Steam does not stop the piracy or even slow it down, every game that has steam is pirated within hours of release just like every other method they try to use.
The only thing it stops is selling it to someone else after you have finished playing it.

For me the biggest deal is the stupid download. I bought the DVD so I wouldn't have to wait for four hours while the stupid thing downloads! Fine, there are updates, why not install the game using files on the DVD and download the updates only?

Also, I agree with others that having to rely on some company that may or may not be around in 5 or 10 years when I want to dig out the game again is stupid. So what happens when Steamworks goes under and I want to play Fallout New Vegas again? Now I've got bubkis. Thanks Steam!

Like others have said, Steam seriously makes the case for consoles. Had I bought the XBox version, I would have been playing right now instead of complaining on a forum.
Fallout 3 was a breeze to install on my PC. So what if I need the disk to play?

Laaaaaaaaaame.

GR I HATE STEAM BECAUSE WATCHING A BLACK "Fallout: New Vegas will now launch..." FOR SEVERAL SECONDS MAKES ME SO ANGRY. IT IS CLEARLY JUST SPYWARE GRRRR

The survey is opt-in and it randomly selects people to allow to opt-in each month.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/4086/

But you must be ready to accept that, to Bethesda, maybe the advantages of using Steam outweighs the loss of sales from people like you. They don't have to acknowledge requests from anybody who thinks things should be different. So yeah just put your money in a game you think suits you better. (just like I won't buy Ubisoft games right now) It's a shame because FANV is tons of fun, but there are tons of great games right now so it's no big deal.

I started using steam ages ago. Or well, I made an account and downloaded something, dont remember. Started using steam again about a year ago and its been nothing but good to me, sweet deals and all. I'd rather take steamworks over most drms on the market and if i'd be forced to use GFWL for a game I'd rather not get it at all (FO3 was too good to pass on at the time though)

It doesn't matter what you think or what I think about piracy, it matters what investors and publishers think about piracy. They think they are loosing boatloads of money, so many of them are pulling from doing PC versions of games. If going on Steam reassures them, increases their profit by making it easy to release DLC, and makes it convenient for them to support the PC platform then all the best for us.

And I do disagree with you, DRMs do discourage the casual pirate, I know it's hard to believe for many of you guys but many people have no clue about how to get around a CD-key and where to download torrents.

wouldn't you though? :dance:

I like Steam a lot, and it is a huge reason why I haven't pirated games for more than half a decade now. I know some of the arguments against Steam, but I feel they are very weak and immaterial compared to the very real convenience and utility Steam offers to anyone with a better-than-dial-up Internet connection.

I've got a 10/10 fiber connection, but it dose not matter one bit if the steam servers are overloaded with ppl downloading stuff. I had to download my NV patch in ~80kb/sec... It takes time, oh my god it takes time...

As someone who knows people who do pirate games, that would be incorrect. The real reasons games get pirated are three.

#1 People want to try out a game before spending $60 on a piece of garbage since the days of good quality demos are long gone, Arkham Asylum was an exception to this.
#2 People are too cheap to buy games, they want something for nothing.
#3 Ratio [censored]s. Just like game achievement [censored]s there are P2P ratio [censored]s.

God forbid you would have had to be an internet junkie back in the days of 300BAUD modems. 80kb/s? Try 37.5b/s That's right, bits per second. 4 1/2 minutes, give or take to download a 10kb image.

Change your download location to something else.


This can be done by using the .exe in the falloutNV folder, you could create a shortcut and place it on your desktop, or select the option to let steam place a shortcut while installing.

Mucho! agreed. Steam is growing on me. Initially i was disappointed but it does run super fast. My lil bro is playing on 360 (installed) right next to me and while he waits for a screen to load I made through three doors and a fast travel. PC is where its at.


jignod

Steam: I honestly hate it. I am not a pirate and I really don't like having to prove my innocence in order to play a game. I do not believe Steam is a permanent fixture, and the off-the disk installation actually quit in favor of downloading the entire package from Steam. This added a few hours to the installation, and nothing I tried could work around that little block. I have yet to see anything from Steam that makes the "service" worthwhile. I can afford to buy any game I like and the achievements system seems... worthless. No offense to they who code it, but when I want community interaction in that regard, I play an MMO.

Fark, I hate Steam. Returned Civ because of it; I'm still split on F:NV. Playing it when I have time, but I honestly now hate Obsidian because I'm forced to use Steam. This from someone who still likes KoTOR II (despite bugs and cut content).

In short, unless Obsidian makes another Fallout or KoTOR, because of this limitation I will not be considering any other Obsidian product.

This. As attempts at DRM go, Steam is the only one I've seen that has substantial value added.

When Steam first came on the scene, I fought it. And in fighting it, I substantiated my own complaints about it - if you only use it for the game that is requiring it, it's not that useful. Where it really shines is for managing the installs and patches for a large number of titles effortlessly.

Now I have everything installed on it I can, and it's awesome. Sometimes you have some time to game but just can't figure out what you're in the mood to play. Instead of physically rummaging through my game library, now I can just launch games from my Steam library.

A Civ V patch came out yesterday; I would never have known that as I haven't been following it since FONV came out. No worries, Steam took care of it.

It's punnishment because the internet here is to slow to update steam to play offline. I have an $83 shiny frisbee now till my deployment is over.

This is not true, if you save your password then steam will automatically go into offline mode when you lose internet and you will still be able to access all of your installed products. Another great thing about Steam as that it has been a MAJOR help for indie developers in getting their products out to a large audience which is a god send to many dev's. Steam has a ton of great offerings that have already been talked about in this post but I've personally used steam since 2003 and I am proud to see it grow in the way it has. Seeing a Indie developer(Valve) really stick it to the big house publishers and show them they can't walk all over the small guys is the message that Steam represents to people who like me watched it grow from a simple patching service to a product delivery service. There are downsides to steam and everyone is in entitled to their opinion but when I head New Vegas chose Steamworks as the "DRM" if you can even call it that, I was extremely happy. Say what you want about steam but almost 3 million people disagree as that is about how many people they have on at peak every day.

For me a steam game does not feel like I really own the game i paid for. Steam is just tool to make money through game purchese, advertisemants, and ingame items. It is a useless bloated program, i only use it to play team fortress 2. Steam games take twice as long to load then non steam games. My only hope is this was an Obsidian, decision not a Bethseda one. Im pretty close to turning my back on Bethseda, they make good quility games but thats all every thing else they do is a slap in the face to their customers. Games for windows live, now steam, hell next game you come out with make us use both to play.

I am pretty sure even with offline mod or whatever if you dont play your steam game for a few months then one day decide to play it, its going to make your ass get online to play it. This happened to me with halflife 2.

I actually made sure to get New Vegas on the 360, to avoid Steam.

I have all of one game through Steam. Civ V. I purchased the disk at the store. Installed, and was quite unhappy to find that Steam was forced.

I'm glad FO: NV came out for the 360, else I'd have had serious questions about purchasing it. While i can understand why some people love Steam. I am not one of them, and rather doubt I ever will be.

Since being forced to use Steam, I've had a few problems with running Civ V and Steam, and ALL of them have been because of Steam.

No, I've not tried to 'cage' it, but I do have it set to start offline. Even when doing so, I've had it do automatic updates (which it shouln't) and at three times now (once a week) Steam has locked up or crashed in doing the updates. While I may not have a custom-built gaming-beast of a computer, it easily runs Civ V at max graphics, amongst other games, and something as 'invisible' or 'transparent' as Steam, obviously does not tax my machine in the slightest, so for it to have so many problems is just idiotic.

I have two problems with this game being steam.

1. Because of steam (steam cloud) I've had a few save game/update issues. I love these games so I want to give them my money(and I do) but some people I know stole the game off the web and guess what, it's not steam based and the game has been 100% for them.

2. I've had a steam account with over $100 worth of games hacked and stolen from me. I had no recourse in the matter either, I couldn't fulfill all the many requirements to prove that the account was actually mine.

I have no issues with steam, I think that PC gamer is in dire straights and anything that can be done to help game companies to get their money and still provide their product/service is fine by me but when it causes more problems then not, that's where I have an issue.

You really are :facepalm:

I love Steam. Online webstore with huge selection, automatic updating of games (can be a bad thing, though), in-game web browser (perfect for Bethesda's games that don't like alt-tabbing), and of course the community functions and achievements, but i don't care about those. It is DRM obviously, but unlike Ubisofts DRM, SecuRom or StarForce it offers functions for the user too. It fails as a DRM like every other, but as a user i find it most agreeable.

As a side note, i upgraded my Windows from Vista to 7 in a way that left the old Windows install directory to my hard drive. I'm unable to remove that directory because it contains SecuRom files that cannot be deleted.