The guy who helped popularize DRM and was a hugh advocator of its implementation recently spoke at my school. In his presentation he essentially said that DRM in its current state is broken ( specifically in the music industr) and advocated piracy. He said his intentions when developing it were to protect the ip of artists and creators but the system is being abused and he no longer believes it is viable.

There are four reasons, why I just don't buy games that require Steam (and similar systems):

1. It just takes spyware to a new level. Huge amounts of personal data are gathered. I paid for the game, if they want data from me, they have to pay me. Btw, I like my privacy. I don't use facebook and the like either.

2. Steam might or might not be there in 10 years. However, from time to time I still take an old game from the shelf and play it again (I even have an old DOS PC for that purpose). Video games are a form of art (their are exceptions^^) and a lot of them will be lost to the public (and me, the paying customer) as soon as Steam goes out of service.

3. Software piracy seems not to be stopped by Steam. It only hurts the paying customer. As such I don't want to get dragged in a pointless war. I am willing to pay, so I think the publishers should care more about me and less about the people who won't give them money anyway.

4. I used to buy any game I was remotely interested in (20+ games a year), and when I didn't like them, I sold them again (most went in my collection, though). This is prevented by Steam. In the end I am spending less money and time on video games - maybe Steam has advantages after all...

As someone who hadn't owned a Gaming PC for years, and is soon to receive one which will enable me to enjoy FNV with mods, I have an important question.
Can I activate a UK version of FNV with a German steam account?
From what I've heard of, that wasn't possible with the Vanilla version, but as the UE is also uncut in Germany, I really hope I can, cuz the German dubbing is really bad.

Steam isn't DRM, its an attempt (and a successful one I might add...) to kill the secondary market.

NO form of DRM is effective. No matter how draconian they get, the games are still cracked, and offered for download on pirate sites. (frequently on the pirate sites even BEFORE they are officially released....) Generally, the more draconian the DRM, the higher the download count for the pirated versions. In a fair few cases, the pirated version is more stable than the retail version.......

I won't buy games that have a steam requirement, as the 'guilty till proven innocent' aspect of it just grates on me. Only reason I have FO:NV, and Skyrim is, they were given to me....... Steam is allowed to be online to activate the games, then it is put permanently into offline mode. I don't want any of the steam features, I don't need any of the steam features, if I could uninstall steam, and still play the games, it would be long gone.

IMHO, it's not typical DRM but it is a form of DRM because it manages the rights of the user. If you have to ask permission to do something (like taking a singleplayer game offline) you don't have the rights to do so. but yeah it made selling games a bad thing as well.

I agree, DRM breeds piracy.

well said.

Completely agree with the sentiment of the post. Concerning the latter, obviously there are people who pirate games, yet the real question is: is it enough to justify requiring a game to be purchased digitally through a third party? I don t think game designers, including Bethesda, can supply concrete numbers saying x amount of people pirating games and they are losing y amount of dollars. If they have I havent seen them.

I think the idea of massive pirating is a myth. People procure illegal games, but the type of people that do most likely were never going to buy the game in the first place. Steam and Origin are just vehicles for game publishers to micromanage their products. The end result is they marginalize a number of potential customers.

Technically I don't have Steam. I bought Warband Mount and Blade: had to set up an account to play, got angry after I perused the EULA and Privacy Agreement, complained about it to Paradox, got a key for the game from them for Gamersgate (which have reasonable Privacy Policies). I haven't looked back since, uninstalled Steam and won't ever put on my system again. Its unnecessary bloat, resembles spyware, takes all control out of the users hands and gives it to a third party. On top of that they steal, in my opinion, and sell my personal info to data companies.

Totally agree -- and now that MS and Sony have seen that Steam is effective at killing off the secondary market they are starting to consider doing similar with the next gen of Consoles by requiring Online activation of the games for the new consoles tying them to the original system they are installed on and no longer allowing them to be transferred to other systems - So now those users that felt Steam was nothing to complain about can be thanked for helping the eventual killing off the used\rental market in the consoles as well !! ( http://www.guru3d.com/news/xbox-720-to-ban-second-hand-game-sales/ )

Greetings all. This particular topic is addressed more to Bethesda and Zenimax than to forum users. Feel free to post your opinions of course, but it is my hope that Bethesda will read this, and will care.

I have nothing against Valve or Steam. I enjoy the convenience of their storefront application and the organization of my gaming library. This is handy, convenient and a welcome change from numerous isntall folders scattered hither and yon across my computer. But this convenience hides an ugly truth. Quite simply that we, the players, who spend hard earned money supporting our favorite developers, do not actually own our games. We bought them; we play them. But at the end of the day we are one misguided post, one typo, one glitch, one clerical error, away from losing access to our account - and our games - forever.

I take offense to this. PC gaming is something I choose to do with my spare time and the relatively few entertainment dollars I have avaiilable to me. I could easily do other things, and I could easily pirate games. Instead I choose to game on PC in an ethical manner, and support hard-working developers and their employees by paying up to $60 for new games like Rage and Skyrim. I do not have to do this; other entertainment options are readily available to me, including the MMO, board and card games and other real life hobbies all vying for my attention - and my entertainment dollar. Nonetheless, I make the choice to spend my money with developers like Bethesda, to support their time and effort and that of their employees.

And what do I get in return for my support? I receive notice that I do not own my game. I receive notice that, any time and for any smallest whim, I can be forever cut off from a product I already purchased. And it does not even have to be my fault. A typo or clerical error can ban the wrong Steam account; a malicious person working for the owner of the service can lock me out for saying something that does not violate a TOS but with which they disagree. Unethical, perhaps, but could it happen? Certainly it could.

I want to support PC gaming. I bought an expensive, customer designed rig because I cannot stand building PC's myself, though I can do it if I have to, and because I want to game on my preferred platform. I buy games instead of pirating them. I support developers when I can choose to do otherwise. In return, all I ask of developers and their ownership is one small concession: Don't make me use Steam to play my game.

If you want me to log into Steam once to install and activate my game I am ok with this. If you want to provide a similar, once and done verification service I can even tolerate this. But once I have activated my game, let me play that game without third party interference. Give me ownership of the game I purchased from you. I won't share it; I actually have refused to allow friends to try and copy my games, telling them to support the time and effort of the devs instead. If its worth playing, it is worth paying for, period. But only if I own it once I buy it.

If I continue to only rent the games I play, I will likely begin to pursue other hobbies. Board and card games are fast becoming more sophisticated than Pc games in this day and age, and more tuned to a discerning, thinking audience anyway. I would like to continue to pursue my first love in gaming, however, I need some assurance from developers that I own the games I buy.

Feel free to chime in as to whether you agree, or otherwise.

As a place to buy games and find weekly deals steam is great. But for having to run it in oder to play single player games it is really a bad idea. Now for people who this don`t really apply to, it won`t make a bit of difference to you because if it don`t directly pertain to you why should you? Where I live internet is expensive and I play on a desktop, I can`t take a laptop to internet cafe or a library and hookup. Now I have gone periods of time without internet and I can tell you it svcks to stare at a desktop full of game icons that won`t work because your internet in unavailable. Now I know there is an offline mode to steam, people always seem to bring that up everytime I say this. What you aren`t understanding is that to get steam to go into offline mode it first needs to be connected to the internet. Yeah keep it offline mode forever without internet and soon as you have a crash whether a game locks up or the pc reboots because it gets too hot or any reason and you are screwed. Again, you won`t really care about it until it happens to you.

The second reason I don`t like steam is because I should not have to have it running for my singleplayer games, period. I think it`s a joke that gamers now are getting a license to play a game they buy instead of buying the game itself. So I have a chance that for whatever reason steam can close my account and say all the games I have bought are now unplayable and nothing can be done about it? But I have the discs and I usually keep the reciepts! Too bad, it seems. Almost every major game company or forum has had internet attacks in the past year from sony to steam and there might be a slim chance my info could have been taken. All I got was a notice telling me to change my password and everything will be ok but yet I`m getting emails from my bank telling me my online banking has been blocked because too many attempts were made to access my account. Now whats to say my steam account gets compromised and someone decides to screw up my account and steal or whatever they do. Is steam going to let me load my discs again and redownload all my games again and be able to play them? Or will they tell me it isn`t their problem? I think it`s the perfect scam pretty much, sell a license to have access to something you buy and for whatever reason can be taken away without a thing you can do about it. These things aren`t something a gamer should have to worry about just to play for gods sake.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun recently put up a piece about the whole Steam/ownership issue. It's an interesting read.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/01/thought-do-we-own-our-steam-games/

I don't think they're going to change their policies until someone actually challenges them in court.

Massive pirating is not myth, but people who would pirate your games, are really not one you want to concern with, they won't pay for any software no matter. People won't go out and buy the game just because you put on DRM, they'd just wait for them to be available on the pirate sites. The crackers for these pirate sites, made habbit of cracking any software published on this world, it is their personal achievement to crack them cause they can, it's their profession. DVD was cracked in less than a month, Windows update key was cracked before release, hell these guys are the same professionals who made DRMs, DRMs are useless in their face. A lot of DRMs were not extensively tested on new machines, making games far more unstable than non DRM pirated versions.

I think Origin had a funny situation, here is the conversation I imagine between their engineers and management:

Management: What information do you have to gather to make it work?
Engineers: For bug fixing and compatibility with various hardware, we will need as much information as possible. OS patch version, C++ libraries employed...
Management: Ok then we'll get everything from user computers.
Engineers: Eh? Everything?
Management: Yeah? you get what you ask for, now do it. We have a deadline to meet.
Engineers: ......

I see you can buy orange box on Origin, I wonder how that works, does it load up threw origin and steam haha sounds like fun. (Worst case scenario, not likely but possible one day) Actually im shocked valve allowed any of their stuff sold threw any thing but steam. Origin games will require you do be login into origin with it running just like steam games.This is good, as much as I despise this system that steam started, im glad they are not the only one now. At least now I can share my hate between both. Seriously every game company should be following the steam model, I mean come on why share your profits with valve when you can do the same. The only thing steam has over the newer ones is that its been around few years now forcing people to use it to play games, so it has an edge on the user acount base. Now that Ea is forcing origin on its games it will have plenty of user accounts. I mean why let people voluntarily use something when you can force them too in order to even play a game. Then they tell me this is a good thing. What really cracks me up is when people say how steam is the least intrustive drm and how better it is over so and so. Yah I go buy a game at wally world then pop it in to install it and play, but before anything I have to be on line, dl the steam aplication, update it to its current version, create an account if I never have yet, install my game be logged in while running the steam aplication, then hope it all works and I can finnaly play the game I actually purchased. No not intrusive at all. Heck I should consider my self lucky I now got two programs for the price of one!

We gamers dont have a say in this or a choice, we either boycott really good games we otherwise really wanted to play or give in and support this thing we hate. I threw in the towel a long time ago on pc gaming, I dont get excited any more with new releases because I know its going to use one or the other with internet required. I sit back watching from afar hoping the wind will change directions and pc gaming can be something I can be part of again. Brings me to Bethesda I had really hoped this game company that ive been trully supporting since morrowind would be my last bastion from steam and the likes, well we know how that turned out.

That's false. I activated Skyrim with an internet connection, and it installed everything else from the disk. I've never needed a connection since.
That's the first time you ever play a Steam game. Otherwise the disk pops in, you type your code in, and it installs from the disk. Simples.

How does that make it false?

* How long does Skyrim take to install? If it takes 10 to 15 minutes, I would assume that it downloads the last bytes during the install.
Or, perhaps the last bytes are late game content that a player would usually never need in the first ½ hour; and it downlaods later. ~I dunno; that's just a guess.
I read that a few hundred MB are commonly left off of the disc for direct install from the Steam servers.

You mentioned there was a "sizeable chunk missing". There's not. You activate the key given, which takes literally 10 seconds. You can then be offline for the rest of the installation. Excluding patches, everything needed is still on the disk.

And if the patch includes the extra data?

* It would be cool if a developer who has distributed via Steam would comment about it here.

Well that's no different to a completely DRM free disk with patches downloadable online. The "core" game works fine. If there's extra content provided through patches then that's too bad, but the game on the disk can be installed and played without issue.

They usually do, that's how they stop pre-release piracy of leaked copies. I don't think it's a large amount of data though.

I have heard stories of some games that you can't install from disc, like Civ 5. I can't confirm that though, since I bought it directly from Steam.

There's on the install disc what the game makers put on there. Steam has little to do with it. It doesn't even force any kind of encryption really. If some game has a big chunk missing on the install disk, it's because it was made like that. Probably because the game wasn't finished at all and was hacked together in the time between the gold was done and the official release.

I got a retail game from Interplay once with the full source code for the Exe accidentally put on the CD.

* So if developers withhold a a bit of the game for later install from Steam; how common is that?

Willingly to prevent piracy or unwillingly because they didn't finish the game in time? Hard to tell in all cases. Valve knows that though but they don't communicate much with it

I'm horribly disappointed about the Steam and needing Internet access. I actually bought two Skyrim games one for a rural family without broadband Internet. Fortunately I found out about the Steam thing before Xmas (it was a present) and was able to return it to the store because it had not been opened but mine was so could not get a refund.

Well, I took the plunge and deleted Steam Spyware and Skyrim even tho' I hated to as I really wanted to mod (not play) in the Skyrim world.
Previous to getting the (boxed) game I had no idea what Steam was - altho' I've bought 20 or so games from Direct2Drive.

But after the wretched user interface of Skyrim and the lack of keyboard and mouse support and the fact that Bethesda only makes games for consoles and joysticks, I've decided to abandon it and stay with the games I like - Morrowind and Oblivion and all my older RPG games.

Regardless of what modders now do with Skyrim if it involves Steam it doesn't involve me.

Steam isn't a Spyware by any definition of the term If the haters could at least stop sprouting nonsense it would make for a more civil discussion.

Interface in Skyrim is hardly worse than Oblivion except the the horrible perk menu. Except from that, the game is better in all points. Such a shame.

I disagree

Spyware Definition ( excerpts taken from webopedia)

*gathers user information through the user's internet connection without his or her knowledge, usually for advertising purposes.


*Spyware applications are typically bundled as a hidden component


*Aside from the questions of ethics and privacy, spyware steals from
the user by using the computer's memory resources and also by eating bandwidth as it sends information back to the spyware's home base via the user's Internet connection.


*they have the ability to monitor keystrokes, scan files on the hard drive, snoop other applications, such as chat programs or word processors, install other spyware programs, read cookies (the potential for abuse is definitely there).


*Licensing agreements that accompany software downloads sometimes
warn the user that a spyware program will be installed along with the
requested software

Also, (from PCMag.com): a description of spyware

"The license agreement that nobody ever reads may actually state that you are installing spyware and explain what it does. For example, it might say that the program performs anonymous profiling, which means that your habits are being recorded, not you individually. Such software is used to create marketing profiles; for example, people who go to Web site "A" often go to site "B" and so on. Spyware may deliver competing products in real time. For example, if you go to a Web page and look for a minivan, an ad for a competitor's vehicle might pop up "

Steam-sounds like spyware to me…