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

Chalks said:

You know what, if I took that stance without ever entering a WalMart store or buying anything from them in my entire life and not even understanding anything about how the stores work, perhaps I should shut the hell up?

The majority of people in this thread complaining about steam have never used it and don't even understand how it works. Quite frankly, I have no interest in what a bandwagoning ball of ignorance has to say.

Have you used Steam? Have you had consistently bad experiences with it? That would be interesting to hear about. It would also put you in a tiny minority in a group of 25 million active accounts.

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A friend of mine wanted me run Steam with him a little while back. I installed it and tried it for a little while, decided it wasn't for me, and removed it. I did have some issues running it on my system--network, my (now replaced) older system, I don't know. I decided that over and above the fact it didn't do things I really cared about, it wasn't worth keeping around. Even if the resources it used weren't that much, it was totally dead space and not something I felt like having stare me in the face whenever I went online.

I've been playing Civ games since CivII. I play single-player games only. I think Steam will be great for some people, and they absolutely should be able to run it if they want. It's a great addition for the game as an option. For me, it's an unnecessary extra step. It's superfluous third-party software--junk to me--that I never wanted in the first place and am not allowed to remove. It's the answer to a question I'm not asking.

Chalks said:

Have you used Steam recently?

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Added an important word to that sentence. Steam has improved a lot over the last years (and even months).

SammyKhalifa said:

For me, it's an unnecessary extra step. It's superfluous third-party software--junk to me--that I never wanted in the first place and am not allowed to remove. It's the answer to a question I'm not asking.

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It's not superfluous because steamworks is likely being used as the basis for all the online content. Contact lists, multiplayer stuff, mod content distribution. That's one of the things the platform offers.

See, this is the thing. You hear that it comes with steam and you say "that's junk" even when it is probably being used as a fundamental component of the game.

Chalks said:

The majority of people in this thread complaining about steam have never used it and don't even understand how it works. Quite frankly, I have no interest in what a bandwagoning ball of ignorance has to say.

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you know, how could somebody who disagree with steam using it? So demanding this is quite senseless, because it´s quite a paradox you demand. You know that following this way to argument to the extrem, the result will not be very fruitful. You can claim that persons who don´t want to use steam to it because of the false reason (propaganda all over the net), but than you have discuss the reasons.

Eg to a certain degree, like EmpireOfCats posted, it´s true that if you have Facebook account and don´t want to use steam because of privacy reason than something is strange. But privacy can only be one of the reason somebody will not use steam, there are others too (and no you will get no list from).

Chalks said:

Have you used Steam? Have you had consistently bad experiences with it? That would be interesting to hear about. It would also put you in a tiny minority in a group of 25 million active accounts.

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Nice style of argumention. Have you used it, no, why you complain you have no experiences. If yes and you had problems, complain. But be aware your are a minority who can be neglected. Very fruitful, the only legal comment following this logic can be a absolut steam praise and prasing take2 for going this way.

I personal have no problem with your opinion - based on your experiences - that you like steam and praise it. It´s the way firms want to have their customers, satisfied and making free ad for them. I also have no problem that steam would be an optional feature of civ5.

But i strongly dislike your war against opposite opinions here about steam (even if the other side also didn´t have the best argumetation style) and demand that most users here share this opinion with the result to like or at least accept the step of take2 demanding steam activation an the use of steamworks for their new games.

Off topic: btw you know there is no reason for double posts all the time, yes?

There is a lot of FUD in this thread. From both sides.

To those that wave off the images of Steam having connection issues, it's actually a pretty common thing. Usually every Friday, when they have big sales or "free weekends" for games. It's disingenous to say that it's not an issue. It is.

Offline mode is not a 100% solution. Please go read the Steam FAQ. There are caveats around offline mode. Chief of which is that you must be completely up to date (Steam client and the game) before you are allowed to play offline. When you go back online, everything will immediately update and re-authenticate.

To the Steam naysayers, I'm not sure where you folks get your impressions, either. Steam does not take up a "ton" of resources. It literally takes less system resources than some web pages.

Neither side is doing the discussion any favors by arguing from ignorance.

The_Coyote said:

you know, how could somebody who disagree with steam using it?

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Man, how can anyone with any experience with the subject matter disagree with it? Everyone must dislike things from a position of absolute ignorance!

Observe: You get steam, you use it, you have a really bad experience and you decide to get rid of it.

If this has never happened to you, then why don't you buy Civilization 3 for 75p and play it through steam for a while.

Then tell me if the experience was upsetting for you.

The_Coyote said:

But i strongly dislike your war against opposite opinions here about steam (even if the other side also didn´t have the best argumetation style) and demand that most users here share this opinion with the result to like or at least accept the step of take2 demanding steam activation an the use of steamworks for their new games.

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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.

I'm seeing lots of people who know nothing but heard from someone somewhere that it was bad.

It's free to try it out. Go try it. There's no excuse to be talking about Steam from a position of ignorance.

The_Coyote said:

Off topic: btw you know there is no reason for double posts all the time, yes?

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There's no reason for a vBulletin forum not to have the auto merge double posts feature installed. My reason for double posting is convenience since I can't "quote edit".

I'm just going to say there are people who use Steam and like it, people who use Steam and don't like it, people who don't use Steam and like it, people who don't use Steam and don't like it, and finally people who don't use Steam and don't know how it works. You will fit into one of those five categories. Personally, I fit into the first one.

But 2K has decided to use Steamworks for the features and DRM of Steamworks. That's their business decision. You either buy the game or not, in the end it doesn't matter, it's just a game.

I'll be buying the game because that's my decision.

Mandatory steam for civ V makes me very very sad. I've been a longtime civ fan, and i was very excited by everything I'd heard about it up till today. All the gameplay changes sound interesting. I'm especially excited about what they can do with a hex based system. Now I just don't know about the game. I may buy it anyway, but i may well not.

I'm not a steam user, and so i have negligible firsthand knowledge of the program or how it works. My impression is that of all the similar sorts of services they could have picked for civ 5, steam is the least problematic, and adds the most value to the game. But its not without its problems.

First of all, my understanding is the game will require 1) a steam account and 2) an internet connection at least once to install. Don't give me crap about how its 2010 and everyone should have internet access. Obviously I do in some form if I'm posting on this forum. But by requiring steam, a game company adds an additional point of failure to the game. One that civilization shouldn't require. As a single player game, there is no reason it shouldn't work out of the box. I guess for the first time that won't be true for civ 5.

As far as a steam account goes, I don't have one. Likely it takes minimal effort to get one, and they won't do anything malicious with the data they require to create an account. But that's only likely, I am paranoid about that sort of thing. Even if you disregard it, creating accounts becomes a major inconvenience if every new game i buy requires a new unique account with a third party to install.

As i said above i don't use steam, so I don't know how well offline mode works, or what kind of hoops you have to jump though. Some people report problems with updates + bad internet locking them out of games. I'm worried about that and similar problems steam may introduce.

The biggest problem, and please correct me if I'm wrong on this, but valve asserts it has the right to close your steam account at any time, for any reason, or no reason, without appeal. Almost every game i own came with comes with some <expletive> eula that purports i don't own it, but only a license to use it at $company1's pleasure. Its a paper tiger because $company1 generally has no way of knowing or doing anything much about how i use the product. (i don't buy games with forced updates/drm that would make that untrue) With steam integration this isn't true, and that is a MAJOR lost of rights for anyone who buys a steam product. Unless there is some easy way to make civ V run w/o a steam account, valve, and perhaps 2k as well, will be able to steal my copy of civ 5 (presuming i do buy the game) anytime they feel like it, or modify how it works in any arbitrary fashion. Valve may be an awesome company who farts bunnies and unicorns right now, i have no way of knowing. It doesn't matter, they shouldn't have the power to take products i own, especially those i haven't even bought from them. There's also the question of resale rights, which is only a question of principle to me, given i'm yet to resale anything i've bought.I can't imagine why i would want to get rid of civ 5. like ever Still principles matter more than entertainment.

Its possible at least in theory that valve's eula and tos or the like give their customers some actual rights, but i would be shocked to learn that's true. If I'm mistaken as to their general bad faith dealing with customers, please post the relevant excerpts, and a link to the full text if such is available online somewhere.

Dale said:

I'm just going to say there are people who use Steam and like it, people who use Steam and don't like it, people who don't use Steam and like it, people who don't use Steam and don't like it, and finally people who don't use Steam and don't know how it works. You will fit into one of those five categories. Personally, I fit into the first one.

But 2K has decided to use Steamworks for the features and DRM of Steamworks. That's their business decision. You either buy the game or not, in the end it doesn't matter, it's just a game.

I'll be buying the game because that's my decision.

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Thanks for that piece of info, captain Obvious!

What amazes me most is people who have no experience with steam whatsoever dismiss steam as a good feature without even knowing what they are talking about. If people know first-hand that steam works poorly for them then I understand all the critisism, but I for one am a happy steam user and not a single one of my friends dislikes steam. I would say that steam has some pretty good things going for it even though I can see it is mildly inconcvinient that you require acces to the indernet at least once...

Blacklanner, here's the KB article on your concerns: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5406-WFZC-5519

Chalks said:

Blacklanner, here's the KB article on your concerns: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5406-WFZC-5519

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thanks. More of the meat of the matter can be found at http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/ Of praticular concern
So you agree they're playing calvinball, and that if you don't like anything they do the only thing you can do is walk away. Depending on your local consumer protection laws you might be able to sue them for the price of any games, but that's a poor remedy at best.

Blacklanner said:

The biggest problem, and please correct me if I'm wrong on this, but valve asserts it has the right to close your steam account at any time, for any reason, or no reason, without appeal. Almost every game i own came with comes with some <expletive> eula that purports i don't own it, but only a license to use it at $company1's pleasure. Its a paper tiger because $company1 generally has no way of knowing or doing anything much about how i use the product. (i don't buy games with forced updates/drm that would make that untrue) With steam integration this isn't true, and that is a MAJOR lost of rights for anyone who buys a steam product. Unless there is some easy way to make civ V run w/o a steam account, valve, and perhaps 2k as well, will be able to steal my copy of civ 5 (presuming i do buy the game) anytime they feel like it, or modify how it works in any arbitrary fashion. Valve may be an awesome company who farts bunnies and unicorns right now, i have no way of knowing. It doesn't matter, they shouldn't have the power to take products i own, especially those i haven't even bought from them. There's also the question of resale rights, which is only a question of principle to me, given i'm yet to resale anything i've bought.I can't imagine why i would want to get rid of civ 5. like ever Still principles matter more than entertainment.

Its possible at least in theory that valve's eula and tos or the like give their customers some actual rights, but i would be shocked to learn that's true. If I'm mistaken as to their general bad faith dealing with customers, please post the relevant excerpts, and a link to the full text if such is available online somewhere.

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Firstly, and this is extremely important: no one owns a game. You pay the publisher the rights to use the game. It's like film and music, you purchase the rights to watch or listen to that media. So if you abuse that right, then the publisher can remove that right from you.

Secondly, all this talk of "ooooo Steam will take my information and money and then just kill my account" is just nuts. They wouldn't do it without a reason, and it would have to be a good one because it is not in their business interests to just close someone's account because Valve Support Agent Rami is having a bad day. They lose a customer, gain very bad press, damage their reputation, loose sales, no profit. You know, the type of thing that Goodwill generates.

Thirdly, the publisher (ie 2K) still own the software. They still issue you with the right to use it. Valve provides Steam as a service to you. The cut that Valve takes out of the purchase, is Valve's charge for giving you the right to use their service. If you abuse those rights, then Valve can legally ban you from the service.

See a trend?

You don't own the software. BUT, if you get blocked from the right to use Steam as a service, you still have the right to use the software. So legally the publisher must allow you to use that right, or repay you.

In general, if i walk in to a store, and i pay a certain amount of money for a product, i own that product. This is generally understood by society and enforced by law. The exact effect of software eula and their legal status is murky, court decisions on the subject have gone both ways. But the common sense usage is i pay money and own what i paid for.

Dale said:

Firstly, and this is extremely important: no one owns a game. You pay the publisher the rights to use the game. It's like film and music, you purchase the rights to watch or listen to that media. So if you abuse that right, then the publisher can remove that right from you.

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Most software companies assert this. And while i don't care for it, as long as they have no way of doing anything about it, its of small concern to me. Making steam mandatory gives them power they should not have.

Dale said:

You don't own the software. BUT, if you get blocked from the right to use Steam as a service, you still have the right to use the software. So legally the publisher must allow you to use that right, or repay you.

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Actually i wouldn't have much problem with steam even, if they clearly spelled out that they had such an obligation. And made changing their agreement very difficult, or grounds for a full refund for affected consumers. Something to the effect of "we may cancel your account without compensation for any of the following defined abuses (piracy, harassment, ect), which we will prove by <procedure>, and you may appeal/contest our determination by <procedure> If we choose to close your account for any other reason, we will provide you with <clearly defined compensation> "

I've used steam. Nothing about steam made me think, "Gee, this is so great, I wish all the games I bought required steam."
Rather, my impression was that Steam takes a non-negligible time to load. At the time I was playing TF2 quite a bit, my computer used to lock up every now and then so reboots were common. Plus I actually turn my computer off when I don't use it (it seems microsoft now think it's ok to make sleep the default shutdown action, but that's another rant ). So loading up Steam is wasted time when I just want to load up the game.

I also frequently change bits of hardware in my pc so please let me know if Steam does any sort of check on your hardware configuration. IIRC Starforce does something like that.

It might be possible to disable ads and automatic updates and so forth, but my understanding is that with most games these are the default settings so it requires the user to figure out how to get the thing working the way they want. The steam fanboys get annoyed that people are ignorant of these settings and how they can be changed but remember a lot of gamers are not the most technically literate people in the world, and even if they are, not everyone knows everything about every product they use.

Civ 5 requiring steam is a negative from my perspective. Unless it ends up making modding so much easier or doing something cool that would be impossible without steam, I would have to say I'm against the whole idea of civ5 being steam-exclusive. There are likely some advantages and some disadvantages but in the end the above is just my opinion.

As neither a steam hater nor steam fanboy, I must admit that one likely advantage of civ5 being steam-exclusive is the compatibility issues will probably become less significant because everyone will be on the same platform. That's a small win though and not one that makes me warm and fuzzy.

As Blacklanner also discussed, and something I wrote about a couple months back, with Steam comes requiring a Steam account and abiding by all their conditions. It IS another step in the process and hence another possible point of failure. I remember the clause "negatively affecting the enjoyment of steam for other members" being one of the offences permitting Valve to ban you. Steam fanboys will just say, "Oh but that never happens cos Valve doesn't work like that." Then why is it in the User Agreement?

You don't own the software. BUT, if you get blocked from the right to use Steam as a service, you still have the right to use the software. So legally the publisher must allow you to use that right, or repay you.

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It's still hoops to jump through just for a game. I don't know many people who'd hire a lawyer to get their rights to play a game restored.

PieceOfMind said:

I also frequently change bits of hardware in my pc so please let me know if Steam does any sort of check on your hardware configuration. IIRC Starforce does something like that.

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It doesn't.

PieceOfMind said:

It's still hoops to jump through just for a game. I don't know many people who'd hire a lawyer to get their rights to play a game restored.

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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....

I am not going to install malware on my computer just to play a game. So either I get the option to completely opt out of steam when I buy the DVD version of this game, or I am simply not going to buy it. I hate having spyware forced on my computer and I don't give a flying bleep on how many fanboys like it or not.

Civ5 does have a big problem: With Civ4 it has a competitor that it will be hard pressed to reach. And Civ4 still has several years of play in it, at least for me.

So 2K/Firaxis - I'm still willing to buy your game, but only if you leave Valve out.

Sir Ralph said:

I am not going to install malware on my computer just to play a game.

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

You know, from the latin "Mal" meaning "things I've decided I don't like".

Dale said:

I'm just going to say there are people who use Steam and like it, people who use Steam and don't like it, people who don't use Steam and like it, people who don't use Steam and don't like it, and finally people who don't use Steam and don't know how it works. You will fit into one of those five categories. Personally, I fit into the first one.

But 2K has decided to use Steamworks for the features and DRM of Steamworks. That's their business decision. You either buy the game or not, in the end it doesn't matter, it's just a game.

I'll be buying the game because that's my decision.

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kinda offtopic, but you're an important guy around here , so how do you feel AS A PLAYER (and a modder too) about the Babylon civ being exclusive to the deluxe edition and its possible implications (the first one that comes to mind is the impossibility of modding civilizations and leaders) ?

NikNak said:

To those that wave off the images of Steam having connection issues, it's actually a pretty common thing. Usually every Friday, when they have big sales or "free weekends" for games. It's disingenous to say that it's not an issue. It is.

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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).