Ok Steam fans, put away your pitch forks and torches, this is not a complaint about Steam.

I've just been running some tests on getting Skyrim to run in a RamDisk, because we all know Ram is faster than a harddrive, anyway I digress, I had a problem making the link so Steam could not find where I copied the Skyrim folder too, of course it would not work, but out of curiosity I shut down Steam, I mean totally shut it off, deleted the Skyrim folder, then in the RamDisk I double clicked TESV.exe, lo and behold the game started up and I'm currently playing it, no steam and no stutter!!

I have nothing against steam, it's never given me a problem, and I realize it was needed for activation, but beyond that it's not needed at all, so I now saved on some resources.

I hope Steam lovers and Steam haters everywhere find this information useful.

I have no problem registering this with steam but keeping an internet connection on my desktop is not acceptable as I dont want the kids able to access it without permission and monitoring. Your workaround looks good. Can you say step by step how you did this?

S***, he's right.

....OR...

Start Steam in Offline Mode and play.

Works for me.

I believe this method will cause a problem with patching however. It may work, but the game requires Steam for patching because the patches are only going to come through Steam. There is no standalone executable you can download.

Double clicking the .exe it just runs. No steam, no worries. When I need to patch, I'll just run steam then.

I guess you could do that, but then you miss the out on automatic updates and oh yes!... statistics like how many hours you've played!

I'm surprised it didn't throw an error. Not because it needs Steam, but it automatically checks for Steam regardless.

Oooh, nice! Thanks for posting the information. I'd planned on not buying the game because I dislike how Steam's DRM works. Your method just could change my mind. Kinda makes Steam optional after activation, like GFWL with Oblivion.

First, at you: You can run steam in Offline mode, then cut the connection to your computer. Bam, problem solved.

And guys, no, steam is ONLY required to register and patch the game. You don't need it to run the game, only to register the first time.

Steam Offline = Play the game
Steam Online= Patch/Update the game.

You only need to run the client to play.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1242199-skyrim-and-steam/

I don't need the stats, it's not my thing.

Thanks for reminding me about updates, however I have the original folder archived and will manually check for updates periodically.

I've not created a very elegant setup for this, but as I said I was just trying things out, perhaps someone can come up with a more convenient method.

The real point here is that Steam is only required for updates after activation, it's not need otherwise and can be completely closed down, and I've got the game running in a non steam folder on another drive, if I need updates I'll just extract the archive, get the update then copy it again to my non steam drive.

btw, if anyone thinking some nefarious is going on, I have the collectors edition.

Yeah, refer to that topic please.

You did plenty with this info! I'd given up on playing Skyrim, you've shown me a lovely potential option.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!