Civ5 - shipping with Steamworks * plus Digital Deluxe Edition

MqsTout said:

We know exactly what it is and does:

It's an intrusive digital distribution system that restricts our consumer rights. It eliminates our resale rights (should we choose to want them). It forces us to be reliant and have ongoing relations with a third party in order to use our product. It forces us to maintain an Internet connection perpetually in order to use the product (heaven forbid hardships might have us consider canceling the service). It maliciously transforms software from a "buy and get" state to a "rent for a long time" mode.

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OK

1) Ya it does take away resale

2) There is no relationship between companies needed to have games on steam, even if something weird happened like 2K decided to buy out valve or they didnt get along or whatever. Nothing would happen. Valve gets money from the deal and 2K gets their game sold, both parties win.

3) No it doesnt require internet service

4) It is still buy and get, in fact its better. If you install steam on any computer and then log onto your account you have all your games automatically. If you decide to uninstall a game it stays on your games list so waiting for you to decide to reinstall it. Steam eliminates the risk of losing your disk
(Something much more likely to happen than one of the biggest and most respected companys in the industry getting shut down or getting bought out)

For Nall said:

OK

1) Ya it does take away resale

2) There is no relationship between companies needed to have games on steam, even if something weird happened like 2K decided to buy out valve or they didnt get along or whatever. Nothing would happen. Valve gets money from the deal and 2K gets their game sold, both parties win.

3) No it doesnt require internet service

4) It is still buy and get, in fact its better. If you install steam on any computer and then log onto your account you have all your games automatically. If you decide to uninstall a game it stays on your games list so waiting for you to decide to reinstall it. Steam eliminates the risk of losing your disk
(Something much more likely to happen than one of the biggest and most respected companys in the industry getting shut down or getting bought out)

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My concern is does steam have the right to ban users for any reason. Lets say I play online and use vulgar language extensively, can they ban me from online play and or future downloads of the game I purchased. To this point, if I bought a game and used obscenities/harrassment on an online game I would be banned from online play, but could still use the disc I purchased to install on any computer I wanted and play on my own or over a lan. Im concerned if steam doesnt like me for above mentioned reasons they will sever ties with me, forbidding me from downloading the game I purchased.

in theory they could terminate your use at any time for any reason - in practice they do remove the right to use their VAC secured servers for multiplayer gaming for specific game engines if you are determined by them to be cheating on that game engine.
There have been no substantiated reports about Steam removing access to the account itself for any reason other than financial disputes (i.e. disputes about payment).
It would be a rather bad business decision to brick any games going through its servers for arbitrary reasons, since that would certainly create a PR backlash that would be hard to contain.

Carl5872 said:

My concern is does steam have the right to ban users for any reason. Lets say I play online and use vulgar language extensively, can they ban me from online play and or future downloads of the game I purchased. To this point, if I bought a game and used obscenities/harrassment on an online game I would be banned from online play, but could still use the disc I purchased to install on any computer I wanted and play on my own or over a lan. Im concerned if steam doesnt like me for above mentioned reasons they will sever ties with me, forbidding me from downloading the game I purchased.

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In theory yes that could happen but it doesnt =). I play lots of games on steam and language isnt something that gets you banned. Im pretty sure they only ban people they have confirmed as hackers. They dont ban modders though. Valve has a history of encouraging modders and giving them tools. In fact 2 of valves games started out as player made mods. Team Fortress Classic was a mod and valve hired the people who made that and made Team Fortress 2 (I think) and Counter Strike used to be a Half Life mod and then Valve hired the people who did that and latter made Counter Strike Source (This I know)

There is a chance that VAC will mistakenly ban players using mods. But that isnt Valves intention and it would be undone as soon as they realized what was happening. An example of this is there were hacked servers in MW2 and people that joined them would get banned even though the players had no idea that the server was hacked. Thousands of people got banned. A few days later Valve unbanned the MW2 players and gave every single one of them 2 free copies of L4D2.

Valve is awesome and I doubt you have too much to worry about

The only way they can ban you from the game proper is if you do something like hack, cheat, or go totally insane spamming racial slurs and such on official boards. Even then, they only ban you from the multiplay servers. There is no way they can randomly remove your game for no reason.

well, technically they *can* - its just close to the very unlikely end of the probability scale that they will

I've heard stories of people selling their accounts having the account, with all their games thus gone, getting cancelled. Also early horror stories about steam randomly accusing you of things and cancelling your account.

If that happens I believe we'll hear about it in these forums. I doubt it will happen though.

I've just preordered. I'm a huge fan of the series, and I want to support Firaxis.

That said, I will probably install a pirate version, so as to avoid Steam.

Steam is Bad Business, and I want no part of that poison on my PC.

Carl5872 said:

My concern is does steam have the right to ban users for any reason. Lets say I play online and use vulgar language extensively, can they ban me from online play and or future downloads of the game I purchased. To this point, if I bought a game and used obscenities/harrassment on an online game I would be banned from online play, but could still use the disc I purchased to install on any computer I wanted and play on my own or over a lan. Im concerned if steam doesnt like me for above mentioned reasons they will sever ties with me, forbidding me from downloading the game I purchased.

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No, steam is not going to ban you for excessive language.

They only ban people from games that they publish (Left for Dead, Team Fortress, etc...) and in those games, they only ban people who are found cheating based on their internal anti-cheat software. Individual servers may ban as they see fit.

Ulyaoth said:

I've heard stories of people selling their accounts having the account, with all their games thus gone, getting cancelled. Also early horror stories about steam randomly accusing you of things and cancelling your account.

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Can you be more specific? "with all their games gone, getting canceled", what do you mean? I sell you my account and it doesn't work? It works but some of the games are missing?

And the "randomly accusing you of things"? See my previous post.