Warning! If its only on Steam I'm not buying

[RichPowers]

If a game uses Steamworks, then it doesn't matter where you get it: it will require Steam. If you're a Steam fan (like me), this allows you to punch the CD key into Steam and never use the disc again.

I am not saying that Civ V will use Steamworks, but if it does, you can still buy retail copies. Dawn of War II and SupCom 2 both use Steamworks if I remember correctly.

 

[Drago Askani]

Even if they appear high to you, here in Australia Dragon Age still sells in EB for over $100. I can get it off Steam right now for $59. Steam works out 50% of the price of Aussie brick 'n mortar stores.



Amazon is already taking pre-orders, as is a couple other stores. This is not a Steam only release.

Well let me educate you a bit. Supreme Commander 2 that you buy in the boxed version REQUIRES a steam account and activation to play it. So in theory Civ 5 could if 2k games decides to partner up with Steam as their DRM of choice.

 

[Sherlock]

Yeah, I wouldn't buy a Steam version either on general principles. If I pay money for a game I don't want people who don't either bother to respond to emails (yes, Steam, your 'customer service' is NON-EXISTENT') to be able to stop me from running that game any time they damn well please and for any reason that pops into their heads.

Steam sucks. HUGE.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Even if they appear high to you, here in Australia Dragon Age still sells in EB for over $100. I can get it off Steam right now for $59. Steam works out 50% of the price of Aussie brick 'n mortar stores.

50%? That's a liberal approximation.

I'm curious, do you ever look at other stores online for game prices or do you always use EB as the benchmark? EB, being as popular as they are and having fairly high overheads, will always be one of the most expensive ways to buy any game. Look at various online retailers and you'll find you can often get it much much cheaper elsewhere - you might just have to pay for postage (which sucks, I know). If you limit your options to Steam and EB, Steam is definitely going to be the best way to go most of the time.

to be able to stop me from running that game any time they damn well please and for any reason that pops into their heads.

Do you have a particular experience with Steam along these lines? Have Steam stopped you playing a game for any reason other than failure to get the game to work, like through installation instructions?

 

[Padje Dog]

This is incorrect. You will buy Civ V regardless of where it is released. This is a fact. We know it, and you know it...

Too true.....

I must have got out of bed on the wrong side this morning. I will buy it from EB if its on Steam, but as stated before it will probably cost more. I don't want Steam on my PC. I use another download service and so I'm allowed to say "I don't like Steam and won't buy from it". I want CiV to be released on a download store other than Steam, I won't say who I want to buy it from because it will turn into a X vs Steam debate.

I don't need to justify why I won't use Steam, I will buy CiV from EB but I want it for sale for download on another download store. I can ask this.

 

[Dale]

50%? That's a liberal approximation.

I'm curious, do you ever look at other stores online for game prices or do you always use EB as the benchmark? EB, being as popular as they are and having fairly high overheads, will always be one of the most expensive ways to buy any game. Look at various online retailers and you'll find you can often get it much much cheaper elsewhere - you might just have to pay for postage (which sucks, I know). If you limit your options to Steam and EB, Steam is definitely going to be the best way to go most of the time.

And what experience do YOU have with Australian game retailers? Do you KNOW how much we get charged?

 

[PieceOfMind]

And what experience do YOU have with Australian game retailers? Do you KNOW how much we get charged?

Yes, I do, though as a customer - not an employee. Civ4 certainly wasn't that expensive when it was released, even in EB IIRC.

Sometimes I'll check the price of a game in EB, see it cheaper on a website and order it from there instead. I think even staticice works for computer games but is probably not the best search near a game's release.
Even ebay is enough some of the time.

EB just have very clever marketing and have stores in more locations than probably any other games retailer (short of generic department stores like BigW etc.). The people who shop there exclusively are probably mums and dads who don't know they can find games cheaper elsewhere, or more likely can't be bothered.

 

[the343danny]

We know for a fact that Civ will have a built in browser for mods that can link to these forums, and Steam has an in game browser too, but not like a mod browser or anything, so it looks like Civ will have its own browser.

I seriously doubt that they would have both the Steam browser and the Civ browser, so if it wasn't apparent already, I think that ups the chance for Civ not requiring Steam.

 

[ori]

What was Colonization's DRM like? Since that is the last PC release from Firaxis it might be the best indication of what we might see with civ5.

Securom apparently
but then they went ahead and removed that (and all DRM) for the US Complete version so I could buy it
Civ4's was Safedisc

 

[Bringa]

What is everyone's problem with Steam? Personally, I am a BIG fan. I do close to a 100% of my game purchases on the service, and to be perfectly honest, Steam is what brought me back from piracy to being a paying gamer. Before I got into Steam, I would buy may one game a year; these days it's much closer to 4-5 games a month.

Me, I *hate* having a physical copy of a game. It's actually a huge turn-off for me. I'm not good with orderliness or organizing my belongings. I always lose or break or scratch CDs; I literally bought Diablo 3 three times because I always managed to lose my CDs by the time my friends dived back into the game.

I also move a lot. I like to keep my physical belongings to an absolute minimum.

Steam allows me to do all that, and then some. Steam is simply peace of mind for me; no matter what happens, my games will be there. My last PCs crashed and burned, taking its harddrive with it, and I wasn't bothered. Anything I was playing at the time I could just redownload on the new PC. Right now if I wanted to format my harddrive, the amount of things I would need to back up would be absolutely minimal. This is just great for me.

On top of that, the steam community is wonderful. There's a guy I randomly met playing Team Fortress 2, and when I bought Modern Warfare 2 I saw he was playing that too, and we've been playing that together now as well. I always see what my friends are playing and I can jump in at any time.

So honestly, what's wrong with Steam?

 

[mrt144]

Please oh great Civ Gods! Hear my plea!

I've played since Civ 1 on the Amiga.

I played Civ 4 to death.

If the only software download store to get CiV from is Steam, I will miss out through my belief that Steam takes games purchasing and buyers rights of software down a dark road.

Support the other shops, especially those that support me as the person paying for the game and not as both a potential pirate and a cash cow.

I don't want to give up on the Civ franchise, don't let it give up on me.

A darker road than Ubisoft, Securom 7 etc? GTFO.

 

[mrt144]

Securom apparently
but then they went ahead and removed that (and all DRM) for the US Complete version so I could buy it
Civ4's was Safedisc

Safedisc is more annoying to make virtual disc for in my experience, but that could be due to operator error. I'm happy that I dont need the CD to play BTS cause trying to create a virtual disc was going nowhere.

 

[mattigus]

I have a friend who stone cold HATED Steam, and everything it stood for. He hated the idea of downloading games, not having a physical copy, and thought it was a bloated mess. Of course, this was all based on what little he had heard about it. When Left4Dead came out, he finally decided to get Steam so he could play Left4Dead with me and my friends.

Every PC game he bought since then has been on Steam.

I agree that it would be a terrible decision to make the game Steam-exclusive, since there are plenty of people who hate it, but I'm definately using Steam to get this.

 

[Modiga-Disabled]

I agree that it would be a terrible decision to make the game Steam-exclusive, since there are plenty of people who hate it, but I'm definately using Steam to get this.

I think the problem is developers are no longer satisfied with the old DRM methods: CD-keys and the like. They're too easily cracked for the developer's liking. That said, it seems all forms of DRM get cracked sooner or later and Steam is no exception. Steam can help prevent zero-day piracy though. If all forms of the game are kept encrypted pre-release then there's little crackers can do to pirate the game before the release date, other than intercept a copy floating around that lacks encryption, which may or may not exist.

I would say CD-key DRM is so ineffective, the only reason to bother with it at all would be if there are multiplayer components that allow for extra online checks to be made to validate uniqueness. The old forms of DRM just seem obsolete to me and either developers adopt one of the new forms to the full extent, or they go DRM-free (on a retail level, they can still sell digital copies of the game that come with the seller's DRM).

Ultimately, the question is what produces the most sales? 100% Steam integration; allowing access to all the advantages of using Steam as well as some additional security, or leaving Steam as an option and allowing relatively DRM-free retail copies that are likely easily cracked but also don't turn off legitimate customers who have a distaste for any additional restrictions imposed by DRM technologies.

 

[Savoir10]

Securom apparently
but then they went ahead and removed that (and all DRM) for the US Complete version so I could buy it
Civ4's was Safedisc

Securom..... Sigh. Well that's going to save me a whole lot of money. No game or computer upgrade. Very sad though.