere or inclined to charge extra for "updated versions of Steam" (they actually worked with a lot of companies to make versions of the games that run on both Mac and PC and allow saves to be shared). Some people do have problems, but Steam isn't the same creature it was a few years ago.

Dont care for Steam, but it worked fine for me for long years

I installed it, and it looks like I only need to log in to Steam for updates. If that's the case, then I guess I can live with it. Having to actually be online to play would have been a deal breaker - no one has any right to know when I am and am not playing a game - but I can live with logging in to download patches. I guess I just need to make sure I backup my system often, and before installing any patches or mods.

I do like the "hardcoe" mode. One of the first things I did with Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 was install a thirst/food/sleep realism mod. No need for that here. Kudos to Bethesda on that one!

Never had that problem with reinstalling. That's kind of weird.


I believe they have said they'd bring out patches to non-steam games if steam ever stopped, though considering it's the most successful digital distribution platform on PC I doubt that's going to be anytime soon.
As for an updated version of steam, having to buy games anew would have a huge backlash of users of steam and so far they have done major changes through their updates without such a thing.

As others said F:NV can be played off-line without much consequence after initial install.

Steam might not be the best option for the player but it's better than most other DRM schemes.
Although I would like it to pay more respect to the privacy of its users.

Well, at least FONV can be installed from disc so you don't have to download it entirely.

I'm putting NV on my laptop to play while on a trip, on the plane for the most part. Will I be able to do so with no Steam connection in the air?

@johnling1953 - You will be fine, just set Steam to run in offline mode.

As others have mentioned, Steam is far less intrusive and fussy than it used to be. As far as reinstallation goes, you will not get hit with piracy warnings and other such garbage. I recently bought a new computer, a month or so after getting FO:NV, and was able to install it on the new system without so much as a hiccup in the process. (I should correct that slightly - make sure your other computer is offline if you install it on a second, it will ask about seeing your Steam ID being online when you attempt to install the new copy, which is easy enough to fix).

Just make sure you activate it first with Steam on your laptop. That is the only time you need to connect to the Steam Cloud with this game. After that, you can be offline, with the Steam Client running, and play the game.

Just because you activated it on your desktop, does not mean you have activated it on your laptop.

Bring some backup power supplies with you, my laptop lasted about 45 minutes and I couldn't recharge it on the plane.

Right, I get about 4 hours normal runtime. In NV i get about an hour and a half. I figure I'll play for 45 min or so each time.

Thanks all for the replies.

not likely, they aready began distributing it through steam and it will only cost them more money to ship it to physical vendors (which most game stores don't carry pc games, at least not the franchise ones.)

I am hoping that future games will be distrubuted by steam and physically so that I can actually buy the game/future games.

There is still a physical copy being distributed. This one also needs Steam to run, but you can get a DVD in a case from a store that carries PC-games.

Bestbuy, Target, Walmart, EBgames, Gamestop, Some Toys-R-Us, Amazon.com.....

Lots of places to buy hardcopy PC games, but no there will never be a non-steam version.

Duh, I'm not sure I have FNV set to play in Offline mode. When I click on the desktop icon, it says it's logging into Steam. Is that wrong? How do I set for offline mode, which is what I want. I've unchecked everything that looks like it might be it but I'm not sure. Thanks.

Open Steam, Click on 'Friends' in the top left area of your screen, and there should be options with a checkbox next to online, three below it is Offline so click on that and viola; offline mode.

Actually, that just makes you look like you are offline.

Use the Steam menu item and choose "Go Offline". Steam will restart in offline mode and stay that way until you tell it to go back online again.

Steam will still start when you start the game and "log in", but it is using the credentials stored on the computer, not accessing the internet.

Thank you...I did both settings and it told me I was in Offline mode finally.

There are no plans for a non-Steam version of the game.

I don't get why so many people get frustrated with steam.

Yes back in the day's of Halflife 1/Counterstrike 1.6 steam was a PITA that served no purpose. Now steam is AWESOME - It is not a buggy mess, but a brilliant program. I use it to chat to mates, voicechat to others, and to find servers for games.

If I can get a steam version of a game I do. It's handy having them all in one list that autoupdate. Its even better being able to re-install them without digging around the house for disks. It's handy not having to put the disk in everytime to play, and its awesome being able to login to my laptop when im traveling (as opposed to my gaming pc) and play all the games I own without having to remember to carry the cd with me.

I personally wish every game was on steam. I think that the more steam games you get, the better and more useful steam will become to you .If this is your first game that is on steam then yes it will seem like having an extra useless program sitting around, but check out the steam specials you can get some games damn cheap and build your collection!

Nothing cooler than going, Man I feel like playing an old game...oh crap wheres my disk, what was my username, how do I activate this online? Urghhhh! If you got steam, you just install it and off you go!

In terms of making a steam and a non-steam version of the game - it just wastes developers time to make a non-steam version. Non-steam versions are easier to pirate, and require Beth to host patches etc for them. By using steam they can pickup cash from people buying it online also, and they can hold specials that lots of existing gamers will see (e.g. I own the Guild 2 on steam, and when I went to play that the other day the Fallout NV weekend special popped up when steam opened )

Give it a chance and use it as much as you can. You will soon realize that steam is one of the best things to come to PC gaming in a long time. Get yourself some specials son!

Frustrated might not be the right term. There are a lot of people who either want to roll back updates, are against any DRM aside from product key registration and/or who want to just click the shortcut-icon and play the game.

I'm with you on loving Steam, but not everyone has the same wishes.
Also no DRM is a full protection against pirating.

do you need internet to play nv on pc what if some one bought it but had no connection to the internet whatsoever and does it play online or form the hardrive

You would have to take the machine to a place that has an Internet Connection to activate the game. However ,once you do that, you will not need an internet connection to play the game. Only to patch and or purchase DLC in the future.

Do you know if this is going to be the plan going forward with future releases as well? I dislike using Steam (or other online distributors) for entirely personal reasons. I guess I'll get over it though, if I want to play with mods. Sigh.

I would like to congratulate you on saying you dislike Steam for "personal reasons". Kudos for you. I'm tired of people pushing their personal reasons as "real factual hard-core reasons" into others

I can respect personal reasons ^^;

I wouldn't be surprised if future releases are all steam, since online distribution is the trend and I see more and more companies moving towards that (which is very good, probably the best and only good choice companies did to reduce piracy).

One thing that I hope from the bottom of my heart is that Bethesta (or Zenimax) never give in to be "bought" by the likes of Activision or E.A. ... those guys live in the stone age and every company they buy end up severelly .. hmm .. let's say destroyed.

Steam is the least intrusive, easier to use and usually offers more advantages over disavantages when compared to any online distribution or DRM. I wouldn't even call it DRM, they managed to make it so mild that you won't even notice. Some companies will use steam and STILL have on top of that other intrusive DRM - that's a real killer.

As for "I just want to install the game, double click the shortcut and play" - well, that's pretty much what you do with steam anyway. You ****CAN**** create a shortcut on your desktop for any game (right-click game on steam list - create desktop shortcut). And if you are on offline mode, the game will just pop immediatly.

As for "offline mode". If you simply can't get it to offline mode (can't imagine why you wouldn't), just so you know: if Steam can't find a valid internet connection, it will AUTOMATICALLY start in offline mode. So just disable the connection on windows and start the game.

Again, with offline mode you are missing auto-patching and other stuff that I like. When we purchased hard copies, we usually had to find updates for ourselves (the ones who actually knew/care) and install them manually. Now you will have the most updated version without bothering. If that is not a very good advantage of Steam, I don't know what is.

A couple of more performance/user-friendly hints if you dislike Steam that much:

+ at settings, on "IN-GAME", disable Steam Community
+ at settings, on "INTERFACE", disable "Notify me about additions, changes, releases ..."
+ at settings, on "FRIENDS" disable "Automatically sign into Friends ..."
+ make shortcuts to your games, set Steam to offline and on "INTERFACE", disable "Run Steam when my computer starts". That way it will only load when you play a game.

That should get you covered so aside from steam taskbar icon, you won't even notice it's there

I recomment, however, keeping steam on online mode for a couple of weeks everytime you buy a new game so you can get patches/updates. It's very common for new games release some fixes right after launch.