considering buying: steam vs store?

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere...

I'm a bit of an idealist and am annoyed that the DRM is rumored to install itself with privileges greater than I myself would have in my system (although it seems like a contradiction that I game I install as me could install a component with privileges greater than I who am installing it would myself have...). So I'm a bit averse to buying a store copy, unless I already unwittingly put it on my system anyway when I got Civ4 or Warlords/BotS?

So I'm thinking about steam, but the sticky thread of newbie questions seemed to imply, without specifics that I noticed, that this has its own concerns or disadvantages. I have no experience with Steam; are there downsides I'm unaware of? Wikipedia seemed to mention it collected usage info, possibly including for its games, or had issues playing games offline? It also mentioned anti-cheating technology in steam; no problem, but does it impact the unofficial mods/patches discussed in these forums that address bugginess, balance, or playability/fun rather than cheatability? Is it more pragmatic simply to get the game in store and discard what may be a largely symbolic aversion?

I have Steam and installed Footie Manager thru it. It was a bit off hassle once when it wouldnt let me run the game due to not being able to connect to the internet/steam servers, which was plenty ghey and annoying, but i fixed that by just creating my own shortcut to the original game .exe. Obviously if youre running it thru steam its also one more thing for your pc to run which isnt really necessary. havent really had any other probs with steam, and its quite good for getting updates to games/chattin to mates etc

I didn't buy Colonization through Steam, but if I had to do it all over again, I would.

I have bought many other games through Steam and they are simply a great service. They do "track" your game activity on your Steam community page, (i.e. it tells you how much time you've spent on certain game this week, etc). I think anyone can see it, and if you have Steam friends then they can tell when you are playing the game and what you are playing.

The "anti-cheating" refers to actual Steam game servers, so if you play a game of say, Team Fortress 2, there are measures to prevent cheating because the game servers you play on are associated with Steam. In the case of Colonization, Steam is really just distributing the game to you. They have nothing to do with the servers you play on if you choose to play multiplayer.

At least that's how I understand it.

Welcome to the Civilization Fanatics' Forums, BlackMole.

FWIW, you can also buy Colonization (as I have) from GamersGate, a digital download service owned by niche Swedish game developer Paradox (e.g., Europa Universalis series). I've bought a number of games from them (primarily Paradox titles, but a couple of others) and it works fairly well and appears far less intrusive than Steam. I also like supporting a non-mainstream developer. I have not actually bought any games from Steam, but was required to use it to play the retail box versions of Valve's Half Life 2 and, currently, the non-Valve Empire: Total War. I havn't had any issues with Steam, but many others have.

Some people who used digital downloads are having trouble installing the new patch for Colonization. You may want to go to that thread to see if they have found solutions.

I don't think there is any problem with patching on Steam.
Steam games are kept up to date automatically, including Colonization if you purchase with Steam.

In fact, I found out about the patch through Steam (their Store news) even though I didn't purchase Colonization through Steam, and actually had a harder time locating the patch for the boxed version than I would have had just getting it automatically through Steam.

Civbowl said:

Some people who used digital downloads are having trouble installing the new patch for Colonization. You may want to go to that thread to see if they have found solutions.

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There are apparently some real problems depending on which digital distributer the game was purchased from. I assume that Steam should be fine (it works smoothly for the two games I have requiring Steam activation). I was able to patch the GamersGate version using the ingame update, just like my retail box version of CivIV, It did take two attempts (the installer failed to show up the first time); I don't know if this indicates any potential problem or just the usual burp.

MasterDinadan said:

II didn't purchase Colonization through Steam, and actually had a harder time locating the patch for the boxed version than I would have had just getting it automatically through Steam.

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Why a problem? As noted above, the boxed game should update easily by using the ingame update option (under Advanced in the main menu).

I would recommend buying 80% of your games from Steam(If you can wait for the download. It's much faster to drive to the store and buy it if you want it quickly), however, Civilization IV and with it, Colonization, are game I would highly recommend NOT buying from Steam. I don't know why, but Civilization games seem to have a lot of problems with the way Steam operates patches/mods, meaning that while the vanilla, un-updated version of the game works great, you may encounter a LOT of problems if you ever chose to patch or mod your game.

As for Colonization's DRM, it is not anything you have to work about. It is only a very simple disk check measure, completely non-invasive. Colonization's DRM is the way companies should do it, not like how EA did Spore's, which was just plain horrible.