You are mistaken about modding--Steam is very mod-friendly. Valve games are very moddable, and the Steam devs even helped with making FOSE compatible with the Steam version of FO3.

Also, you can disable the in-game Steam overlay--that might help with your crashing. If it doesn't, then your crashing is not likely to be Steam-related.

Edit: Ninja'd! My comments were obviously directed at Wardminator's post.

Incorrect.

Steam is completely mod friendly these days. You don't have to go offline and Valve actually worked with the creators of FOSE to ensure it was Steam compatible.

GFWL was mod friendly for the most part, except you couldn't be online AND use FOSE.

Xbox Live? Theres a good reason you have to be offline to mod. IT'S NOT ALLOWED!!!!!

Given that the auto-updates seems to generate problems in its own right (see the post immediately preceding this one), and that patches also tend to break saves and mods, one could argue that these features represent as much of a burden on tech support as they do an asset. While a decision to effectively "not support their games themselves" might be facilitated, and seemingly attractive to a publisher, I like to get my support from the closest source to the designer as possible, and have found that these middle-man arrangements actually tend to create additional ambiguity and forms of evading customer problems.

Whether I am arguing against a Steam business practice, or against a publisher decision really is not the key point however, and my core question remains: WHY does Fallout New Vegas have to require Steam?

I do not want to participate in Steam, but I would like to purchase a license to play FONV. I continue to adhere to my refusal to participate in Steam, and therefore, have not purchased FONV. I've made Bethesda aware of this in a message attached to my most recent purcahse (Oblivion GOTY; Morrowind GOTY; and Rogue Warrior). I have great respect and admiration for Bethesda and the games they publish. I would happily buy FONV, despite _any_ reservations I might have about the game itself (and even in spite of the apparently awful game that is Rogue Warrior [still have not installed it]). But since I am expected to agree to become a Steam member in order to purcahse a license to play FONV, I will not buy the game.

That is one less customer for Bethesda, and I suspect I am not alone. Indeed, I can name at least a dozen forumites who share my sentiment on the 3 or 4 differnet game forums where I'm active. How many Steam users would actually prefer to have other options as well?

Even if there are 10 times or 10,000 times as many of you who eagerly participate in Steam, the fact remains that some customers are being lost by making Steam a mandatory part of owning certain game licenses. If the benefits of Steam to any who might benefit are not contingent on Steam being the exclusive source of distribution, then what reason is there for any game to be Steam exclusive? I can see no obvious reason other than that Valve benefits more, both in the short-term by sales, and in the long-term by outcompeting other distributors, by virtue of Steam exclusivity.

In order to launch via FOSE or NVSE, you have to disable the Steam Community, or at least I do. Otherwise, the game will not launch. That means that you do not get credit for trophies, nor can you chat. The only thing Steam does not do is ban you should you try to play a modded game, which XBox Live will.

That's not true either. Well, i have to disable the community to make MGE work with Morrowind, but in Oblivion i think i had to have it enabled for OBSE to work.

Well. I can't personally confirm as I don't use NVSE yet.

But according to NVSE's main page..





:whistling:

All I know is, I have to have it disabled. Otherwise, Steam fails to launch. Don't know why it does for some and not for others. I think a lot of it has something to do with hardware. The point that I am trying to make is, it is not user friendly to everyone. Right now, Bethesda and Obsidian has a mess on their hands because game crashing is pervasive. It was with Fallout 3 and it is turning out to be the case with New Vegas as well. All one needs to do is go onto the forums within the modding community and see the cries for help. I relate it a lot to my own personal experience with both gaming through Steam and via a direct install without any type of DRM.

steam will cause crashing and whatnot if your security software is preventing it from functioning... I had that problem when I first tried a steam game, but that was like 5 years ago and have not had any problems since.

Exclusivity is implied by the use of the Steamworks SDK, see Rouge Warrior, Brink, AVP, MW2 and dozens of others. Look closer exclusivity for titles you sell and get your game in front of as many people as you can. Of course Steam has no problem letting a game be sold by other distributors, the game still requires Steam to run, all those buying the game from other sources still end up on Steam. Steam was very cagey in how the addressed this.

Just to be clear, there is nothing illegal with exclusive distribution rights per se, but the are a lot of illegal practices that are associated with exclusive distribution. Lets pretend we all love peanutbutter. If your favorite brand is the Walmart brand then you would have to go to Walmart to buy it. (Just like all Valve titles are Steam-only) But if your favorite brand is Jiff you can buy it at any other store. Walmart can make a deal for exclusive distribution with Jiff, at this point no laws are broken. If the terms of the contract allow it, any store can still sell Jiff, but they cannot distribute it. If you buy Jiff at another store you would be issued a certificate that is redeemable for one jar of Jiff at Walmart. Not a smart move for the other stores and this is where the law gets fuzzy. If Walmart negotiates a special pricing structure with Jiff that is not available to any other store, like making Walmarts wholesale price half of that for all other stores or Walmart promises 100% pass through of all money made from the sale of Jiff, then that could be illegal. (depending on the judge)

Your argument is faulty for 2 reasons

1). you are again looking at steam as a service instead of a drm platform.

2). There are games that use steamworks (aka torchlight) that use steamworks for DRM, cloud saves, achievements... etc and their boxed versions don't need steam at all.

This means that exclusivity of steam as the only method of distribution is not a result of valve but of the publisher themselves. You cannot have a problem with valve if they offer a product (because don't forget valve takes a certain percentage of every sale on steam, like Itunes) that developers and publishers alike enjoy. If you do not like what steam has to offer than I suggest you help other drm methods (GFWL, Uplay) become more publisher and consumer friendly. As it is more and more of publishers and small indy developers are choosing steamworks as their drm choice and the majority of pc gamers are happy about this fact., ecstatic even.

If you were charged a fee to make/hold a Steam account I could see the hate. Until then I do not see what the big deal is.

The big deal is called freedom of choice. The only choice that we are being given here is to choose to buy the game or not. I wish now I had followed my first gut reaction and returned it to the store when I first found out. That won't happen again. Until Bethesda changes it's policy and continues to use Steam as for a DRM, I won't be buying any more of their products no matter how good the game really is. Just because a service is free doesn't mean I have to like it. The game most certainly was not free. It is one of the most expensive games on the market at the moment in fact.

It is the same as any other internet related DRM.... I would prefer not to have it, but I also hate swapping disks constantly so I lose either way.

Wha...!??!?! hmy:

I thought that was the whole basis for choosing Steam over anything else, because it provides a service. Isn't that what has been coming from the Pro-Steam side of the conversation? Steam service allows for use on multiple PCs, Steam service lets me throw away the disk, Steam service allows in game chatting and web browsing, ect.. I'm pretty sure that Steam has been referred to as a service this entire thread. If there is some way to decouple the DRM side of Steam from the Service side (and I don't mean "put it in offline mode") then please let me know! I would still have time to pick a copy of New Vegas to put under the tree for myself.

As to your second point, IIRC Torchlight was Steam-Only during the initial release, it was re-released directly by the developers without Steamworks, though if you like Steam the Steam version still uses it.

What I am saying is that you have to judge steam as a form a DRM, the service is what it provides to the consumer, but the DRM is why its chosen by the publisher.

Can you provide some evidence about your statement? Did Bethesda published or spoken this somewhere?

I believe they chose it as a service, since it has a better track record for distributing mods and DLC than GFWL.

Did you read my previous post where I point out that the FAQ you link to proves nothing about how Valve negotiates about steam exlusivity??



I take a different view. Instead of supporting "other DRMs" I say we boycott ALL OF THEM. This is related to my dismissal of the argument that "Steam is the lesser evil of the DRM alternatives."

No it is not. Buy some games on Gamersgate, or Matrix Games, and then you will experience the least of evils when it comes to user validation proceses, or "DRM" technically.

Nothing wrong with a CD and a CD key for physical, nor with just a simple login, purchase, and serial key posting with digital distribution. Hardly seems like the same thing as what tends to be called "DRM" but technically even these innocuous tried and true methods are forms of shrinkage control.

Ok, so you boycott all those forms of DRM and refuse to play a single game from a major publisher and/or developer (except cdprojekt, but there are threatening to sue pirates) and the rest of us will deal with the minor inconvenience that steam may cause enjoy the pc gaming in its entirety.

Unless you consider serial keys to be "DRM" (which agreed, technically they are, but is not typically referred to by the term) there are plenty of games to play that do not involve ANY DRM. Indeed, some producers have adopted a "NEVER DRM!" branding strategy. Given the massive popular outcry against some recent DRM efforts, and corresponding massive increases in torrents, I predict that DRM will gradually begin to fade back to a minimal level of threat to 'domination' of gaming.

There is no threat from DRM "taking over" and the idea that one's choices are to surrender or forego gaming is inaccurate. At this point it is just a temporary annoyance that is foolish to succumb to, because eventually, it will disappear. Eventually, games like Civ5, and FONV will be available via other distributors than Steam. Maybe it will take 5 years or 10, but whats the hurry?

The Evil DRM Empire(s) may like us to believe that their domination of the game galaxy is inevitable, but, as Princess Leia said



I taunt you a second time Valvkin!