I went and bought Skyrim to pass the time. I went to install it and it immediately took me to Steam. I FUCKING HATE STEAM! That being said...is there a way to install the game from the DVD? It is literally trying to install the game from downloading it...at my whopping 4kb/sec connection. I click on the DVD and I press the Play the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim link and it takes me to the steam box where it continues to try to download the game. WTF?

From the steam support forums:

Using Steam launch options to install retail games from disc
     Log in to Steam and click on Library.
     Right-click on the game, select Delete local content, and confirm.
     Insert the first disc into your computer.
     Close Steam (Steam > Exit).  
     Press Windows Key + R to open Run  
     In the Run window type:  "C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -install E:
 
Replace E: with the CD/DVD drive you are installing from if is not correct.     Replace C:\Program Files\Steam if your Steam installation is not in the default location. Press OK.  Steam will launch and ask you to sign in if you do not have your password saved.  Your installation should continue from the disc.

Thanks man! Looks like it is installing now. But, seriously, WHAT. THE. FUCK!? That's a lot of bullshit to do just to install a game. I've never had to do anything like this with any other game I've installed with CD/DVD. This just goes back to my original statement: I FUCKING HATE STEAM!

It's not steam's fault you don't have access to a good internet connection. Other than that particular problem, how is steam bad?

Steam is easily one of the best things to happen to the internet.

Sorry for your loss.

In MANY cases downloading from steam is faster than installing from DVD. It is for sure the case for me.

_________________

World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I wish more game companies would do licensing agreements with Steam for content download. Steam is easy when I just play games they have.

_________________
"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Steam really sucked in the early days when it was too huge and memory-intensive for the computers playing games at the time. But now it's awesome. I don't know how someone can dislike it.

_________________

I want Xbox to put away Games for Windows Live and just sign a contract with Valve to use Steam to distribute our PC-side games. Not everyone does that, though, because Valve reserves the right to do things you might not want them to, without your permission -- Notch waved off distributing Minecraft through Steam because he felt their terms amounted to losing positive control of his game.

Steam requires an internet connection. I bought a stand-alone game so that I did not have to have an internet connection. I am often stationed in places that have little or no internet connection, which is the whole point in my buying a game to play that does not require the internet. Had I known Skyrim was involved with Steam, I never would have bought the game...regardless of how amazing everyone says it is.

I have been looking at this "Preparing to launch The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" box for the last hour and nothing is happening. (Yes, smart ass, I am connected to the internet...with my whopping 4kb/sec connection that costs $80/month). If I buy a game that is ready at launch and requires updates later, fine...whatever...that should be my option to update it. But to require an internet connection for a stand-alone game is fucking bullshit in my book.

Of course, none of you would understand what I am going through because you all probably have 584930850943 GB/sec connections and enjoy waving your holier-than-thou finger in the faces of those who have anything less. :p

Or you could set steam to Offline mode and play...

That stuff, above, right there.

Also:



That's... not about Steam, or at least it won't remain so for long. I agree that it's incredibly annoying to have to maintain a connection to the Internet in order to play games. You should know that Steam is the content platform closest to requiring this all the time, but they're not going to be the only ones. As Internet access becomes more and more ubiquitous, content creators are going to presume that you have it, with increasing flagrance. Valve's just out ahead.

I run Steam in offline mode most of the time, because I have a bunch of casual games that I play on my laptop away from my home internet connection.

_________________

"The Steam client application's files must be updated to allow for the use of Offline Mode. If your game's status is "100% - Ready" but you receive the message "This game cannot be started in Offline Mode" when attempting to play offline, the Steam client application's files need to be updated."

And, for whatever reason, it's not ready because it is either taking a looooooooooooong time to download, or I can't connect to the server to update the game. There is a bar that I can only assume fills up as the game is updated. I have no idea what that fill color looks like because the bar doesn't fill at all as it "prepares to play the game". I tried offline mode but I get the same message every time I hit play - "This game is not ready to be played in Offline Mode."

So I state again, I FUCKING HATE STEAM!

Then start TESV.exe manually from the skyrim folder... I swear, gotta tell him everything.

Yeah, because all of these sidesteps, backdoor solutions, and alternatives to simply clicking on a Skyrim icon on my desktop, that does not exist, are clearly illustrated in the user manual. Ass.

I tried running both the SkyrimLauncher and the TESV applications. The TESV response is an error box that says it is not a valid Win32 application and SkyrimLauncher gives me the same "Preparing to launch The Elder Scrolls" box. I have to run it online because the offline message says "This game is not ready to be played on Offline Mode."

Again, this game seems to require Steam to do something online before I can do anything with Skyrim, online or offline. I've tried running every application in both the Steam and Skyrim folders. Everything points back to requiring some kind of internet connection to either validate or patch or "something" on the Steam servers before I can play Skyrim.

So I state for the third time - I FUCKING HATE STEAM! This shit has never been an issue with any non-Steam non-internet-based game I've put on any of my machines in the past. It might be a super awesome thing for people that have a good internet connection but, based on my own experiences of not having a good connection, it's complete shit for those of us that don't have the luxury of a good internet connection.

Actually, I wouldn't be blaming Steam for this. I'd be blaming Bethesda for requiring Steam.

_________________

World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Wait a while.

_________________

Bethesda only required Steam because it was the most convenient means of secure distribution -- and Steam only works the way it does now because early adoption is easiest for the PC platform. I feel like I can't say it clearly enough; the requirement of a constant Internet connection is coming, to everywhere, on every platform, and it's not Bethesda's fault; it's not Steam's fault; it's just that it's the only really effective copy protection method available. We could have avoided this if everyone would just pay the fucking 50 dollars, but that was too much to ask.

If only they didn't charge 50$ on a game I can finish in 6 hours you mean? Ill buy some and I'll copy the rest. If they want to sell me a game then it better be worth it... It's like the music CD's with 1 good track and 12 track of bullshit.

This is how you are not gonna sell me a game:

I'll agree that you shouldn't have to pay for shit, but if that's the logic and it really is shit, why steal it in the first place?

So you're stealing software on the rationale that it's really just haggling over the price? The publisher didn't get a chance to make you a counter-offer. It sounds like you'd have no problem with buying it legally at a discount, if the publisher offered any conditions under which they'd agree to that.

Steam is the mechanism through which you would make that deal. Exactly that happens, all the time. You'll get it later than your friends, sometimes a year later, but you weren't all that excited about that title anyway (unless you could get it for free). The publisher still isn't making all that much from you, like you wanted -- but you're getting a legal license for it, like you wanted. They get to protect their copyright and only support legally-purchased copies on the server side, like they wanted. Everyone wins except the thieves, and Bello. If the thieves didn't make it necessary, Bello would win too.

And he's mad at Steam!

Half-Life 2 wasn't made in 2010.

_________________

If this garbage is the trend of the future, I won't be buying any more PC games. High speed internet charges are way too high in my neck of the woods and I've been getting by with dial-up. I'll be damned if I'll line an ISP's pockets just so I can play games.

There are many functional DRM schemes that they could have used for the physical edition, rather than requiring you to add your game to steam and go through a possibly lengthy download process. After all, there's probably a reason you chose to go physical disk rather than download, and that reason is probably your internet connection.

Steam is only good if you have what I would consider "blazingly fast internet", which means anything that's at least 12Mbps. Under that then it's just a gigantic pain in the ass.

_________________

World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

...What DRM scheme successfully does its job without an Internet connection? It's been my experience that anything that can't note your use of a unique registration key in a definitive list somewhere, is defeated by the simple expedient of having one person post one key someplace, and having everyone use that one since you can't catch them at it.

Actually I think my issue is not so much that it requires an internet connection, but requires steam specifically, which unless configured not to will automatically download and install patches that can easily approach 1gb or more in size.

If it added the game to steam, with steam drm, but had "keep this game up to date" checked by default, I'd be happy as a clam.

There are also issues with "must be online" drm in the case of authentication server failures (cough ubisoft cough), or not being able to access a product you have purchased if your internet has gone down.

_________________

World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

"Easily" is not the word I would use to describe an extreme edge case -- patches in excess of 1 GB are not at all routine, and usually an indication that the developer doesn't fully understand differential updates. FPS games do this sometimes; they'll fix an exploit by changing the clipping in some map, altering maybe 2 MB of its total length, then send the entire updated 200MB map in an update when 2 MB of content and some offset indices would have been fine.

Automatic updates are annoying, agreed. It would be better if Steam took the same route as everyone else -- download a self-contained update package to local storage, and then process it offline, with your software only being unavailable during the actual update process. You can't really do that with multiplayer games, unfortunately, because it leaves you either supporting every version of the game ever made in the same lobby (making it possible for four different people to be using four different versions of, say, shotgun physics), or supporting a separate lobby for every minor release (for Halo 3, that would have been almost a hundred lobby divisions -- and if you didn't have the same exact version as your friends, you just can't play with them). So, at least on LIVE we require everyone to have the latest and greatest, and we provide that for them when they connect with a valid license.

But not before! LIVE waits for you to sign into that actual title, whereas Steam collects and begins pulling all the available updates for your whole collection as soon as you connect. There are advantages both ways, but again -- if Steam at least let me play offline while it was downloading updates to my game before applying them, then popped a notice and waited for me to shut it down before processing the update, I'd be happier about it.

You can also decline Live updates and play offline.

_________________
Marauder Harabakc Goat

You could do that, if you accept the premise that you paid $300-400 for the console and now you can't play with your friends. This is not a market saturated with split-screen multiplayer; your opponents and teammates are people on a totally different XBox, and they can live next door or fifty miles away. (We try not to link Americans with guys in Australia, because lag blows, but sometimes [Blur beta] there just isn't headcount to support a good testing session any other way.)

The point is that multiplayer absolutely requires LIVE now, and that means updates, and if your connection sucks your experience is compromised. Then again, if your connection sucks, get off multiplayer -- no one likes that guy.

I really wasn't talking long term. And quite frankly with patches like the 1.2 skyrim patch I would have declined if I had known it would glitch my dragons like it did. I had whole portions of my world I couldn't complete because of glitched dragons and had to wait until the next patch to do them.

_________________
Marauder Harabakc Goat

This discussion was started on the basis of forced patching for a single player game, the multiplayer component is a completely separate discussion.

_________________

World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Vanamar, I was only drawn out this far on extenuating circumtances. <bullshit deleted>

EDIT: I think I was drinking when I wrote that.

I can agree with this!

_________________
"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala