Is the Steam DRM just a one-time verification check? Or is it much more?

PoM, I don't see why it would be trolling. Its merely making sure their words are on record.

Frekk, some of your concerns are valid. There is a chance that Valve could go bankrupt or be bought out by someone sinister. However in 7 years Steam has gone to the market leader at 75% of market share by some estimates, is offering generous deals and the Steamworks functionality to free to other developers and has remained firmly in the control of Valve software as "their" thing.

The guy in this article is biased and a known troll but has some stuff about Steam's strong position and how its adapted its business model to stay successful. Theres reason to be confident that Steam isn't going away soon.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Dere...rs_Boycott_Valves_Steam_Service_Seriously.php
The article is about how rival download services refused to stock Modern Warfare 2 because it had Steamworks integrated. Its expected that many of them will do the same for Civ5 for the same reason.
 
Chalks said:
Dude, everything is trolling. :) I'm pretty sure that even talking about trolling is trolling.
Click to expand...
It's true. Maybe I should report your post, and mine? :p
Senethro said:
PoM, I don't see why it would be trolling. Its merely making sure their words are on record.
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Many would consider it harassment which is against forum rules. If you went on a search for these people, what purpose would there be other than publicly naming them and shaming them, in effect? Chalks even said he'd enjoy doing it. Personally I think that's a rather odd thing to enjoy doing, that's why I said "whatever floats your boat".

In other words it's kinda like looking for trouble, and besides, it's not exactly friendly. We're all civfanatics here so we should be happy for all those who discontinue their boycott.
 
Senethro said:
I invite you to show your working.
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I used a watch at work. Was like 2 secs vs 12 via steam before the game started to load.

I don't have video recording equipment, so I can't show proof. I will state the caveat this other people's experiences may vary, and other DRM schemes (such as Securom) has similar performance degradation. This is why cracks are worthwhile for legitimate owners- they do make games load faster.

I have offered a legitimate way for people to see for themselves- if someone on here has a Copy of Mount and Blade for Steam, they can verify- start with Steam off, then see how long it takes the game to start loading/get to the Paradox screen both on Steam, and off of Steam.

I've said while I hate this decision, it does not mean that I won't consider it later on, when it's at a price that's reasonable for the DRM that's on it. (aka no more then $20- and probably not even then) Without the DRM, I would have paid full price.
 
arstal said:
There is no conspiracy at CFC. I do think that some of the Steam Sunshine Squad has gotten away with murder by comparison- but we have no foolproof way of knowing, but that's not an excuse to act in the same way.
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At the very worst we're guilty of prodding the anti-Steam crowd into greater hysterics. Mind you, all that required sometimes was to reasonably state an opposing position with a link to a Steam tech support article.

I'll accept some DRM. I stop accepting when it slows down the experience every time I wish to play, which Steam DRM does (Mount and Blade was a good test, it took an extra 10 seconds to load on Steam, then what I got it off of Steam)

If I play a game 1000 times , 1000*10= 10,000 seconds= 1,667 minutes= 28 hours roughly.
That's a significant time wastage.

Even at 2 seconds, it's 5.6 hours. Still a siginificant chunk of time.
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I didn't get my payoff here so I'm going to make it clear that your calculation is wrong.

After 1000 uses you've lost 2.8 hours. So if you play the game once a day for 3 years you'll have lost 2.8 hours. An hour a year. Not a big deal. You'll probably have spent more time choosing your custom game options.

Game is pretty good also. The Original is dirt cheap and uses the same method- no MP though. Very few people use steam in MP there, and the servers are a lot less laggy then TF2 servers. (probably apples and oranges comparison)
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TF2 servers are privately hosted, not associated with Steam. If you experience lag its an overloaded private server and you should change or you should fiddle with your client settings.
 
Not always on the TF2 part. Sometimes it is Steam- the most noticeable time was around the MW2 launch, or at peak hours. If the servers lose connection to Steam you lose your unlocked weapons, but they often run much better. Again, that's my experience.

Oops on the math, you got me there. Still 2.8 hours which can be avoided by minimal/ no work. It's still a mild annoyance, plus again it's an added layer of things that can go wrong, and they do go wrong occasionally.

As for the Anti-Steam crowd, there are reasonable and unreasonable sides on both the Anti-Steam and Steam Sunshine Squad sides. That said, these threads have made me move more people to the ignore list on my end then anything ever on this site just from sheer lunacy and fanboyism.
 
Alki said:
Is it really any surprise that a profit making company is targeting a customer base that can afford the internet and therefor can afford to buy expansions add ons and the rest?
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Gold star!

There are going to be precious few people out there who will spend money on a PC game have no access to the internet. I am sure it is not a market segment anybody cares about.
 
that where my experience with steam came from - NEVER AGAIN
 
Grouchey said:
For the uninitiated, you can learn a lot about customer experiences with Steam in these 1,300 posts:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=222206
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I looked at that thread, and it seems to me the problems people were having had nothing to do with steam really.

Looks like the developers released a game on DVD that could not be played without downloading a massive patch file. All the people trying to get the game running were frustrated by having to download a huge patch when they were expecting to be playing the game instead.

How is that steam's fault?
 
bigdog5994 said:
:eek: omg its a horror story

people need to click this link and get ready for whats heading our way
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Not if the Civ5 team do their job and deliver a game that works out of the box. The only real problem on that thread, as I said, was that people stuck the DVD in their computer and expected to be able to play--but as the developers had botched the release they couldn't play until they downloaded some massive patch.

Normally downloading a massive patch is something steam is good for: It happens in the background, when you don't really care.

In this case it happened when people were eagerly hoping to fire up the new game they just bought on DVD and instead of just authenticating the game they needed a huge download in order to play.

Obviously if you buy a game online you expect it to take a few hours to download but that is not what you expect when you have the DVD in hand.

Steam isn't to blame for that!
 
bigdog5994 said:
what kind of patch takes 15 gigs?
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I don't know, but that has nothing to do with steam. The patch came from the developers, steam simply served as a point of downloading it.

In fact, I think steam saved the day in that case. As frustrating as that must have been for the people who bought that game to have to download a massive patch they were saved from worse by it.

Imagine what would have happened without steam:

1. You buy the DVD and go home and install it

2. It installs buggy software without complaint

3. You try and play the game and you are horribly frustrated: Nothing works, your computer crashes, the game is unplayable.

4. Some people whine about the quality of the game in blogs, others ask for their money back. A lot of people are turned off the game by the negative reviews.

5. A few hardy souls venture onto the developers site trying to understand what happened, and they notice that a massive patch for the game is available

6. They spend the same long time manually downloading the patch as with steam, read the patch documentation, manually apply the patch, and finally everything works.

Because steam was in the picture it forced everyone to download the patch which guaranteed an enjoyable gaming experience. After all, that is the goal!

Now hopefully with Civ5 things are properly tested before the DVD's are shipped and there is no need for massive patch files on day one, but if there ARE, personally, i would rather wait to download the massive patch than have a crappy experience with a buggy game. If I were Firaxis or 2K and steam allowed me to ensure my customers got a quality game even though I screwed up the release I would be thanking my good luck for having chosen to go with an online distribution system.
 
their saying the "patch" was 15 gigs and takes all day to download

its obvious that they are downloading the game content
 
That's most likely CA's fault, not Valve's.

CA is pretty much shovelware quality these days.
 
As seen on this forum, 'they' say a lot. I've got some anecdotal evidence too, I got about 130 games on steam and they never ever downloaded the entire game when patching. And as for that game being a bugridden piece of youknow is hardly steam's fault.
 
Id just like to say as far as DRM and electronic distribution of games goes I think steam does a really good job at being as non intrusive as possible. Originally I pirated civ4 but eventually bought it and its expansions over steam because I enjoyed the game so much. Steam had no effect on any of the mods I have tried, if I know im going somewhere on my laptop with no internet I can launch in offline mode.

To people thinking steam is going to be checking your computer for files... they dont. Look at the community that does / used to exist around the HL2 engine. Valve/Steam have allowed for nearly unlimited modifications to their games/engines. They dont even "scan" your hard drive or do anything else to look for hacks unless you explicitly join a hack protected server.

I cant see steam suddenly changing its tune and "banning" mods that give similar functionalities to expansion packs (or whatever else you guys are afraid of)
 
have you tried non pirated civ 4 without steam ? cause it works just fine too and doesnt send your personal info like facebook does
 
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