Civ 5 digital deluxe coming exclusively to Steam! Steamworks confirmed!

What has the policy in the past been of using content from expansion packs for modding?

EmpireOfCats said:

Strange, can't say I've noticed that. Friday's certainly are fine here. However, this might be a difference between the amount of traffic on the U.S. East Coast servers and on their German servers (or European, or whatever).

Click to expand...

Same here, never encountered it. EU servers here too.

never seen any slowdown either on a EU server.

Chalks said:

Under what definition of the word "malware" does steam qualify as such?

Click to expand...

You mean, except of

- forcing me install it even though I don't want it
- forcing me to sign up to a community I detest
- forcing me to run it first just to run something completely different
- spying on me and phoning home on every opportunity and reporting my gaming behavior
- forcing patches upon me that I don't want to install at given time
- eating bandwith and system resources while providing no benefit?

Nothing that I can think of.

Sir Ralph said:

You mean, except of

- forcing me install it even though I don't want it
Being a prerequisite for something else does not make something malware
- forcing me to sign up to a community I detest
Having to create an account to use it doesn't make it malware
- forcing me to run it first just to run something completely different
Being a prerequisite is not the definition of malware
- spying on me and phoning home on every opportunity and reporting my gaming behavior
You can opt out of being part of their statistics. Why you care is another question
- forcing patches upon me that I don't want to install at given time
You can turn off auto patching
- eating bandwith and system resources while providing no benefit?
It provides the DRM system, the multiplayer platform, contact lists, update system and possibly even the infrastructure for the mod distribution system. You might not like this but "having features that you don't feel like using" doesn't make it malware

Nothing that I can think of.

Click to expand...

So congrats, you don't know what the words you're using mean or what the software you're talking about does.

Don't worry, you're not a minority in this thread.

cardgame said:

It uses... 32,000 RAM

My 2005 system has... 4,000,000,000 RAM

WHAT A SYSTEM HOG OMG!!! It uses a whole 1/125000th of my RAM! Freaking system hog, god, NO WAY AM I GOING TO DOWNLOAD THIS

Click to expand...

Damn, you have more RAM than I have hard drive space. Let me know if you're ever selling your computer.

Chalks said:

It doesn't.

Click to expand...

Ah, excellent news.

They're not like, bond villains. They're not sitting there stroking a giant fat cat trying to work out how to mess with you. They want to provide you with your games. Yeah, they could go on a banning spree, but that wouldn't make very much sense. It's like not getting on a bus because the driver could drive off a cliff.

Yes... he could do that....

Click to expand...

I see your point. In the end, an agreement is an agreement. It is not so much a concern for myself but rather for people who have a tendency to get more emotional or anti-social and upset other people in the process. It might even be an overall good thing because it forces people to behave in more socially acceptable ways. Really it's just a part of the user agreement that I don't like to see because it's so ambiguous and open to abuse. You're quite right it would give Valve bad PR to abuse it. Then again, there is quite a lot of negative opinions with Valve so it surely must be tricky to argue Valve will not do something if it will annoy some people. It has already happened that Valve have pissed people off. The message, "It'll be ok", coming from someone who openly admits to thinking Steam is basically the best thing since sliced bread is not as reassuring as you might think it should be.

PieceOfMind said:

It has already happened that Valve have pissed people off.

Click to expand...

[Citation needed]

Seriously.

I wouldn't classify steam as malware. But a parasite program installed or caused to run by another program without consent of the user does qualify, even if that program doesn't do anything overtly malicious.

In particular if steam runs, without the user affirmatively enabling the option, when civ 5 isn't, either upon system startup or by scheduling itself in some manner, or after civ 5 closes, it's reasonable to classify it as malware. I don't believe steam behaves in this manner, but again i don't have firsthand knowledge.

If the default behavior is to only start at the same time as civ 5, and to exit as soon as civ 5 is closed, then unless it does something malicious or deceptive, it is inaccurate to classify steam as malware.

Chalks said:

So congrats, you don't know what the words you're using mean or what the software you're talking about does.

Don't worry, you're not a minority in this thread.

Click to expand...

So you define malware differently than me? Big deal, and now please explain why I would care about your opinion on the subject malware. And FYI, I don't care what I can turn off and what not. I don't want to bother with the whole thing, period. So if Valve is part of the deal, I'm out. My right as customer, no?

Sir Ralph said:

So you define malware differently than me? Big deal, and now please explain why I would care about your opinion on the subject malware. And FYI, I don't care what I can turn off and what not. I don't want to bother with the whole thing, period. So if Valve is part of the deal, I'm out. My right as customer, no?

Click to expand...

No, you define malware differently than the english language

I could say steam was a genocidal fascist dictator, but regardless of how I personally chose to define those words, I'd be talking crap.

They're not like, bond villains. They're not sitting there stroking a giant fat cat trying to work out how to mess with you. They want to provide you with your games. Yeah, they could go on a banning spree, but that wouldn't make very much sense. It's like not getting on a bus because the driver could drive off a cliff.

Yes... he could do that....

Click to expand...

As far as that goes, no they aren't evil overlords, they're human beings. And people in general make mistakes, get angry from time to time, and hold/form grudges for irrational reasons. The bus example as a bad one, because the company doesn't make me sign an agreement saying i understand and agree they may drive over a cliff if they feel like it before getting on the bus.

I take issue with making steam mandatory with civ 5 because their legalese is clearly in bad faith, and they have real power to do harm with it. If they didn't have the legalese, i might not take exception, because then that would be a similar situation to the bus example. If they couldn't enforce it, most likely i'd just buy civ 5 and ignore it.

Chalks said:

So congrats, you don't know what the words you're using mean or what the software you're talking about does.

Don't worry, you're not a minority in this thread.

Click to expand...

Trying to to explain what Steam is and how it works to people like that is just a waste of time. No matter what you say they will keep whining.

Many of them admittedly never installed it and never will, but yet they know all the bad things Steam will do to them if they do. "oh no... steam stole my baby while I was putting my tinfoil hat on! omg".

In a few years they will realize that Steam or other services similar to it will be the de facto gaming platform for PC and just maybe they will realize all the advantages this will bring. Until then, let them be.

Chalks said:

No, you define malware differently than the english language

Click to expand...

It's not my native language and I really care little about it, but nonetheless I followed your link:

The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.

Click to expand...

Hostile, intrusive and annoying... hmmmm. Sounds precisely like Steam.

And unless it is written thick on the box (as big as the game title): "Can only be played if you join the Steam community" so it can be seen before shelling out the money, it is also trying to intrude without the user's consent.

Chalks said:

I could say steam was a genocidal fascist dictator, but regardless of how I personally chose to define those words, I'd be talking crap.

Click to expand...

Trust me, nobody would notice the difference.

Blacklanner said:

I wouldn't classify steam as malware. But a parasite program installed or caused to run by another program without consent of the user does qualify, even if that program doesn't do anything overtly malicious.

In particular if steam runs, without the user affirmatively enabling the option, when civ 5 isn't, either upon system startup or by scheduling itself in some manner, or after civ 5 closes, it's reasonable to classify it as malware. I don't believe steam behaves in this manner, but again i don't have firsthand knowledge.

If the default behavior is to only start at the same time as civ 5, and to exit as soon as civ 5 is closed, then unless it does something malicious or deceptive, it is inaccurate to classify steam as malware.

Click to expand...

That's a pretty wild definition. The print spooler service runs on your computer all the time, regardless of if you are printing or not, or even intend to print. Is it malware?

Steam, by default, runs on start-up and runs 2 services in total (I believe, I'm at work, working hard as you can tell ). You can disable it running on start-up which will set both of those services to manual. When you launch a game steam will start up. Once you quit the game you can shut down steam again if you really want.

But its not malware, not even close.

Chalks said:

I dislike people who don't know what they're talking about making sweeping statements about how stuff is bad. Because then other people who don't know what they're talking about read it then start posting it too... and it kinda just goes from there

Click to expand...

I only posted before because i got nerved because of the general discussion style, but as last words to this topic:

One of my reasons is that i can´t accept the Privacy Policy form valve, beside the fact i also don´t really like the subscriber agreement (even this one is similar to one i already accepted, but this is not equal to i liked them).

And if you can´t accept to the agreement and policy, you can´t use it. So all the arguments about, test it and say me what you think are senseless in this case (certainly it has it´s advantages for some, but i´m not willing to pay the price). It´s a personal decision (therefore don´t even try to get a more detailed explaination from me) and the only option left if a game requieres steams is that you do not buy it. And because it will be the second game i post my opinion, so the publisher has a change to see that - if (what i must confess is not sure) the numbers drop it must not be a reason of the game it could also a reason of the choosen DRM.

But like Dale said is the decision of the publisher. For them it´s a trade off between the hope to aquire new playes because of the new platform, to reduce piracy (also new paying players), to have the possibility to offer DLC (also known as new milk cow of the business) - together with the hope not to loose old players and only a reduced reputation loss. It seems take2 expects - or had in similar cases, it´s not the first game published this way - a financial gain from this policy - at least short term.

But again as customer you can only complain and if it doesn´t help, don´t buy products which conditions you can´t accept. Atm we still in the complaining (!= whining) phase in the hope there will a change in take2 policy, so that there will conditions we can accept (and i´m sure, even if take2 - which i don´t expect - makes changes, it will be impossible to satisfy everybody).

Sir Ralph said:

Hostile, intrusive and annoying... hmmmm. Sounds precisely like Steam.

Click to expand...

Turn your phrasebook to the definition of "hostile".

Sir Ralph said:

And unless it is written thick on the box (as big as the game title): "Can only be played if you join the Steam community" so it can be seen before shelling out the money, it is also trying to intrude without the user's consent.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it will say that, but feel free to hold them accountable for things that they're not going to do in the future, because that's a solid argument no doubt.

Clearly you've never even seen a game distributed through steam before.

Chalks said:

Clearly you've never even seen a game distributed through steam before.

Click to expand...

No, and hardly I ever will. I'm buying my games exclusively online, and in the last time I purchased a lot downloadable stuff from Gamersgate, but no online distributor so far forced his spyware and questionable community accounts upon me.

The following is an answer to a post in the Poll-Thread ( http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=363733 )

Craxymaxy said:

I'm not trying to start a discussion but, really all those people won't buy it just because its on steam? Even though they've been following it for months?

Click to expand...

It's not because of Steam. It's because one is forced to use Steam. If it was optional - no problem.
I for my part preordered a month ago - and cancelled this preorder today.

I occasionally like to troll in a lot of forums. Just love seeing the reactions from people I have no clue who they are; however, there is one thing I am sincere about: I love the Civilization franchise. And what they have done in all these years with all the titles they had released.

Maybe the added bonus, with partnership with Steam, can be included in the next expansion pack (assuming there will be one). It doesn't matter. We don't know yet till after the new game is released sometime in the fall. If problems do occur, I am sure they will read all the comments in this forum to make the necessary correction. So don't jump to the conclusion yet.

I am going to pre-order it.

Chalks said:

Turn your phrasebook to the definition of "hostile".

Click to expand...

So you're ceding "intrusive" and "annoying"?

Samus_au said:

That's a pretty wild definition. The print spooler service runs on your computer all the time, regardless of if you are printing or not, or even intend to print. Is it malware?

Steam, by default, runs on start-up and runs 2 services in total (I believe, I'm at work, working hard as you can tell ). You can disable it running on start-up which will set both of those services to manual. When you launch a game steam will start up. Once you quit the game you can shut down steam again if you really want.

But its not malware, not even close.

Click to expand...

I was mostly replying to the somewhat wilder post on malware above. My definition was deliberately very broad. But to be clear, it is highly questionable if i install program A, program B is installed as a component/helper of program A, and program B runs at times other than when program A is running, or i explicitly run program B. Unless I gave my informed consent to that behavior by program B, then yes that sort of behavior makes program B malware.

Presuming I buy and install civilization 5, and at some point in the install process it requires me to install steam, and at no point informs me that steam will load itself on startup, yes it is clearly behaving as malware. If, as is common practice by software companies, that information is shown on screen somewhere, perhaps with the option to opt out preselected, its on dubious ground. If i get a popup suggesting i turn it on as part of the install process with the option to say no, then no it isn't malware because I have given permission.

The issue is the software being installed/running without informed consent. It doesn't matter so much what it does if its installed deceptively or runs without permission it is malware.