Why do you have to sign up with Steam to play Skyrim?

[Major.Robto]

Haha, I don't believe you. It pushes 20mb ram, 0% CPU usage on my old Core2Duo 2006 iMac (under bootcamp) and the same under my new iMac.

Something else was wrong with your system.

Yeah thats on mac hardware though, Not generic PC hardware,

Trust me it was steam, It was making my cpu run atleast at 50% I guess it was doing something in the background.


I just know it happened when I downloaded and installed steam from there website.

 

[cerote]

Portal is a one player game, Why do I need to be online to play a single player game?
Steam is on my system is that not enough?
at the time my DSL was acting up for about three to four weeks.

I beleive there is an offline option in the settings of Steam.

With the way steam is adding workshop for a several games it is expanding upon the game more for the people that don't want to hunt down mods for games.

I don't feel like hunting down mods and with workshop you can search member made mods and install them with ease.

 

[Major.Robto]

The workshop thing sounds smart, its like other games like for example god forbiden halo, The third game had that big editor thing. I hate fpses alot but I lied one thing, it was that super cool level maker.

It was a cool thing that was added in, I spent more time there then in the game.

but being able to get user made stuff easy is cool. and to be able to make it easy also.

Thats what I liked and thats a cool feature they are adding in where its so much easer to share with others. I've always wanted to see something of that nature for Old school turn biased rpgs. I love them with a passion.

I never did find the offline. Its to big of a deal to even bother with on its self. I find that is the most ridculus thing ever.

I know diablo 3 does not even work if there is no internet at all, Not even for single player and if the servers are down... wait it happend at launch....Well anyways you can not play the game at all.


I hate to say but thats a bit bull right there. Its such a fail if you ask me.

 

[cerote]

I know diablo 3 does not even work if there is no internet at all, Not even for single player and if the servers are down... wait it happend at launch....Well anyways you can not play the game at all.

I didn't have a huge issue on launch day. Yes it did take me about 30 minutes to get on right at launch but I expected that; as with any launch. But after that point I had no issues and later that morning I had no issues getting back on after nap. Total I got 16 hours of gameplay in launch day before I stopped playing for the day. Haven't had an issue since getting on other than the maintence downtimes. But I was used to those times because I used to play wow.

I enjoy playing games without people that hack or cheat the system. I even stopped playing with a friend in d2 because he used stuff he got by cheating the system. I just prefer to play with people that actually enjoy the games to take the time it takes to find the gear. Not just for Diablo either.

It does suck it requires constant connection and I understand some peoples hate for it because some people don't have time to grind. The auction house (non-real money) at least still gives them a way to get gear.

 

[Major.Robto]

Well still, The whole DRM thing just kills it,

Cheaters do, it depends on how broken the game becomes for me. There are some games I know of where you kind of need to break the game to beat it or play it enjoylbly for a few hours.

Like I know in turnbaised RPGS you grind for money so you can have a crap ton of health items after each battle in the field.
I know in FF4 after years you need to do that like all the time. It gets stupid. after a while.

so yeah,

Honsitly the DRM thing does kill me alot.

I may also once in a while do certan ilegal things, but its for a reason.
Like one snes game Earthbound, Its way to expencive ebay and hard to find, You some times may need to resort to shady things. if its a truly good game,
I wont even justify my self, I know its a bad thing, but I do not care.
Nor am I telling anyone about my gray things.

Now, I will speak for a few of my frends, If its way to hard to find, It may be worth to walk the line. If you can get it in the city easy it can wait.

 

[Huntn]

Well still, The whole DRM thing just kills it,

Cheaters do, it depends on how broken the game becomes for me. There are some games I know of where you kind of need to break the game to beat it or play it enjoylbly for a few hours.

Like I know in turnbaised RPGS you grind for money so you can have a crap ton of health items after each battle in the field.
I know in FF4 after years you need to do that like all the time. It gets stupid. after a while.

so yeah,

Honsitly the DRM thing does kill me alot.

I may also once in a while do certan ilegal things, but its for a reason.
Like one snes game Earthbound, Its way to expencive ebay and hard to find, You some times may need to resort to shady things. if its a truly good game,
I wont even justify my self, I know its a bad thing, but I do not care.
Nor am I telling anyone about my gray things.

Now, I will speak for a few of my frends, If its way to hard to find, It may be worth to walk the line. If you can get it in the city easy it can wait.

Right now, DRM is keeping me from purchasing Diablo III. Have to be online to play? Pa-shaw, I'll find something else, or continue with Torchlight. I make exceptions for MMOs, not CRPGs, at least not at this time.

 

[laetusviator]

Right now, DRM is keeping me from purchasing Diablo III. Have to be online to play? Pa-shaw, I'll find something else, or continue with Torchlight. I make exceptions for MMOs, not CRPGs, at least not at this time.

Agreed. The whole 'must be online' thing seems ridiculous for single player gaming.

Then again, is content being updated on-the-fly for DIII (i.e. the server decides item drops and stuff?) in single-player? (I must admit, haven't played and don't know much about DIII). Even so, it seems like it would only need to connect once and a while for that, not maintain a connection.

 

[cerote]

Then again, is content being updated on-the-fly for DIII (i.e. the server decides item drops and stuff?) in single-player? (I must admit, haven't played and don't know much about DIII).

Yes it is. This helps them keep track of how much of what drops to help stop duping.

 

[Huntn]

Agreed. The whole 'must be online' thing seems ridiculous for single player gaming.

Then again, is content being updated on-the-fly for DIII (i.e. the server decides item drops and stuff?) in single-player? (I must admit, haven't played and don't know much about DIII). Even so, it seems like it would only need to connect once and a while for that, not maintain a connection.

My guess it does. However the primary emphasis is to protect Blizzard, DRM to control the content and income via loot purchases.

 

[MRU]

Yes it is. This helps them keep track of how much of what drops to help stop duping.

Realistically your game could do this as a log while you play and offer to sync this info to Blizzard Cloud later when you decide to connect / sync your save etc..

The main reason was to control piracy, which whilst a part of me laments DRM - a part of me also says if I had invested $ millions into developing a game, I'd want to protect my investment.

Piracy is ripe on the PC. A quick glance at piratebay is plain evidence of that fact. There were some reports a while back from a publisher who said around 7 out of 10 copies of their game on PC was pirated. One report from Capcom estimated 90% of copies on PC were pirated. When levels of piracy reach that level you can't be surprised when harsh DRM is implemented.

That being said, I wont be buying Sim City because of the always online necessitation of the game, much like I missed out in the last Settlers game because of it. I just don't have access to the Internet all te time, so it is unfeasible for me to play these sadly

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-30-how-bad-is-pc-piracy-really-article

 

[cerote]

That being said, I wont be buying Sim City because of the always online necessitation of the game, much like I missed out in the last Settlers game because of it. I just don't have access to the Internet all te time, so it is unfeasible for me to play these sadly

The online part they have been showing and detailing has me super excited for it. The integration/teamwork between you and your friends, even while they are offline, is a great feature to me.

Yes, I wish/hope they offer an offline version because I wouldn't mind playing some SimCity when not around internet.

 

[glades20]

Here's a thought: What happens if Steam ever goes out of business and their servers shut down? All those games bought on Steam, or require steam to run will become useless. I still have software that I've had on backup for 10 or more years. When I buy software, it had better be usable for life, whether it becomes outdated or not. Because Nostalgia happens.

Besides, nothing can beat a physical backup. Corporations go under, thus clouds may fail and relying on a company to be there whenever I need to reinstall just doesn't seem logical to me.

 

[doh123]

Its unlikely, but in that event they (or someone else) can put out an update that gets around the issue. People do hacks all the time right now to play Steam games without Steam, they are just... well hacks, and theres always a fight. If the company is no longer doing updates to counter hacks, it wouldnt be as hard.

 

[Mackilroy]

Here's a thought: What happens if Steam ever goes out of business and their servers shut down? All those games bought on Steam, or require steam to run will become useless. I still have software that I've had on backup for 10 or more years. When I buy software, it had better be usable for life, whether it becomes outdated or not. Because Nostalgia happens.

Besides, nothing can beat a physical backup. Corporations go under, thus clouds may fail and relying on a company to be there whenever I need to reinstall just doesn't seem logical to me.

You're not the first to have that thought -- Valve said somewhere they'd issue an update if that happened to allow people to play anyway.

 

[0098386]

Besides, nothing can beat a physical backup. Corporations go under, thus clouds may fail and relying on a company to be there whenever I need to reinstall just doesn't seem logical to me.

So then keep local backups?

If Steam went down this second I'd still have my downloaded games, all my saves (since uninstalling games via Steam doesn't remove save files) just no Steam to launch them without using a hacked exe file. It'd be the same for everyone here.

Plug in a USB hard drive. Instal Steam onto it. Download all your games. Win.

 

[Tech198]

...

It's just like the App Store or the iTunes Store, but for games.

Yea.... and more hackable.

 

[OldSchoolGamerz]

TLDR all posts..

Back to the OP,100% agree. To the rest/most of you. You must be younger generation gamers which is why you so openly embrace stuff like Steam.

And for those of you that think its "safe and secure"... Don't ever get a job in IT. Stay in your delusional bubble. lol.

Back in the day, you could by a pc game, load it up and go. Games with single player mode could be done offline. Life was amazing. Games were awesome!

Today, I bought the hard copy of SkyRim for the pc as my family won't get off the ps3 long enough for me to play SkyRim there. My son has a steam account and d/l the game on his pc. I did not want steam. Just the game. So I bought it only to realize that the box says in tiny print, you have to have a steam account and internet to play a SINGLE player game... Guess what. The box is unopened and its going back. I didn't pay $85 to use Steam. I would gladly have paid it to avoid putting yet more crap on my pc.
So I'll just buy another ps3, yes I will pay for another ps3 to play on our other tv just to enjoy the game and not load dn my pc with their crap.

Peace out Gamerz

 

[Washac]

TLDR all posts..

Back to the OP,100% agree. To the rest/most of you. You must be younger generation gamers which is why you so openly embrace stuff like Steam.

And for those of you that think its "safe and secure"... Don't ever get a job in IT. Stay in your delusional bubble. lol.

Back in the day, you could by a pc game, load it up and go. Games with single player mode could be done offline. Life was amazing. Games were awesome!

Today, I bought the hard copy of SkyRim for the pc as my family won't get off the ps3 long enough for me to play SkyRim there. My son has a steam account and d/l the game on his pc. I did not want steam. Just the game. So I bought it only to realize that the box says in tiny print, you have to have a steam account and internet to play a SINGLE player game... Guess what. The box is unopened and its going back. I didn't pay $85 to use Steam. I would gladly have paid it to avoid putting yet more crap on my pc.
So I'll just buy another ps3, yes I will pay for another ps3 to play on our other tv just to enjoy the game and not load dn my pc with their crap.

Peace out Gamerz

Have to agree with your post wholeheartedly.

I also fell for the Skyrim hard copy small print ( Mine was opened before I found out ), pissed me right off when I found out I had to play via Steam.

 

[madeirabhoy]

Boy, do they...

... I picked-up Arkham Ayslum for £3.50 well over a year ago, long before you could accuse them of doing it to promote Arkham City. Dead Space, £4.99, at around the same time. BioShock, £2.50. And their multipacks are genius: the Id Complete Pack (Commander Keen, Wolfenstein, Spear of Destiny, the first three Dooms, the first three Quakes, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, plus the crappy ones like Heretic and Hexen) cost me £39. Yeah, okay, so I'm not gonna play some of those games ever; but most of them, I have done.


I was resistant to Steam, at first. Didn't get an account until two years ago. Honestly, my friends; just give in.

so true. max payne 3 the other week was €7.50.

also the humble bundle offers, which are brilliant, dead cheap and your giving to charity, are always on steam.

the WB one at the minute is arkham city GOTY plus Arkham Asylum GOTY, F.E.A.R 2 and 3, and Lord of the rings war of the north, and scribble naughts, for 4 euro.


previous there was n Origins one, battlefield 3, dead space 1 + 3, sims 3, crisis 2, medal of honour, mirrors edge and burnout paradise, for about 4 euro

 

[Mackilroy]

<snip>

I've been playing video games for a couple decades now. No problem with Steam at all. It's an excellent bit of software.

 

[iMacFarlane]

I love Steam, and I've been playing video games for a long time. In fact, the first video game I actually owned (so I wouldn't have to bum quarters off of Mom in order to walk two miles to play Asteroids at the pizza parlor) was a Mattel handheld football game.

Steam is totally awesome because it organizes your games, provides achievements, and allows for modding via the workshop in order to infinitely extend the life of your favorite games (cough **Skyrim** cough).

 

[Solomani]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Idk I'm with the OP on this one. I hate how all the games nowadays are forcing sign up for stuff. Steam, EA Origin, Battle.net and stuff like that. More of an annoyance seeing as I can tell then no emails. Just frustrating having to have yet another login info to remember.

It's all about DRM and control. The minute you do something offensive or something against their Terms of Service, you can be banned from the service. Oh noes! You also lost all access to your Steam-tethered games. Don't bother getting a lawyer. When you first sign up, you probably already clicked on their User Agreement saying that they can ban or drop you any time, and in doing so you have no legal rights to "reclaim" your game purchases. To be fair, this is not just Steam… this is also with any online distribution site like Origins or even App Store.

This is the dark side of cloud computing. In a few years, the days will be over when you used to be able to purchase CD/DVD-rom physical copies of games, where you can install and re-install at will, as long as you have the original CD or the original registration key code. What is gradually replacing that model is that we now have to buy our games tethered to a digital distribution site.

 

[Solomani]

Right now, DRM is keeping me from purchasing Diablo III. Have to be online to play? Pa-shaw, I'll find something else, or continue with Torchlight. I make exceptions for MMOs, not CRPGs, at least not at this time.

I disagree with you as far as Diablo III is concerned. It's certainly not just a single-player CRPG. It's an interactive online game where you are encouraged to trade items, sell/trade items (using real dollars, up until 2014) between player, and of course group adventuring. This classifies it closer to an MMO than a lone CRPG.

As I also have a distrust for DRMed software, I (like you) will make reasonable exceptions for certain games like MMOs…. because I realize that a controlled DRMed environment is the ONLY WAY that such massively interactive games can succeed, and the ONLY WAY that they can prevent massive scammers and exploiters from overwhelming and destroying the game ecosystem. Blizzard knows all about this! Trust me…. played the original Everquest, which was the original breeding ground for the very first generation of so-called "Asian Gold Farmers".

In summary. Single-player non-interactive games should not force an online-required mode to players. The devs telling us otherwise is disingenuous at best. But for interactive multiplayer games? The DRM and online-account-tethering becomes a necessary evil. Does this mean they always succeed in keeping out scammers, cheaters and exploiters? No. But at least they have to try.

 

[Huntn]

I disagree with you as far as Diablo III is concerned. It's certainly not just a single-player CRPG. It's an interactive online game where you are encouraged to trade items, sell/trade items (using real dollars, up until 2014) between player, and of course group adventuring. This classifies it closer to an MMO than a lone CRPG.

As I also have a distrust for DRMed software, I (like you) will make reasonable exceptions for certain games like MMOs…. because I realize that a controlled DRMed environment is the ONLY WAY that such massively interactive games can succeed, and the ONLY WAY that they can prevent massive scammers and exploiters from overwhelming and destroying the game ecosystem. Blizzard knows all about this! Trust me…. played the original Everquest, which was the original breeding ground for the very first generation of so-called "Asian Gold Farmers".

In summary. Single-player non-interactive games should not force an online-required mode to players. The devs telling us otherwise is disingenuous at best. But for interactive multiplayer games? The DRM and online-account-tethering becomes a necessary evil. Does this mean they always succeed in keeping out scammers, cheaters and exploiters? No. But at least they have to try.

I appreciate the perspective, but I plan on sticking with Torchlight for now- solo or multi-player, local network only.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

I've been playing games on computers since the PC-XT. I've been on Steam since its inception and never had a problem with it. I like Steam and I like cloud storage. I don't mind online requirements. I am online 24/7 anyway. I like Steam's bargain prices and I like the features of the client. As a Mac gamer, I am particularly appreciative of Steamplay titles. When I switched to Mac over a year and half ago now, thanks to Steamplay I instantly had nearly 100 Mac games on Steam at zero additional cost to me. What's not to love there? The Steam store and client have matured into a complete service for PC/Mac/Linux gamers that I imagine rivals the experience of services like PSN and Xbox Live. You've got game matching, time tracking, social features, voice chat, text chat, screen shots, news on updates, automatic updating of games and more. Again, for me at least that is all great stuff. It adds value to my game purchases and it was all done to add value so people would shop there. That is why there are over 40 million Steam accounts and at any given time millions online playing games there.

Somebody above mentioned resistance is futile and they are right. Those who have issues with modern retailing might as well get with the program because the days of DVD releases are on the way out. There is a reason why Apple dropped DVD drives in new Macs. Few were using them anymore. Yes, I know there is always exceptions - like those who hate digital distribution, etc. but they are exceptions at this point, not the rule.

That's just the hard facts. Digital distribution and cloud computing are here to stay. People might as well get used to it because we are never going back to the days of buying all our games in a retail store in boxes, etc.

Steam is a very, very successful business and is not going anywhere anytime soon. My own remaining life expectancy is most probably shorter than Steam's so I do not worry about that. And even if disaster did strike, I own games on the App Store and GOG and Origin, etc. so my little gaming world would not stop turning. I'm sure I'd still have something to play and somewhere to get more games.

So yeah, it is true. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated or else you will need to find some other form of entertainment but I hope it isn't movies, music or increasingly books because that is all going digital distribution too. Playing outdoors should remain a safe bet, golf, etc.