Old Steam Poll posts split and 'archived'

[Killjaeden]

you know, alot of people change thier mind over steam when it comes to sale time.

Exactly. How about a poll *percent you think that voted "wont-buy" but will buy it anyway*
My money is on 85%

No steam is a plus, but won't stop me from getting a good game if i need steam for it. Good games are rare after all. As long as it does not include Windows4Live-Scamware and i get a boxed version of the game i'm happy.

[exogenesis]

Or maybe even more won't buy, especially reading all the steam-workarounds
people are talking about, just to get the game to play like you'd like it to,
without inteference, i.e. smoothly & securely offline

With the best will in the world, and all the intelligent & techno posts in this
thread, I can't see a reason to have the steam engine on my new clean PC,
even with the very high incentive of playing the greatest installment
(I would hope) of X. Enjoyed them all very much, will be a shame to stop now.

Sorry, but I'm not a steam-hater, as seems to be the immediate response,
just don't want any control-freak-like software running the way I use my computer.
Bad enough with anti-virus behaviour,
but that really is a necessary part of being connected to the internet.

[Observe]

With the best will in the world, and all the intelligent & techno posts in this thread, I can't see a reason to have the steam engine on my new clean PC, even with the very high incentive of playing the greatest installment (I would hope) of X. Enjoyed them all very much, will be a shame to stop now.

I hear and agree with you there.

I'm still hoping (probably against reality) Egosoft will provide a non-Steam boxed version. I don't mind validating through Steam as long as I don't have to create a Steam account and run their client.

Short of that, I'm coming to grips with the distinct possibility of no more X games for me.

[ScRaT_GER]

just don't want any control-freak-like software running the way I use my computer.

What are you talking about?

I'm not a big fan of steam either, but I really don't see how it controls the way I use my computer!?
Also, I don't see how Steam pollutes your "clean" computer.

Would you care to elaborate?

Sorry, but I'm not a steam-hater, as seems to be the immediate response,

It sure seems that way. At least your opinion seems to be based on "principles" and prejudice instead of rational thinking.

Greetings,
ScRaT

[frymaster]

I don't mind validating through Steam as long as I don't have to create a Steam account and run their client.

I'm afraid that's a bit like saying "I don't mind eating haddock as long as it's not seafood", you unlock* the game by adding it to your steam account.

*actualy, decrypt. You ship at least part of the install as an encrypted file, and the key is sent via steam.

[veronique]

i use steam all the time, they (valve) creators of games themselves, have some incredible sales on all the time, there are a lot worse drm, ubisoft for one and the awful gfwl, theyre all heading in steams direction as it truly is a success.

give steam a chance and youll find it isnt as bad as you think, and there are some excellent benefits to using it.

[Texhnolyzed]

i use steam all the time, they (valve) creators of games themselves, have some incredible sales on all the time, there are a lot worse drm, ubisoft for one and the awful gfwl, theyre all heading in steams direction as it truly is a success. give steam a chance and youll find it isnt as bad as you think, and there are some excellent benefits to using it.

Like the Indie games!

[philjp]

70 pages of people seemingly dividing into 2 camps and taking shots at each other....its almost like a first person shooter in this thread! with the greatest of respect may i suggest people consider each others personal feelings on this matter rather than attacking what was written.

i have used steam and have never had any major issues with it.

my only issues with steam are simple ones:
1. once the purchase is made via steam, game data is installed to your pc. the game itself is not downloaded in its complete form for your ownership, personally if i'm going to buy it then i want to own what i have bought...i.e i want the disc to do with as i please.
2. as it is run from the steam network they can make changes to their service with little to no notice. if i own the disc nothing changes unless i decide.
3. a steam account requires that you give financial details to steam which is just another potential financial risk.(look at sony only recently)
4. i simply do not trust a 3rd party, i don't like to deal with the middle man, if i'm buying a product from egosoft i want to deal with egosoft.

these are just my opinions and thoughts, please feel free to comment but please respect my opinions as i do yours.
phil.

[fairywhipper]

give steam a chance and youll find it isnt as bad as you think, and there are some excellent benefits to using it.

I did....
thats why I/We are asking for a non steam version, hence the posts

before anybody says bad luck etc.
steam is a very good idea and it will work for many of us, however it doesnt mean that it is suitable for all.

The PC system is a varied not just in terms of hardware or software (OS included), but also in terms of use and access. it is the variety which gives it strength but also weakness.
weakness in terms of vastness of specification (unlike consoles which have fixed base)
strength in terms of what we can do (look at modding or levels of graphics details etc).
The PC is independent/dependent at the same time. software systems such as steam regulates dependecy, but in doing so, it takes away your independence.

some may argue the evolution of software in terms of:
in the old days we had to program our own games by hand/ punchcards etc. then we had storage mediums such as tape, disks etc which began a system of pre-programmed games on a physical medium. Steam may be the future medium by having no physical matter, but we are still too entrenched with physical matters not to have it. There are 7billion people on earth, if you could ask them would they like something they can hold on their hands or a virtual icon on the internet, what do you think the answer would be, and what % of the earths population will have access to an internet connection which is stable......

once you start on dependecy, your future is invested into that one format, so where is the variety which is the complex driver which instills greatness in PC gaming, because it will no longer be called PC gaming, it will be STEAM:gaming and it wont matter matter, but virtual matter controlled by steam......

Steam maybe the future, but I'm not ready for it. So the post is to ask for our physical medium that is entrenched in past ways, because I'm not ready for the future.....

Fairywhipper

[Texhnolyzed]

@philijp:

1. Steam is a Digital Distribution service, so you can't really expect a disc... unless of course you buy a Steamworks or Steamplay game retail. Then you get the disc along with the advantages Steam offers.

2. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, or what changes they would make and why it would be a problem.

3. As far as I'm aware, you don't have to put any financial info into Steam, plus you can choose not to have it saved after your purchase. Plus, if you buy Steam games retail, this won't be an issue at all.

4. The middle man generally isn't much of an issue though in this case. At least for me, it hasn't spawned any noteworthy problems. You simply buy and install, or download the game, update it if needed, and then play!

Also, Egosoft actually sees more of the money paid for their games when bought over Steam, or DD in general, I guess.

[VincentTH]

@philijp:

1. Steam is a Digital Distribution service, so you can't really expect a disc... unless of course you buy a Steamworks or Steamplay game retail. Then you get the disc along with the advantages Steam offers.

2. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, or what changes they would make and why it would be a problem.

3. As far as I'm aware, you don't have to put any financial info into Steam, plus you can choose not to have it saved after your purchase. Plus, if you buy Steam games retail, this won't be an issue at all.

4. The middle man generally isn't much of an issue though in this case. At least for me, it hasn't spawned any noteworthy problems. You simply buy and install, or download the game, update it if needed, and then play!

Also, Egosoft actually sees more of the money paid for their games when bought over Steam, or DD in general, I guess.

I just tried today at work, on a laptop where I ran Steam X3TC before, which I have put on Offline mode (previously at home).

Boot up the laptop, but I forgot to unplug the Network. Result: Steam refuse to go to offline mode, even though I have unplug the network cable. Reason? I am behind a firewall at work, Steam knows that it can go on the net, (ping method I think) but refuse to go into either online or offline mode, because it insists on talking to the Steam server using game ports.

I feel for the poor X gamer who lives in a dorm at University.

Before you steam guys jump in and say it will time out. I have waited and retried several time for 6 hours, to no avail.

No, Offline mode does not work for me and others behind a firewall, emphasis on "for me" and firewall.

I end up using the hard disk installation from my USB drive to run X3TC.
I hope and pray that Ego would use GamesGate as an alternative. GamersGate use HTTP/HTTPS port, and it worked for me.

[philjp]

@Texhnolyzed:

for me it's more an issue of:
if i part with my money then i want something to show for it, in this case the game in my hand.

i wasn't aware that steam offered a service allowing the purchase of the disc and i will look into this as it would resolve my main steam "issue".

my service changes issue.........if you are using a client such as steam. could they pull the plug on a game if they considered it "old" possibly not many people playing any more? you connect to find the game can nolonger be played (if such a thing is even possible via steam?), could they impose a subscription service at any point? etc.
these are questions i can't answer and if i purchased the disc i wouldn't ever need answering as the game will play so long as the disc will play.

as i gues you have gathered by now. my lack of trust in steam is my lack of knowledge of how steam works.(clearly my issue and not that of steam)

something i didn't consider was that you commented that steam= a greater share of the profit for egosoft. this is certainly a consideration as we must support the creator/manufacturer of the product we are so passionate about.
phil.

[festa_freak]

Last year I really hated steam because the offline mode worked very poorly and inconsistantly. This past month I again used steam offline and it just worked. I was floored and was very happy that it worked. Usually you need to first log online and then put it in offline mode for it to work but I didn't need to do that this time.

I have about 65 games on steam including X3TC and I really don't have any problems with it. I really only use it for the crazy sales.

[strude]

i wasn't aware that steam offered a service allowing the purchase of the disc and i will look into this as it would resolve my main steam "issue".

Steam doesn't provide this service. The game will be available to buy from retail stores on a disk. You still need to run and authenticate it through Steam, unless word to the contrary is made public from Egosoft. I doubt this will happen, but some in this thread live in hope that a Steam free disk version will be available.

my service changes issue.........if you are using a client such as steam. could they pull the plug on a game if they considered it "old" possibly not many people playing any more? you connect to find the game can nolonger be played (if such a thing is even possible via steam?), could they impose a subscription service at any point? etc.
these are questions i can't answer and if i purchased the disc i wouldn't ever need answering as the game will play so long as the disc will play.

Bernd (Egosoft) has stated that if the Steam service was ever shut down, they would be able to produce a patch that removed the Steam requirement. It's unknown if Egosoft intend to do this at any point regardless or Steam's status. It has been their history to remove DRM from their games after one year, however the agreement they have with Steam may not permit this. Your fears could eventuate if Steam shut down after Egosoft ceases to exist, in which case no-one would be left to remove the Steam requirement. As for Steam removing a game from the library due to being old, or low player numbers, they really have no reason to do that.

something i didn't consider was that you commented that steam= a greater share of the profit for egosoft. this is certainly a consideration as we must support the creator/manufacturer of the product we are so passionate about.

People on the Civ5 forum suggest as much as 30% extra would go to the developer verses a shelf bought copy. It's just from another forum post so I cannot verify the accuracy, and even if the percentage is correct (or close enough) it's also possible that amount is shared in some way between the developer and the publisher.

[Raider480]

Steam is kind of eh for me, I like the IM, community and ease of updating, but it has a lot of downsides too, particularly offline mode. Even if offline didn't work once a year that would be too often, because above all else, if I bought (the license to play) these games, I think any restriction whatsoever on this is both extremely troubling, and likely illegal. Achievements can be fun, but inexplicably give me the slightest second thoughts about going modified. Still, all other complaints aside, please for the love of Albion don't make me every have to check online after I've already activated it; I don't want to worry about the use of something I've bought being contingent on a recurring, sometimes unavailable, outside resource. Initial activation I'm mostly fine with, though it can have some issues if I have to reinstall Windoze on my laptop without 'de-authorizing' it.
I like Ego's current implementation with TC - if you buy the retail version, you have a good stand-alone install option that's save interoperable with a complimentary Steam version. If history's any lesson though, it'll be a while into XR's release before they relax the DRM restrictions, which I suppose is understandable, but still irritating to everyone who's bought the game.

[apricotslice]

Talking about Civ5, I was in my local store yesterday and picked up the Civ5 box.

There is no mention anywhere on it of Steam, or the need to activate through Steam.

Does that mean the box version doesnt require steam ? Or is the box misleading ?

[grbaker]

I think Civ 5 is one of those rare DVD that installs of the disk but activation and patches are all Water Vapor based.

Last 2 games I picked up, Duke Nukem Forever (I'm old and like classics) and Dungeon Siege III all came with DVD's that were useless... the both downloaded the entire game from Steam... arse to that.

Got home with goods in hand think, 20 minutes installation then off for some 'ME TIME'... nope... 4 hour download from Stream (well BubblingBrook maybe).. I had to spend time with the wife, doing stuff around the house... Gonnerdamnit.

At least if the XR game is known to be Steam only - I can live with the pain... barely... knowing it will be worth it (unlike the 2 previously mention games here). and don't get me started on Shogun 2.... (12Gb patches... good grief... they must have planned this new way to kill "ME TIME" for a whole weekend... cos the game was so average they really didn't want anyone to play it!)

Did I mention that NOT every country has a local Steam mirror.

[apricotslice]

I think Civ 5 is one of those rare DVD that installs of the disk but activation and patches are all Water Vapor based.

If thats so, then it should say on the box that Steam activation is necessary.

"Installation from disk, but you must be a registered Steam user to activate the game online. Game will not run without online activation.".

"Disk logs into Steam and downloads the latest game from your nearest Steam server. Download size is approximately ??gb.".

That should be mandatory on the box of all affected disks now. imo.

Water Vapor - took me a minute to work that one out.

[grbaker]

Sorry been watching too much Bottom Live (on disc, not downloaded) and have a bad case of the verbal replacement syndrome.

Just had a lookc at the back of those two games DVD cases... Both say "Steam Activation required" no mention of download... they obviously chose not to so they 'punters' will still buy the DVD version (for some reason there a people out there whom don't feel like they are getting what they paid for when downloading - and publishers know this.)

Dungeon Seige III has about 4Kb of files total on it's disc.... the biggest one was the SteamClient.msi.

Worst still is that the PS3 consoel gamers didn't have to download from steam... their disks had stuff on them ... like what they paid for


Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2.. both installable off disk or electronic... I prefer the choice and don't mind combining the two.

Another point is that Steam is killing off local Game shops ... are atleast turning into something evil... so they become the realm of those that can't type.. console platformers.

[strude]

I think Civ 5 is one of those rare DVD that installs of the disk but activation and patches are all Water Vapor based.

If thats so, then it should say on the box that Steam activation is necessary.

"Installation from disk, but you must be a registered Steam user to activate the game online. Game will not run without online activation.".

"Disk logs into Steam and downloads the latest game from your nearest Steam server. Download size is approximately ??gb.".

That should be mandatory on the box of all affected disks now. imo.

Water Vapor - took me a minute to work that one out.

Never seen the box, but as I understand it, it is listed under system requirements. Civ5 is one of the reasons I hope Rebirth will have it prominently displayed that Steam is required, if not on the front, then on the back in a noticeable fashion. Even though it's their responsibility to make sure people check the system requirements before purchasing.

Otherwise we go through this all over again with a new bunch of people (and the same arguments), although those people have already paid for and opened the package (and thus accepted the terms). Then they make legal threats and calls for class actions that never go anywhere.