I stopped buying series such as total war and civilization because of steam requirement, but I broke down and got skyrim and really wish i'd have passed on it, but i'm a fan and i love the modding thats done with beths games. Pretty much agree with everyone elses problems they have with steam so I won't repeat that. I just thank bethseda for making sure I'll never buy another steam required product again. Not even TES 6 which will most likely require steam. The series has progressivly gotten worse after Morrowind and steam just put the last nail in the coffin for my future TES purchases.

In a lot of ways people distrust steam or have to feel like they total possess something they paid for without relying on a 3rd party. I don't really care if I totally own something I paid for, nor do I care if I have to rely on a 3rd party to use it. Unless I'm the most educated man in the world I'll always have to rely on a 3rd party to use, or fix things I own and even then I don't believe I actually own anything. In a lot of ways the idea of owning is too materialistic to me, and has caused many problems with my family in which I'm ridiculed for giving something away for free because I could get potentially get money from it... something I also do not own.

It's an overly pessimistic, hippie, I don't care life is vain type attitude but it's whatever.

As a side I'll say I don't own my thoughts, and they're not unique, as many people have come up with the same ideas I have, and they may have been direct replicas of what I've thought, or think. I do not own my body as once I die I'll be broken down and released into nature again. I don't own my animals as they're free beings that I just happen to take care of...

Ditto here. I have Steam installed only because I have FO:New Vegas; if I could buy FO:NV again, but without Steam, I would, and then I'd uninstall Steam and the few trivial items (games) that I leased through Steam. I can abandon these without care or feeling of loss.

Since you don't really own, give me my stuff back, will ya?

I would have paid extra for a non steam version of the game.

For me it has nothing to do with what Valve will do with info. It is the fact that why I can't run my game without it if I buy the disc is plain B.S. I can understand if someone buys a game through steam. But why should I be forced to use it when I go out and physically buy the disc.

Steam is irritating. Connection problems, the fact that I need to wait for internet to be connected when I first buy the game, which is a real pain if Comcast is down in my area. More importantly: Steam has no point in game. It's not online, nor a Valve game so the whole point is null.

Also: Modding the game is a bigger hassle. In Oblivion, just drag and drop with the occasional installing. In Steam, sometimes the data files don't even show up, there are many more glitches to the launcher because of steam, and the fact that Steam Workshop won't know how to install the complex mods.

All that, again, for nothing. Oh, chatting with friends. Great, go do that on your phone or alt-tab out of the game. Alt-tabbing doesn't crash New Vegas or Skyrim so have fun with it.

Oh yeah, and the fact that I have to log into Steam to play my freaking Skyrim. Offline Mode is all good but why do I have to do that? Just let me play the game.

Don't look now, but every game you buy supports that philosophy. There is no such thing as a "hard copy" anymore.
That's true of almost any game that has DRM, which is all of them. If the company doesn't support it anymore, it's tough luck.

I was skeptical of Steam at first, but it's so easy and stable, not to mention cheap, that I don't want the disk clutter anymore. And since all games require some online component, it might as well be a good one.

I was really considering upgrading my PC and getting Skyrim for it, but when i learned it was tied to Steam i decided to buy a PS3 instead and get Skyrim. Maybe cause i'm been mostly a console gamer most of my life, but the idea that i don't own the game I purchase is just crazy to me. Though my love of Skyrim is high enough that, if i see enough really good mods for it, I might get it for PC anyway, even if it means i have to get Steam.

Valve has one of the highest, if not highest profit-per-employee ratio of any company on Earth thanks to Steam. They are like Google in that sense. For them to go belly up, Gabe Newell would have to die along with the co-owners, and whoever takes over would have to drive it into the ground.

Even then, Steam states that should a situation like that ever happen, they will release a failsafe patch that patches all owned games on Steam, to no longer use Steam to play. Granted, it's going by the honor system here - there's nothing saying that they could go under and just not patch your games to work without Steam. But Valve are literally the last company on earth to decide to do something like that, considering how consumer focused they are, and the fact that it is a digital good - they lose absolutely $0 if they let you "keep" the games you purchased or that require steam. They have zero reason to NOT patch in that hypothetical failsafe.

The only "scary" thing about Steam is getting your account banned (thus, loosing access to your entire library until the ban is lifted), which if you are truely innocent and not someone who does suspcious activity like hack online games, steal accounts, or exploit game trades, then you'll get your account back.

I hate to break it to you, but you don't own your games.

Due to how copyright law works, when you play ANY game, listen to ANY music or watch ANY movie, you are simply paying to have a licence to use that media. You do not own that media. Technically, licenses can be revoked, even for physical discs (i.e. patching your console to no longer let you play X game).

If you actually owned your games, you would have copyright authority over them, and could freely distribute the game, sell it, etc. As when you own a piece of media, according to law you technically own the intellectual property of it. So that's why all media you purchase is just licensed to you instead. The games you play on Steam are as much yours as the PS3 version. Just because you use a disk doesn't mean you own that game, you just own a license to use it (just like Steam).

That's ironic, since Sony plays the same role for your console that Steam does for a PC game.

Honestly I don't get the hate for Steam. It's a fantastic service. Makes buying games almost too easy.

Game was sold in retail form on the box stating that you only needed Steam and the Internet to 'activate'; not have it to play the game. So my issue is with Bestsoft for the most part. After the Ninja patch, Steam was supposedly needed now just to play. I am not going to get that Ninja patch or any other updates (up to 1.4 now) because I don't want my game mechanically broken by having a new, forced requirement of Steam and the Internet needed just to play.

Thus, I will be stuck with ver 1.1.21.0 (before Ninja patch) until a day comes when I can update the patches that I am acceptable with. If/When the bugs for quests are mostly fixed, then I will figure out what to do and how to do it where an Internet connection won't be necessary. If one never comes through, then I will have to live with whatever bugs are in my version. Until then, I will continue to play Skyrim without Steam and without the Internet playing with my original boxed DVD version with only the first patch from when it launched.

I would have preferred that gamesas and/or Steam didn't mess with the basic mechanics of my game play, and instead, concentrated their efforts on bug fixes, quest and storyline adjustments, and more stability for the occasional crashes. Not sending out one of the first patches to break the intended use of my game which is to play without Steam and the Internet. That is just wrong and seems like a bait and switch to me.

Looks like Steam has another update today. I wasn't going to post here but I just opened Skyrim to play and I have to sit here and wait for Steam to update itself. I thought I had taken the time during the first week of Skyrim's release to get rid of all this auto updating crap.

Anyway Steam is something I dont need. I dont buy my games online, I know how to backup my games, do it often because I download tons of mods, and I actually prefer backing up myself. I'm a Mac user and use my PC solely for gaming, so it annoys me when I have to download additional software I do not need. I chose offline mode and no auto updates yet it still updates. And this seems to be a well-known issue in the Steam community.

I'm not here to bash Steam, I'm sure many find it useful, but it would have been much better if it wasn't required to play.. I'm sure anyone can agree with that. Well update is 80% done.. still have to wait. Any console gamers reading this, dont let any PC elitist smooth talk you, there are pros and cons to both platforms, with this additional software crap obviously being a con.

Steam says I can play now. /rant

I would be very angry if I was a PC user. Did Bethesda really have to use Steam?

You are correct! This is why I don't run Steam and don't update my game. If the function of 'not updating' was a working function that actually meant "DON'T UPDATE MY GAME UNLESS I WANT TO", then I would go back to using Steam. But because of this updating on it's own for a version that may or may not work; I am not going to update or use Steam any more.

Really though, would it be too hard to have a way for Steam not to update a game if you just prefer it didn't? Not everyone may want to go to version 1.4 or whatever version Skyrim is up to now, or maybe in the patch notes someone decides they only want to update to version 1.3 or something.

This is all discussion of playing a single player game like Skyrim, thoughts may change if this were a multiplayer game where game play integrity was important for all players to have the same version.

This could be Steam updating its platform, if you're just getting a wait screen.

Go offline. Steam will never nag you if you stay in offline mode.

If I had a choice, I'd buy the non-steam version, but steam isn't a reason to not buy the game.

I use Steam because I have to. I don't like it, but I don't hate it enough to keep me from playing the game. But if given the oppertunity I woulg gladly pay extra fro a Steam free (and completly DRM free for that metter, though I know that's wishful thinking) copy.

I would happily have paid twice as much for a non-Steam PC version of Skyrim. For starters, I was extremely displeased to have bought a pre-ordered game, received it as soon as I could get my hands on it, and then to have to wait nearly a month to play it, because the Japan release was later. I was literally prevented from playing a game for which I had the actual disk. Unfortunately for me, I didn't realize that until it was too late. It will certainly strongly influence buying decisions for future games; i can see no benefit whatever for me in having Steam. Others' mileage will no doubt vary.

Nonsense. In all cases before software appeared you owned the copy of whatever was on your media, be it a record, CD, book, etc. You could do as you pleased with this, except for copy it to other people. You could still give it to them, take it apart, rearrange it, etc.

Software companies seem to think it's an ethical practice to prevent people from doing this in most cases. It's garbage and most of what they write in EULAs should be illegal. Some of it is, and that's why nobody gets busted for reverse engineering. The reason they can do these things is because they arrange it so they won't agree to give you a copy until you agree to their terms. This doesn't mean similar terms apply to all copyrighted works.

Requiring Steam is silly. I don't agree with it; I never have and I never will. However, I do like Steam. I find it extremely convenient to use. I also had Skyrim ready to play the minute 11/11/11 happened. No hanging out in silly stores and putting another box on my shelf to waste space.

Because I don't want to give someone the unilateral ability to take away full-price games on a whim. If you somehow break Steam's TOS, you lose access to all games on it even if you don't break those games' EULAs (regardless if you believe in their validity). You can physically have the game installed on your hard drive, you can fully abide by its EULA, and Steam can still claim its "unavailable" to play. You can have a dispute over a $5 game, and be blocked from playing $500 worth of games. You can have an account with $1000 worth of games, and lose it all because of a $1 screw-up. And if you lose your account over a payment problem, they won't give it back even if you offer to pay them whatever money's being disputed.

An even bigger problem is that Steam doesn't have to tell you why it disables your account (and it doesn't for some people). You'll have no way to prove your innocence if you're falsely identified to have done something wrong, because you don't have to be told what you've supposedly done wrong.

Games like TES are ones I'll still want to play decades from now. I don't want my ability to play them at that point be up to a third party that has no real involvement in me playing, and which I am not allowed to circumvent should such a problem arise through no fault of my own.

Steam is not perfect, nothing is perfect anyway, but it is actually very good.

You don't have to manually download the patches, they do everything for you.
Now there is this feature where you can download mods from Steam for something, correct me if I'm wrong.

Steam is actually a convenience. I think people are being silly to avoid it just for the sake of avoiding it. It is a good software. Give it a chance.

We gave it a chance, and we don't like it. Automatic updates and the Steam workshop is just silly. Some people don't want updates, as they sometimes break games. And the Steam workshop is just useless, since there's already a perfect site for mods. It's a bad idea to add something that's already there.

Yes very few, now one idea for Steam to increase sales a lot:
They organize the copy protection of games they have so could they make an demo version with a 1-3 hour play before the game is deactivated, buying it would just download an new exe.

Benefit is that you could check if the game works well on your pc and if you like it.
Your only downside is that you would have to download the full game, however most games don't have demos.

Yes it might make piracy easier as you only have to download an cracked exe and not the entire game, however the danger is that the exe might be bugged and steam finds that you run pirated games and deactivates your account, you would also not be able to download it again.
Most pirates download full dvd images anyway.
Would probably reduce piracy as many people download pirated games to see if they are good and run well and then "forget" to buy it afterwards.

Yes if you make bad games an demo might hurt you, I might have both DA2 without the demo.