So, essentially, you are telling me Steam in unnecessary?

It monitors nothing, keeps no tabs and has no use to operate Skyrim?

I could care less about achievements, Steam most certainly tracks and flags many things you do in game... all in the name of the dreaded pirates.

Would you like me to link these spyware initiatives and the Steam EULA?

4. Don't you dare ever try and operate this piece of software in even a minor fraction above and beyond the speed limit of your EULA. You will be banned and lose all software you paid for.

Not even sure how you didn't catch that.

You should re-read it yourself.

Valve will compensate for every game you bought if the service ever shuts down. If you get banned and lose things that way, it's your own fault, as the only way to get banned from Steam is to either be caught with illegal content (pirated games), using fraudulent methods for purchases, or by extreme cases of cheating.


Steam, as DRM itself, is what prevents piracy. Key validation, steamworks functions (achievements), etc. Do you really think there's some 1984-esque big brother program running in it to watch if what you're doing in-game is somehow piracy related? How would they do this?

The only time Steam collects data about your PC is when you allow them to. Ever participate in one of the surveys? Why run those if they're already running spyware on your PC? Oh right, if it runs in the background it must be svcking info from your private files, and stealing financial information. You're confusing Steam with Origin, man.

Tell you what...

Here's just a couple of rather startling links in regards to Steam.

http://www.ehow.com/facts_7589593_steam-spyware.html

This one is particularly funny, especially when they try to explain how Steam runs silently in the background without your consent.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/13567-13-steam-spyware

Even funnier, when one considers how Steam combats piracy. Pay attention to the sig at the end.

http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?t=206058

AND a thread here just to illustrate this whole 'minority' and you must be a pirate to not like Steam sentiment.

http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/43149/t/Steam-No-Thanks-to-spyware.html#.Ty9-SoG6SuI

Do you need more?

Would you prefer the EULA cliffsnotes of Steam or the whole kit and kaboodle?

What are those supposed to prove to me?

Two of those links are ancient forum posts that are later debunked by other posters as paranoia *with justification*, and the others are just more speculation and baseless distrust.

Steam was horrid and pointless in 2003, so of course people didn't trust it. And even then people couldn't find any ACTUAL reasons to be paranoid, as your own links show.

And many antivirus programs give false-positives for a wide, vast array of background programs. It's what they do best.

Fair enough.

You can clearly see that there is plenty of distrust for Steam, it is in no way a minority and has been controversial and distrusted from its very inception.

S'all I'm saying.

The EULA for Steam is particularly interesting I must say... particularly when it comes to modding games through the CK. Effectively mods are now property of Bethesda.

Let us see how this plays out.

I can't believe I did it but I really read your links. What exactly did you want to achieve with this? Those links proof exactly nothing, they rather support PotatoChip...and I am with him in this case. If you post links to support your opinion you really should be more careful.

Edit: That said, mistrust towards any program that tends to work on your PC in ways you don't fully understand is per se a good thing. But mistrust and paranoia are different things. I agree with you though on the mods...this will be interesting to watch.

Yes, you did. You missed why a sub-par internet connection is a problem.

My Steam screwed up, and would not let me install from disc. I had to restart installation dozens of times. (And I mean dozens, I would be surprised if it wasn't 50 times)

So I attempted to download the game. That would have taken 20 hours at my internet connection. I left it running all day, and then I left it running overnight.

Or so I thought. My computer went into a powersaving mode because I had been a numpty and not switched that off. Thankfully it was at this point that the "from-disc" installation worked.

Then it had to download the latest patch before I could play, which took 5 hours of constant internet connection.


So it turned out to be two days from when I got the game to me almost being executed.
Now of course, I can play offline or online, it doesn't really matter. The reason I will quite happily avoid buying any game released in the future from Steam is that I spent the best part of 12 hours screwing around trying to get access to a game that I legally owned the rights to play, and what was more, that I actually had in my possession. Furthermore, for me personally, Skyrim was my reward for completing my end of year exams, so I had been focused on my exams for two weeks and ignoring Skyrim in order to play Skyrim on the weekend after my exam. All my friends were still doing exams, and after exams people don't really want to do anything strenuous anyway, they just want to plonk out and relax. So for me my end of exam celebration was instead spent effing around with Steam.

Let's just compare this to a non-steamworks game. I could have gone to the shop, bought the game, come home, installed it on my computer and be playing it at most 1 hour after I got home. I would be more likely to buy a copy of a non-steam game than a steam-game.

Do you see the problem?

Not sure what buckshot refers to, but whatever. Until that day, I have no reason to complain.

Steam is sort of like Netflix. It's so popular because they've built up a good base of customer goodwill. The minute they abuse that goodwill, they'll hear about it, just as Netflix did.

The first game I leased from Steam would not run ~not even a CTD... just nothing. Steam took over a week to reply, and their 'help' was to suggest that I disable half of my system RAM permanently; (and that was the end of it as far as they were concerned). The game was Bloodlines; a Source engine game.


It sounds like a network issue with your Witcher 2 installer; (I can't know for certain of course, and I don't understand the CD nag ~that's certainly not a network problem).
I did not have issues with my Gog pre-order.


Lets hope.

As a former PC gamer I refuse to have steam on my PC, why should I need permission from a 3rd party source to play a game I payed for? Screw that crap, I've just moved to the Xbox now, and the PC games I play are older ones like Rome:Total War. But I ain't bothered, as long as Steam don't somehow find a way to stop us playing older games without their permision, in that case, its war.

It's funny you mention VtMB, since it's one of those games everyone has issues with on Steam. Literally everyone. You have to get a third party fix for it to work correctly.

I've played the game on my room mates PC multiple times. It does not seem to be that bad.

I prefer buying from Steam and have never had more than momentary problems with them, until recently, when I learned that Steam will patch your game even if you have it set not to patch.

Options are good. Forcing people to do it one way or no way is not good.

We have a thread for discussing Steam

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1331715-unofficial-steamdrm-discussion-26/