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

You can turn auto patching off. It's not rocket science ffs!

I just tried it out now and actually it was pretty confusing. Maybe the interface is broken on my version of Steam but if you click the mouse on the box to change the type of updating, you can't scrow down and nor does a drop down box appear. You have to click it then press the down arrow on the keyboard. That is quite confusing and my first thought when the mouse didn't work was that the update mode was locked as automatic and couldn't be changed.

It also seems that when the update mode can be changed, it can take up to 10 seconds or so to change. i.e. lag.

Then I tried restarting Steam and put it in online mode and it seemed to work much better. This time the drop down boxes appeared and there was no lag.

So, you can only change the auto updating in online mode? I tried to reproduce what I saw earlier in offline mode where I was able to change the setting but I can't now. :confused:

It's not rocket science I guess, but it was a hassle because I hadn't done it before.
 
You can turn auto patching off. It's not rocket science ffs!

Ok, if i know in front of a patch that the patch will break the game / mod i can turn it off. Now i only need the ability to predict the impact of a patch before i got him installed. Can you please lend me your abilities - i plan to win in a lottery this weekend. Yes you´re right, predicting the future is no rocket science. :goodjob:

a bit more serious: where did you see the connection between the ability to turn autopaching off and the non ability to roll back to an older version (after a game has been patched / perhaps he should try to reinstall the game). A bad patch is no steam issue, but the non ability to roll back to a former version of the game is a steam (or similar tools) introduced issue.

Chalks said:
And as I said, 2k would also be able to unlock the game even if Steam didn't.

How do you know (reference please)? And thanks, if it´s that easy there is still a lot of hope for a non steam version with another DRM (perhaps without some steam feature, but they shouldn´t be game breaking, or?).
 
How do you know (reference please)? And thanks, if it´s that easy there is still a lot of hope for a non steam version with another DRM (perhaps without some steam feature, but they shouldn´t be game breaking, or?).

2k wrote the binary themselves. If they didn't want to use steam, they wouldn't have added it. If they wanted to remove steam, they can delete the parts of the code that prevent the game from launching if it is not present.

Not saying it would be a particularly easy job, but it's not like steam has the keys to the castle here - 2k are choosing to use the platform and if it went away they could "un-choose it".
 
2k wrote the binary themselves. If they didn't want to use steam, they wouldn't have added it. If they wanted to remove steam, they can delete the parts of the code that prevent the game from launching if it is not present.

Not saying it would be a particularly easy job, but it's not like steam has the keys to the castle here - 2k are choosing to use the platform and if it went away they could "un-choose it".
You are probably right, but it would be very very hard to distribute that piece of code that would make steam not needed any more. If the steam people have a sense of buisness the contract between them and 2k has a clause on what woud happen should 2k brake the contract. These fines for breaking the contract can very well be large enough to put a party out of buisness. It is not unheard of.
 
You are probably right, but it would be very very hard to distribute that piece of code that would make steam not needed any more. If the steam people have a sense of buisness the contract between them and 2k has a clause on what woud happen should 2k brake the contract. These fines for breaking the contract can very well be large enough to put a party out of buisness. It is not unheard of.

No no no - I'm saying if Steam went bust they could do this.

They're not going to do it otherwise, but one assumes that 2k have a clause to cover what happens if one side of the partnership goes bust since that's pretty standard for a contract.
 
In the case of patches having side effects/problems it is an inherent problem of the Steam procedure that you don't have a chance to go back to a previous state, once you have downloaded and installed it.

What kind of nightmare world is that, where you are inflicted with such shoddy patches that you have to manually roll some of them back to get a reasonable experience?

Sorry that just doesn't happen with quality games.
 
DRM does not have to stop piracy, it simply needs to raise the bar so that it is harder to pirate it in order to move more people from the "might pirate it" into the "will buy it" group.

Alright, so, if this is effective, and all those trillions and trillions lost to pirates are stopped (even if piracy itself isn't), I guess they can sell the game for oh, $20-$25 instead of $60.

Will it happen? Not a snowball's chance in hell, and we all know it, because (a) it won't work (b) it has squat to do with piracy and (c) even if it did, they aren't losing anywhere near what they claim.
 
What kind of nightmare world is that, where you are inflicted with such shoddy patches that you have to manually roll some of them back to get a reasonable experience?

Sorry that just doesn't happen with quality games.

One example: Lets say you play a mod (and only a mod), a patch arives that will break the mod (really this did never happens to civ4 mods, never) and you only saw / discovered this after the game has been patched. (autopatching, you know, you no longer need to care about this patching stuff). Nobody is evil, the game company can still be great and the problem is existent. It´s a real nightmare world we have. :lol:
 
I reckon most people just get pirate stuff 'cos they can. I doubt if most would buy the game anyway if they couldn't get it pirated. I doubt if game or music companies actually lose that much money to pirates.
 
Alright, so, if this is effective, and all those trillions and trillions lost to pirates are stopped (even if piracy itself isn't), I guess they can sell the game for oh, $20-$25 instead of $60.

Will it happen? Not a snowball's chance in hell, and we all know it, because (a) it won't work (b) it has squat to do with piracy and (c) even if it did, they aren't losing anywhere near what they claim.

Remind yourself of what your original question was.
 
One example: Lets say you play a mod (and only a mod), a patch arives that will break the mod (really this did never happens to civ4 mods, never) and you only saw / discovered this after the game has been patched. (autopatching, you know, you no longer need to care about this patching stuff). Nobody is evil, the game company can still be great and the problem is existent.

This is right and when you consider the inevitable arrival of Steam-enabled DLC, playing mods with CIV is likely to get much, much more complicated.
 
...when you assume it'll be the same system as Civ IV. We'll probably just have to wait and see though.
 
...when you assume it'll be the same system as Civ IV. We'll probably just have to wait and see though.

Which different system would eliminate complications for modders/mod users caused by sold DLC?
 
This is right and when you consider the inevitable arrival of Steam-enabled DLC, playing mods with CIV is likely to get much, much more complicated.

Reality check: Valve's own games are the most modded games in history.

The solution is to do what Valve does, release every new major update as a beta, and run it as a beta long enough for the mod developers to catch up.

It works.
 
Does steam require you to be on-line to play?

No. Steam requires you to be online to activate the game. After that it has an "offline" mode that allows you to play without being connected.

I have Civ4 installed via steam and played it on my laptop on an airplane for example.
 
Steam's activation process upon installing the game, and any checks done when starting the game can and will be bypassed. This is all a non-issue.

Buy Civ 5 - if you have a problem with the DRM, crack or bypass the game before/after installation. Hell, don't even register your CD Key, if it bothers you that much. Just enjoy the game how you want to - you paid for it.
 
Originally Posted by NBAfan
Does steam require you to be on-line to play?
No. Steam requires you to be online to activate the game. After that it has an "offline" mode that allows you to play without being connected.
But in case of being online (for whatever reason), it would require you to download any available patch for both, the Steam client as well as Civ5 before allowing you to switch back to offline mode, right?
 
The amount of Steam bashing and unadulterated ignorance flying around on these forums sometimes is simply ridiculous.. people are freaking out over Steam? It uses all of 20mb of system RAM to stay open, jees.

You can even disable almost all of it's features and go bare bones down to 15mb of system RAM. You can right click a friend and instantly join their game, this is only a good thing for Civ.

And to the above post, the Steam UI update was the first mandatory Steam update in I believe three years. You can turn off your game updates too, or download them elsewhere away from Steam and install them manually if you REALLY don't want Steam on the internet.
 
The amount of Steam bashing and unadulterated ignorance flying around on these forums sometimes is simply ridiculous.. people are freaking out over Steam? It uses all of 20mb of system RAM to stay open, jees.

You can even disable almost all of it's features and go bare bones down to 15mb of system RAM. You can right click a friend and instantly join their game, this is only a good thing for Civ.

Why do you want to sell Steam to us?

The issues people have with Steam go far beyond just how much memory it uses in the background. For example, many don't appreciate the fact that the license to play civ5 will now simply be a "subscriber agreement" and if you, say, do something against Steam's terms of service in another game on your account, there is potential to ban you from playing civ5. One of the things included in the reasons for closing someone's account is negatively affecting the enjoyment of Steam by other subscribers.

While I find Steam to be bearable (I use it for a couple of games, mainly TF2 - a game where for obvious reasons it's fair enough to be Steam exclusive), I also find it introduces a bunch of complications that are nothing to worry about at the best of times and damn nuisances at the worst of times. For example, it is difficult to install steam games to different partitions. It is possible using hardlinks I'm told but for many users this is too advanced. Then again, the users for who that is too advanced are probably the same users who don't have more than one partition. :)

Steam takes time before it launches a game. With civ4 I play PBEM games so I load up the game intermittently sometimes, preferring to use windows explorer to manage my files rather than in game. With civ5 I wouldn't be surprised if ALT-tab now gets broken and to avoid having to restart the game over and over, with steam's delay, we would have to do everything from inside the game. I find civ4 loads very quickly when I launch it by opening a save from windows explorer.
Things like that are just simpler when there isn't an extra layer between you and game (e.g. Steam). To me, the selling points of Steam e.g. friends lists and achievenments (:lol:) at the moment are outweighed by the likely inconveniences we will suffer at times. I don't believe I need to "bash" steam for what it does, but I equally don't see why I have to be perfectly happy about it either.

You can right click a friend and instantly join their game, this is only a good thing for Civ.
:confused: I can appreciate you like this feature about games that use Steam, but I'm not sure it will even be all that important for civ5. We don't even know yet whether it will be possible or recommended to "join" an existing game, whether a friend is in there or not. We can only assume at this time that civ5 is not like TF2 where you can jump right into an existing game and do it often. In civ4 multiplayer, it was usually a nuisance when a player joined an existing game (usually because it would sometimes cause game to hang, at other times because we wanted the original player to rejoin).

And to the above post, the Steam UI update was the first mandatory Steam update in I believe three years. You can turn off your game updates too, or download them elsewhere away from Steam and install them manually if you REALLY don't want Steam on the internet.
If the bolded part has been confirmed for civ5 please provide a link. IIRC someone asked this question of 2K Greg and I'm expecting a reply when he finishes the FAQ.
 
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