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

Use this thread to discuss Steam

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