All Games, except MMOs, should NEVER require internet connection to play. No 'Ands', 'Ifs', or 'Buts'.

A question has been rattling my noodle for sometime now

has the steam exclusivity actually netted anymore users than if a game wasn't?

from my POV the answer seems to be a "No" & that is a bad thing for game makers as that means they are using a smaller user base thus a smaller moneypot is available .

And that means that a company will need to sell the games for more, place more emphasis on DLC, acquire money from other sources or all of that to pay development & operational costs

I'd be pretty surprised if it lost them any customers, overall that is.

So you are saying that some wont "buy" unless both DD & disc go through steam?

Just trying to understand

I'm saying I don't think there are as many people as you think who factor Steam into their purchasing decisions.

Not everyone has a rig that can spare anything for a 3rd party program that does absolutely nothing to the game itself. (Edit: You can have a system barely good enough to run Skyrim and not much more. Please don't tell me that "if you can run Skyrim, the memory drain will be nonexistant.) Nor does everyone have a solid enough internet connection to run something like Steam... and all for a single player game? There is no online mode for Skyrim, therefore there should be no requirement for internet.

To say I'm pissed about the whole Skyrim/Steam thing is an understatement. I fell in love with TES for both the games and the fact that I could actually play them with my craptastic rig and even crappier internet. I was planning on even taking out a loan to build a new system JUST for Skyrim and thankfully ran into a financial situation that made me hold off. Soon as I heard it was attached to Steam, I knew I could save my money. Good for everyone who doesn't have to consider things like internet connections, but Bethesda could have netted BOTH of our sales if they had made Steam an option and not a requirement. I would have honestly paid more for a disc that didn't require internet activation then what the people on Steam paid. I assume they must have gotten a huge kickback from Valve by going Steam exclusive though. In the long run, that kickback may have been more then what they would have picked up from us non-Steam players, but again, I can only assume.

Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but Steam makes me feel like I have a nanny looking over my shoulder. Like, someone who's telling me what I can and can't do by forcing patches (unless you run offline, yeah, I get it), forcing me to run a program that literally does nothing for me other then unlocking my offline single player game, only effects the legal paying customers, etc. It just rubs me the wrong way.

Does any company in any industry truly care about the consumers though?

Couldn't help but find this gem

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/06/gog-talks-preserving-value-of-games-slow-death-of-drm/#more-102864

Steam sales are actually bad for the industry, huh I never thought about it from that particular point Of View. Not to mention another point furthered that DRM doesn't work at all.

I for one will never buy another Bethesda game if tied in with steam..steam has forced some 8,875MB download on me i dont want ..i beleieve its the high texture pack...im on a wireless connection broadband(MIFI) that is limited to 5GB a month and anything over that cost me 10 dollars for every GB over the 5GB, so now steam is costing me money and i cant even play my game now because of the update...another thing is i have a cd copy of skyrim thats legit with key code and was never asked for a key code when i installed game..I have no option for internet service other than satillite or wireless since satillite svcks i went with MIFI .


Have a Nice Day

You can disable updates you know.

Not that Steam listens. I signed in to steam to find an 8GB update for The Witcher 2. I checked my settings and I had it set to not download updates automatically, yet it did anyway. The update is most likely completely unnecesary anyway, I've already downloaded an 8GB update which was for rearranging the file structure and I shouldn't have to do it twice. I've paused the download but its getting irritating having a download on pause for days on end.
Of course that is only one example and may not be representative of Steam as a whole, but it shows that unwanted updates are not always avoidable on steam.

Yep..and mine is set not to update and even checked it to see if it was disabled and it was, but somehow it has been forced on me..and it has to be done thru yoyr account that overrides that no update

Is there any way to find out what files/saves etc are stored in my Steam Cloud?

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the high texture pack required going through workshop. If this started automatically it's probably a patch.

However it's quite possible that update isn't as large as it says it is. I've had a number of supposedly enormous TF2 patches that should have taken me hours to download and they were done in about thirty minutes.

Well all that messing around with steam has cost me 20 dollars because of overage on my data plan...but anyway someone made mention that you can turn updates off ...well that doesnt work here's the answer i got from steam suppost about that, and it seems you have no control over your account when it comes to updates or what ever anyway heres what steam support said.

Hello,

A staff member has replied to your question:

Hello Bruce,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

The option to disable automatic updates does not disable the requirement for Steam to install the latest updates before launching your game. This option will only allow you to delay the update until you next choose to launch the game.

There are no options for running Steam games without all necessary updates.

If you have any further questions, please let us know.

while that does make sense for multiplayer games, why should a working singleplayer game need a "necessary" update?

It shouldn't. It's stupid for people who have limited internet caps to have to download huge patches to play the games they bought.

Yep i just replied to that message and told them that there are many people out there with data capped internet service and the overage is costing extra...so we will see what they have to say about that...I also told steam i would not buy another game that was steam supported as long as they going to force updates on people.

This last round of updates that did not full update cost me 20 extra bucks and i told them that also.......and i still cant play game so i deleted steam and Skyrim.

Ok for one steam says that it's a safe place to register, ok if i register which i already did along time ago and everytime i try to log into my steam it says password incorrect, everytime i try to log in. It says that password is incorrect, who ever made steam lacked at making the register right because i go to forgot my password and type the answer in and it says incorrect, it also says my email not reconized on the site lol not "reconized" seriously if i confirmed my email and still have the confirmation to my email then obviously steam fails at having a account and i know vaule created it, but still it won't let me change my password or send a password to my email and keeps saying incorrect. I have two games on steam which are TES Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas, then what am i suppose to do never log in ever again and have to pay more money for a game to download mods and also i created a new account, went to my email and no email confirmation in my email or junk folder this tells me that steam is not worth anything if you can't log in at all. So if anyone can explain whats up with steam then that would be great because steam is starting to lack and if i cant get my account or log in then what is steam? Nothing but a palce that wants you to buy more copies of games and pay more money, if this site is trying to do this then it's scamming people for their money and doing that it against the law to take peoples "money" and scamming people for it's money lol wheres that going to get vaulve. Now be advise i didn't come here to flame topics or anything, i just don't understand why steam has to say my account not accesible at all. So i would love to know how does steam let you log in then when you log out you cant ever log in again?

Have you tried contacting Steam Support?

https://support.steampowered.com/

You might take a deep breathe and settle down a bit before you write your email to them, I barely understood what you were trying to say.

My understanding is that you have to be in Offline Mode and Disable Updates in order to force steam not to download anything. And it helps to go ahead and firewall it from your internet connection.

No, that's offered as a free DLC, which means it will download automatically every time the game installed. I copied the plugin and BSA files to an external hardrive, but even after copying them to the Data folder after install Steam insist on downloading them (which is weird because that works perfectly for New Vegas' DLCs ). And since you can't remove a DLC from a game either, that is a required part of of the installing process from now on for me, despite me not even having them activated due to them being too much for my PC

Though if memory serves, it's size was around 2 GB. When Steam seems to be starting a humongous download, i pause the update and make it check game files, that corrects the download size.

This is not true, unless there's something I'm misunderstanding. I have the game installed, and I have never downloaded the HD Texture Pack.

the way I understand the texture pack issue is that if you downloaded it once you're stuck with it even if it's too much for the computer.

Exactly. As a DLC you have to "buy" it for it to be included in your game. If you don't do so, it will not be a part of your game.