Some civil discussion until the tinfoil hats comments and general veiled insults. Can we all try and not use words like malware and rehashing topics that are in every previous thread on this topic. You dont have to read them all but even reading back one or two would cut out half of these posts.

Nothing really changes in these threads and I feel sorry for the new posters, and even the old, who think these threads are changing anything. Bethesda is tying itself with steam more intimately with every release, patch and even now modding then ever before and this isnt going to change. They dont even reply to electronic or physical mail let alone forums.

as one of the first (at least on this forum) to say "I wont get another Steamworked game willingly" I have noticed some trends here as Bethesda goes more hardcoe in their application of the Steam Service the fanbase has gotten more moderarate in general and more started speaking out against the steamification. IMHO there is still hope that Bethesda will shift it's focus back to a more inclusive model (offering games through Steam is a good decision but forcing Steam does a disservice to some users, Bethesda & PC gaming)

Rusty Gunn, I agree.

And if I'd known Skyrim was Steam-locked, I wouldn't have bought it. I am not buying any future Bethesda products that are Steam-locked. This means no day-one purchases for me -- seeing as, you know, Bethesda doesn't bother to advertise that their products are Steam-locked.

Steam has a steam workshop now. You can mod your skyrim to get more spells better graphics and stuff.

Yeah, Steam is absolutely necessary for that, because there was no way you could do that with previous, non-Steam Bethesda games.

other than the ability to allow mods to be downloaded from steam I fail to see how that is any different than what was possible with Oblivion or Morrowind with their rexpective CS's

According to Valve, the hacks that took place this past November is still a threat:
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/02/10/steam-hack-in-november-may-still-pose-a-threat.aspx

Just thought I would let you guys know. Keep a close eye on your accounts, Steam and bank!

grr can they get steam up already, it has been down for a while now

Hmm, has the publishers love of Steam outmatched the servers capability to keep up (I'm hearing about Steam being down a lot lately)

https://twitter.com/#!/Steam_Support/status/168800173793878016

It's difficult maintaining a server group when the power's out.

Having worked in this industry for 11 years, it's actually quite easy. The keyword is "redundancy".

If you're halfway competent and plan for it, of course.

Okay, had to move my comment here from another area.... And reading this thread I'm not adding much in the way of new inFORmation but allow me to add my inDIGnation...

First off, I love Skyrim, and Oblivion too for that matter. Great games. But I have to say that my enjoyment of the game is GREATLY diminished by your approach to copy protection and the fiasco that is Steam. I know that you need to protect your intellectual property, but this model where we are essentially only "leasing" the software rather than owning anything, and the idea that we can't play unless we can successfully connect to a finnicky and buggy system on the Internet is just horrible.

I never know day to day if I'm going to be able to play the game I paid for! Between service interruptions, Internet downtime, and mysterious patches and updates getting stuck in the works, I often get stuck behind some stupid steam "game is unavailable" error. Yesterday, for example, I just plain couldn't play my game for several hours for some stupid reason. No reason why, no updates available, nada. Then, mysteriously, after rebooting 3 times, a new update became available, installed itself, and then the game worked. Don't even get me started about the inconvenience of getting Steam to work when upgrading hardware or re-installing Windows (which I do several times a year). Since getting Skyrim, I have literally spent a whole business day in time screwing around with troublshooting Steam issues, just so I could play. It just shouldn't be that way.

I just want to be able to play the game I paid for! This copy protection only punishes the honest people who paid for it and try to play nice. I just want a locally installed game that WORKS when I want to play! It is sooooo damn frustrating to not be able to play just due to random Steam errors. Please please please take a clue from Stardock and their approach to copy protection. Do we really think that people who are going to pirate the game are lost sales? I say no - the people who will steal from you would do so anyway and wouldnt have bought it anyway.

Sorry, I know you've heard this whole thing a million times but after a really really annoying day trying (and failing) to play my game I just had to say something. Its just sad when all of the fun of the game you have made - all the skill and creativity of your team - is wiped away due to bugs and an inherently annoying system of copy protection.

Thanks,

Mark

He's right, in that it will potentially cost them my money, never again will i buy beth product requiring steam. And they will not get my money if i have to purchase their DLC products from steam. Steam will never get my credit card number, ever.

Most Devs even say DRM doesn't work. Take Spore within 1 hour the DRM was removed and people could own a copy for free. DRM is the equivent of saying we don't trust you even though you gave us your money. (this is not an endorcement of Pirating but a repeat of what several developers have said, I personally don't believe in Pirating and generally buy my games New)

DRM is also called Defective By Design which is a good website that explains the whole reasoning why it is wrong, stupid, and ineffective.

I think honestly Steam should be optional. It makes moding easy so many would opt in but for those that don't they should have the right as a consumer who put down money for said product.

People are increasingly becoming privacy conscious, hence the resistance to Steam, Origin, Google etc. You paint Google Apps, and assumingly Google products in general as non invasive/harmless, but they are not. I think since services like Gmail, Google, Google Earth etc. are ubiquitious you assume they are harmless. Also it seems that the privacy conscious are labelled by people like you as paronoid schizophrenic if they question or are concerned about seedy data gathering tactics. A bit extreme.

privacy isnt the concern of a soley fringe element consider these two, of many articles about Google:

Google Reaches Privacy Settlement with FTC
March 30 2011 ABC News.com

"Google has agreed to adopt a comprehensive privacy program to settle federal charges that it deceived users and violated its own privacy policy when it launched a social networking service called Buzz last year."

Group Urges FTC Action on Google Privacy
February 9 2012 ABC News.com

"Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said he was disturbed by the executives' answers to questions about users' inability to delete data from sensitive e-mails or data that reveals visits to certain websites"

"Instead of the consumer being the master of the Internet, Google is the master of the consumer" Barton

I think Steam has a relatively decent privacy policy, but to equate Steam and Google as the same is errant.

I′ll just throw in my two [insert random stuff-to-knee crap here].

Steam would be a very fine thing, if it was optional. Getting patches, logging gaming hours and all that. But as it is now I will stick with pure offline games that requires no more "activation" than my money in the dealer′s hand.

Well my thread about steam, in Fallout NV, got locked, apparently it's ok to complain about steam if you do it exactly where you're told to... yeah freedom...

Anyway the gist of the thread was me asking "why steam" and I was told that it essentially was a money grab. Personally I think that's very foolish of the developers.

As for the issue of whether steam is malware, it clearly is. To quote from that thread:

"Really? Do you know what malware is? Yes it can also be viruses and other nasty programs, but at its base it's just this:


" Any software designed to do something that the user would not wish it to do, hasn't asked it to do..."

malware. (n.d.). The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. Retrieved February 21, 2012, from Dictionary.com

Now... I didn't want steam, I didn't ask for steam to advertise to me, or desire it to do so, that makes it adware. I'm also quite sure that it collects personal information, even if it's not personally identifiable information, that makes it spyware... do I really need to keep going?"

Personally I will not buy another Fallout game, despite the fact that I really like them if it is tied to steam. I don't mind them selling their product through steam if they wish to do so, but forcing me to use steam to play their game is very bad policy and has lost them my future business if they continue to package their products in this way.

It only collects your info if you let it, there is an option for that, and its only hardware info it's collecting anyway. And you can turn off those pop ups too. Did you install it for like 30 seconds before judging it and calling it malware because you were too lazy to go the settings?

also with that extremely loose definition of Malware I can say any program is malware if does something I don't like.

Actually, no. And you're misrepresenting what I said about malware as well, not only do you have to not like it, it has to be something that you haven't asked it to do. Which is basically the definition of this bundled piece of software.

There are plenty of other problems with steam as well, for instance the licence issue where supposedly they can revoke your ability to use the software at any time, for essentially any reason, or none. There are problems with that, EULA's are not neccessarily enforceable, this stuff hasn't had a solid test in court yet, but still. And, this is not the only problem with Steam, by any means.

None of that really matters Kyle. Steam will cost this company and a number of other companies that are going to forced bundled steam sales. It may not cost them enough sales to cancel out the money they're getting from Steam... we'll see. However, there are plenty of game developers that are not going this route. As awareness of the negative issues associated with this package increase I expect a decent number of people will migrate to those companies.

A good reason as any not to go with Steam. If anyone at anytime can prohibit me to use what I legally bought, then that′s a product I don′t want to buy.
Sure, the electric company can cut the power so I can′t use my computer at all, but that′s a bigger step. Besides that′s my only concern as it is now. If I′d go with Steam, then I would also have to rely on that website to function properly at all times and my internet connection just to play the game.

No thanks.

I clearly haven't posted a lot here, but after glancing through this thread why does everyone act like it was a surprised that Skyrim required Steam? It says it right on the back of the case for the game, if you bothered to read it. "Requires Internet Connect and free Steam account to activate."

I personally have no problems with Steam. I've used it for a couple of years now. Do I find it annoying at times? Yes. Do I worry about my privacy and my CC information being safe? You bet I do. But I get it because the amount of reselling games and pirating games is insane and these companies need to make money too.

Exactly. It doesn't say every time you reconnect that it's going to go about changing things without your permission. If this was as simple as connecting to Steam servers once to activate the game (the impression I was under), I would have been fine with it. If I'd known what I know now, I wouldn't have bought the game.

Granted, I've heard that at first activation was all that was needed (the original game executable didn't require Steam) & people were happy then Beth pretty much said "Well, We can't have that." & forced a patch that made it all the more dependent

I say they have chosen a dangerous path

I agree, to me it seems like Bethesda is developing an EA games or Ubisoft mindset