Civ 5/Steam:Offline Mode Question

Do you honestly feel that anyone with any intelligence would have place more trust in an article in Wikipedia than in a Subscriber Agreement issued by Steam?

I would have thought that anyone with intelligence would understand the difference between a catch all disclaimer and disaster recovery plan.
 
....What I don't understand is since you are pretty determined to not ever buy it due to steam, why you keep arguing these same points over and over?....

Perhaps it's because I don't want Steam to become a monopoly and be required to play ALL PC games. After all, I've just lost my favorite game series to a gaming service/DRM I refuse to use.

I would have thought that anyone with intelligence would understand the difference between a catch all disclaimer and disaster recovery plan.

I furnish official sources. You provide propaganda.
 
Anything is possible. You're more likely to get hit by a car tomorrow.
I better wear a helmet.:shifty:
Tell me, do you always plan for every single possible eventuality? You must never leave the house.

Ever heard of the scout's motto? "Be prepared."
 
I'll ask again, since you seem to have looked over it. Why would a company speak of their own hypothetical bankruptcy in the EULA of all places? What company do you know that does that?

Email Gabe Newell if you want to hear it from him.

What you quoted me as posting is in response to Chalks, not you.

And if you want to know "Why would a company speak of their own hypothetical bankruptcy in the EULA of all places," why don't you email Gabe yourself?
 
What you quoted me as posting is in response to Chalks, not you.

And if you want to know "Why would a company speak of their own hypothetical bankruptcy in the EULA of all places," why don't you email Gabe yourself?

Because you demand it, apparently. No company does that, that's crazy. That was the answer. Yet it's the only thing you'll accept, isn't it?

And I meant email him with your hypothetical doom-scenario's.
 
I'd get to your point if there was a point to your argument.

Explaining the way how science tries to understand decision (and therefore one of the most established explaination of decisions), with the target to show how different decisions can occur. It´s still one of the reason persons argue all the time here - the non ability to understand how the other side can - while working with the same facts - come to another, completely different decision. And why steam can see as something with negative value.

All your previous post said was 'I don't want to register on steam, because it takes some time'. No need to obfuscate your point using lot's of xyz "calculations" and beep-boop-im-a-robot talk.

I can´t remember that i said this. I can´t even remember that i introduced the aspect time. You again worked with your assumption, your believes about my intention and reasons, but not with my words.

I said a registration (in general) has a negative use for me. But i did not said time in this context. I did not even said why, i only said it has.

Decision theory is not needed in this at all, it just further confuses it.

Really? Why? Sorry, but i disagree. (and if you don´t like it - simply ignore my posts - your are not forced to read and even comment them)

ps:'the economy crumbles' part was because of your apparently very high "monetary value "z" of a registration", which you said would shock me.

And where i said, that it´s a relative high figure? [i said shocking, perhaps i meant shocking high, but perhaps i meant shocking low for someone using this example - only negative you can seen as confirmed]. Btw i can´t even remember to adress the post to you - it was a response to a comment fishmonger did.
 
Because you demand it, apparently. No company does that, that's crazy. That was the answer. Yet it's the only thing you'll accept, isn't it?

And I meant email him with your hypothetical doom-scenario's.

I did? Oh, you said *apparently*, which is neither here nor there. I linked to the Steam Subscriber Agreement. Read it. Perhaps your answer lies therein.
 
You're more likely to get hit by a car tomorrow. Let me know what you're going to do about that before you let us know what you're going to do to avoid the significantly less likely collapse of steam.
I'm gonna look both ways before I cross the street. Which is basically what I am attempting to do here as relates to Steam. Again I ask you what are you doing here beyond attempting to troll for drama?
 
As far as I am aware the way steam game installation from disks works is, you install the game then steam goes online to "unlock" the game.

What you'll do is install the game, and it'll say "unable to unlock due to not finding the steam servers :(". Then you'll go to *whatever website* install a patch to the steam system and it'll unlock the game without verifying it against the servers.

I assume the patch would contain a whole bunch of server side verification codes for all the games in the steam library and alter the client to check that list if it can't find the steam server online.

As has been said before, the chance of the steam servers going offline at any point in the foreseeable future is extremely slim, and even then, the companies who released the games via Steam will be perfectly able to release a patch to detach their game from the platform if they needed to.

What if you're one of those who bought into the whole digital distribution deal and don't actually have any DVDs of the game? How are you supposed to reinstall your game in the first place?
 
You might be well advised to create some backups of the games you've downloaded using Steam's backup creation feature. It can install from them. Assuming the authentication step is removed then they should work as well as a DVD by that point.
 
I'm gonna look both ways before I cross the street. Which is basically what I am attempting to do here as relates to Steam. Again I ask you what are you doing here beyond attempting to troll for drama?

Looking both ways doesn't remove the possibility of getting hit by a car. Your logic states that any possibility, no matter how tiny, should be seen as a major problem. Why so inconsistent?

Oh, and I'm here attempting to get people to shut up with their hysterical and disproportional whinging about steam. Since you're not going to buy the game apparently, what on earth are you doing here? Ctrl+W if you would be so kind.

What if you're one of those who bought into the whole digital distribution deal and don't actually have any DVDs of the game? How are you supposed to reinstall your game in the first place?

One would assume that someone on the magnificent and blessed internets would have a copy of the game and would provide a method to download said game. Possibly 2k, possibly some smart fellow utilising the power of bittorrent.
 
You might be well advised to create some backups of the games you've downloaded using Steam's backup creation feature. It can install from them. Assuming the authentication step is removed then they should work as well as a DVD by that point.

Funny, most people advocating the usage of Steam seem to make it a point of not having to deal with DVDs.

One would assume that someone on the magnificent and blessed internets would have a copy of the game and would provide a method to download said game. Possibly 2k, possibly some smart fellow utilising the power of bittorrent.

And so the legitimate purchaser has to turn to piracy simply to play a game they paid good money for? How is that any better than other forms of DRM?
 
Funny, most people advocating the usage of Steam seem to make it a point of not having to deal with DVDs.
Doesn't have to be on DVD. You can make the backups on HD if you want.

And so the legitimate purchaser has to turn to piracy simply to play a game they paid good money for? How is that any better than other forms of DRM?

Remember, this is in some hypothetical situation in a future where things happened that won't happen, not the real world.
 
I did? Oh, you said *apparently*, which is neither here nor there. I linked to the Steam Subscriber Agreement. Read it. Perhaps your answer lies therein.

Third time:
Do you think the consequences of a company's bankruptcy is something that normally is included in a EULA? Do you think it's right to see any speculation on this hypothetical scenario as truth because of it's not being written in the EULA?
 
And so the legitimate purchaser has to turn to piracy simply to play a game they paid good money for? How is that any better than other forms of DRM?

Obtaining a copy of a game that you have a legitimate license to use is not piracy.

You would also only have to resort to this if 2k completely abandoned the game and refused to provide an alternative download location.

So yes, if an extremely successful company went bust and you'd uninstalled the game and not backed up the game data and the developers of the game also went bust or refused to support it then you would still get to play the game as long as you could obtain the games data from any backup on the planet.

I'm sorry to inform you that if the internet also burns down you may have difficult locating a copy of it if you do not have any friends who also own the game and can back their copy up to a CD for you.

Otherwise you are going to be doomed to a lonely internet free existence without any Civ.

Do you think we should start planning for this eventuality right now?
 
Doesn't have to be on DVD. You can make the backups on HD if you want.

If it's backed up on your hard drive, wouldn't it already constitute being already installed? Even if it's an external drive, you can play straight off of it.

Remember, this is in some hypothetical situation in a future where things happened that won't happen, not the real world.

Nobody knows what will happen in the future with any certainty.

Here's an example scenario: Gabe Newell dies of a heart attack, and Valve is sold off. Ubisoft purchases it, proceeds to run Steam straight into the ground, people leave in droves and eventually Ubisoft kills Steam because it's no longer profitable.

All of that could happen in a span of five years, perhaps even less. And it's only one of a myriad of ways in which Steam shuts down; other scenarios might take longer, but the end result is the same. And what if Steam doesn't shut down, but simply became so much of a nuisance that you don't want to use it? Not even their promise to unlock all your games applies anymore, since Steam is still alive.

You might be willing to accept the risk of losing access to your games, but that doesn't hold true for everyone. Losing one game is unfortunate, two or three regrettable, but we're talking about accounts that may have hundreds of games; what's the value of that? Thousands of dollars' worth of goods, ready to disappear at a moment's notice. Are you willing to accept the risk of losing all that money, plus more for the games you have to repurchase? Not everyone can afford to do so.

Obtaining a copy of a game that you have a legitimate license to use is not piracy.

You would also only have to resort to this if 2k completely abandoned the game and refused to provide an alternative download location.

So yes, if an extremely successful company went bust and you'd uninstalled the game and not backed up the game data and the developers of the game also went bust or refused to support it then you would still get to play the game as long as you could obtain the games data from any backup on the planet.

I'm sorry to inform you that if the internet also burns down you may have difficult locating a copy of it if you do not have any friends who also own the game and can back their copy up to a CD for you.

Otherwise you are going to be doomed to a lonely internet free existence without any Civ.

Do you think we should start planning for this eventuality right now?

And where is this license? Right, it was with Steam. My proof of purchase is a credit card bill from a decade ago. 2K games offers an alternate download, if I can provide some kind of proof that I actually did purchase the game, except I never saved any of it because I didn't think it was necessary.

Of course, the license you purchased may or may not have a provision regarding the usage of backups (when was the last time you even looked at the license agreement?), and there's reasonable doubt as to whether or not a pirated version even qualifies as a backup to begin with, since you're not the one who created it.

These are very murky legal waters to be dealing in, yet nobody seems to care simply because they decided that the convenience of digital distribution is worth sacrificing the physical copy and all the rights it entails.

If your answer is to download that pirated version anyways because you know you paid for it, then you had best hope that you don't end up in court for any reason, because you'll be paying far more than the fifty bucks for a new game.
 
And where is this license? Right, it was with Steam. My proof of purchase is a credit card bill from a decade ago. 2K games offers an alternate download, if I can provide some kind of proof that I actually did purchase the game, except I never saved any of it because I didn't think it was necessary.

Of course, the license you purchased may or may not have a provision regarding the usage of backups (when was the last time you even looked at the license agreement?), and there's reasonable doubt as to whether or not a pirated version even qualifies as a backup to begin with, since you're not the one who created it.

These are very murky legal waters to be dealing in, yet nobody seems to care simply because they decided that the convenience of digital distribution is worth sacrificing the physical copy and all the rights it entails.

If your answer is to download that pirated version anyways because you know you paid for it, then you had best hope that you don't end up in court for any reason, because you'll be paying far more than the fifty bucks for a new game.

So back up your games in case of a games industry apocalypse? There's a whole backup system for making copies of your steam games in the client.

I'm not sure what you want me to say, there are a whole bunch of different options available to you if something that's really unlikely happens.

You play the game with steam.
But what if steam vanishes? You can still play in offline mode
But what if I uninstalled the game? You'll get an unlock patch from either steam or 2k so you can install without verification
But what if I don't have a physical copy? You can back the game up to dvds using the interface
But what if I don't do this? You can just grab a copy of a friend's backup, or get a friend to back up their copy and give it to you
But what if I don't know anyone who have a backup? 2k will probably provide a download location should steam distribution fail
But what if they don't? You can probably acquire a copy of the game online
But what if I refuse to do that?

Well... then I guess you're probably not going to be able to play the game.

Although to be quite frank, the idea that you wouldn't buy the game for fear of the above sequence of events happening at some point in the future is a joke.
 
Third time:
Do you think the consequences of a company's bankruptcy is something that normally is included in a EULA? Do you think it's right to see any speculation on this hypothetical scenario as truth because of it's not being written in the EULA?

I don't know and I don't care. Ask the company that issued the EULA, not me. Opinions do not count, facts are facts. Read the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
 
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