Looks like Skyrim has shipped.

[wanderer27]

wah

/end

Meh, I believe in consumer rights, you obviously don't . . . to each his own.


.

 

[HeXen]

And game services like Steam, Origin, etc... aren't the problem. They have pretty minimal footprints and while may keep going after started, can at least be configured to not to load every time you boot the machine. It's nothing compared to the dozens of services, pre-loaders, and updaters that most people have running on their machines all for applications they never actually use.

Thats not what i was saying. Their a problem when theres no limit. they remain open after exiting the game. Imagine having Impulse, Origin, Steam from the games you play.
Now what about the future? there could be no limit for any particular game to require a specific client. And we don't know how many game services there will ever be...for all we know, there may be 20 game services in 10 yrs and many games requiring different ones.
If GTA 5 requires Social Club and GFWL...well theres 2 more things to add to that. And some other publisher will come up with something else we need to install and run...again, there is no limit imposed cause they don't care.

Plug-ins like these are only loaded when the game using them is running and unload automatically when the game exits. Pretty much like having a game installed on your hard disk normally.

again, whats the limit on the amount of plugins that they may one day force installation of? Would you like your next 10 game purchases to each have their own plugin required?

To top it off, the plugins and game services has their own set of bugs. cause we all need more code on our systems right?

 

[shortylickens]

Meh, I believe in consumer rights, you obviously don't . . . to each his own.


.

Its still a free market. And you arent "entitled" to DRM-free games.
Dont like it? Make your own game company and see if your investors dont push you to use DRM.

 

[wanderer27]

Its still a free market. And you arent "entitled" to DRM-free games.
Dont like it? Make your own game company and see if your investors dont push you to use DRM.

Quite true, but my choice is to just pass on it - there's too many other options.


My game development?
I could do the overall design (I'm actually doing an Excel based layout for something I'm doing for my own entertainment), but I have no artistic ability


.

 

[dennilfloss]

Well, I was at the shopping centre this afternoon to pick up the newest album from Florence And The Machine, so I stopped at EB Games and asked if I could get my game immediately since it would not activate until the 11th anyway. I was told no, can only pick it up on the 11th. Was also told that PS3 & Xbox 360 people however can pick it anytime but PC people have to wait.

 

[pw38]

I like the physical disc format as I just enjoy it for some reason (collecting probably) but it's not really that big a deal anymore. If I can get the disc game at a discount I will otherwise I'll use Steam or GFWL or Origin. Whatever makes it easier and cheaper on me I'm all for.

 

[dennilfloss]

So, once the game has activated, what purpose does the Steam client fulfill that it needs to run all the time when you're playing?

 

[shortylickens]

So, once the game has activated, what purpose does the Steam client fulfill that it needs to run all the time when you're playing?

It keeps checking to make sure the game is genuine, just like all Steam titles.
Of course anyone who can hack a disc check can also probably hack the Steam check.
But as we've already posted, if they insist on using DRM, Steam is by far the best one. It does the least amount of screwing over to legit customers.

 

[Demo24]

So, once the game has activated, what purpose does the Steam client fulfill that it needs to run all the time when you're playing?

updates, and i suspect it's tied into steam cloud so saves will remain if you need to either install on another machine or reinstall it

 

[Merad]

updates, and i suspect it's tied into steam cloud so saves will remain if you need to either install on another machine or reinstall it

Probably not for Skyrim. Oblivion saves could get fairly large, and there will be a lot of them.

 

[Demo24]

Probably not for Skyrim. Oblivion saves could get fairly large, and there will be a lot of them.

Not really, been playing through it at the moment and each save is like 1.5mb, hardly significant.

 

[Merad]

Without many mods, maybe. With lots of mods, they can easily go to 10-20mb. And many players will be saving every few minutes.

I remember cleaning out my Oblivion saves once and deleting a couple GB worth.

 

[dennilfloss]

Without many mods, maybe. With lots of mods, they can easily go to 10-20mb. And many players will be saving every few minutes.

I remember cleaning out my Oblivion saves once and deleting a couple GB worth.

Lots of mods here and my Oblivion saves are currently 3MB in size at level 15, except for the most-important one save done before exiting the initial sewers (so I can restart the game with a different character easily).

 

[zinfamous]

Hehe. My Oblivion folder is over 40GB with 55k files.

Mods mods mods...

so, 50k files, named either "cock" or "boobie?"

 

[darkswordsman17]

Thats not what i was saying. Their a problem when theres no limit. they remain open after exiting the game. Imagine having Impulse, Origin, Steam from the games you play.
Now what about the future? there could be no limit for any particular game to require a specific client. And we don't know how many game services there will ever be...for all we know, there may be 20 game services in 10 yrs and many games requiring different ones.
If GTA 5 requires Social Club and GFWL...well theres 2 more things to add to that. And some other publisher will come up with something else we need to install and run...again, there is no limit imposed cause they don't care.



again, whats the limit on the amount of plugins that they may one day force installation of? Would you like your next 10 game purchases to each have their own plugin required?

To top it off, the plugins and game services has their own set of bugs. cause we all need more code on our systems right?

Careful what you wish for. The next step is them making their client like OnLive. This way you never even install a game and don't have to worry about resources or anything.

 

[heavyiron8]

When you make a game, make sure its got some kind of multiplayer. Else, why would I spent 60 bucks on something when I can wait 24 hours and get it for free with 1 click. GzGlHfIrlM9.

 

[HeXen]

Careful what you wish for. The next step is them making their client like OnLive. This way you never even install a game and don't have to worry about resources or anything.

Onlive would be great if it could do 1080p and no lag. One day it likely will, but atm its still pretty decent cause you could play your games on any laptop or Ipad even.

unfortunately, they don't have a Linux version afaik. But the idea is great if the client is available to any platform, no windows required.

Like i said, i don't care about DRM as long as it exits when the game does and preferably, not spread tons of files all over the place, like BF3 puts over 20 registry entries in, probably tons more than that...kinda silly. And the more files, the more bugs.
Can't tell ya how many times Origin crashed on me, causing me to lose a perfectly good match in BF3. of course BF3 crashes plenty on its own.

 

[gothamhunter]

When you make a game, make sure its got some kind of multiplayer. Else, why would I spent 60 bucks on something when I can wait 24 hours and get it for free with 1 click. GzGlHfIrlM9.

WTH is that?

Also, reported. :biggrin:

 

[ImpulsE69]

Once more splintering off of Steam starts to happen, I think more people will see the pitfalls that this type of management will have. Sure right now, it's mostly centralized, but companies come and go, and business partnerships dissolve. In the future we could possibly see dozens of "Steams". We are already seeing this happen with EA, and a few others. At some point, you'll have all these companies game managers that do not allow keys from each other which all require their own proprietary console. That is when "steam" will really mean nothing.

One thing about companies is they don't like to have to pay other companies to sell their products. When it becomes cheaper for them to do it themselves, they will.

I'm still debating if I will get Skyrim...I just don't have that kind of patience these days for it's style of combat, but I do enjoy wandering around the environments...

 

[Terzo]

You better learn. Very soon ALL games are going to require a background app running. And Steam is by far the least invasive and most functional out there. And with modern OS's it uses even fewer resources while your game actually runs.
And when you arent playing Steam games you can kill it quickly and bring it back even quicker.

That's fine, I just wont buy these games. In between the backlog of games I have (e.g. Armored Princess, Planescape, Evil Genius), and great games I haven't bought (Icewind Dale, Vampire, Crysis, Mechwarrior 4 and Mech Commander, Witcher 2, and so on) I could probably live to 100 and not have to purchase a new game. I complete games at such a slow pace and play rarely enough that the changing landscape isn't an issue for me. Then again, I suppose I don't qualify as gamer, so my opinion is probably worthless to developers.

As for steam itself, I actually find steam to be annoyingly slow in starting up and shutting down. I haven't played any games in a while, but I remember getting frustrated with steam telling me some error about processes running or something when I tried to close it after exiting TF2. I generally had to wait a minute or so before I could close it without an error message.

Its still a free market. And you arent "entitled" to DRM-free games.
Dont like it? Make your own game company and see if your investors dont push you to use DRM.

Isn't Valve a privately owned company? I wont argue it has been great for Valve, but I don't think they had investors pushing them to create the greatest (in terms of adoption and acceptance) drm platform. Wasn't steam met with criticism by the majority of users for the first few years? Valve used the popularity of Counter Strike and Half-Life to "force" steam on to gamers, much like EA is doing with BF3 and origin.

I wonder what other companies have the clout to do this. Perhaps Activision with Modern Warfare, but it seems most other companies are complacent with steam, or in a few cases their own ridiculous services (Ubisoft).

 

[HeXen]

Someone needs to make an open source multiple account GUI for accessing games across different servers. Kinda what Trillian did for IM's back when Aol and others each had their own IM service.
that way you have one service accessing Origin and Steam accounts. open source to get communities involved and perpetuation of the GUI itself and perhaps efficiency

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

The DRM for Skyrim is really some of the best around. Steamworks allows you to install a game and then you never need to put the disk in again. In fact you don't need to use the disk to install the game at all. If you want you can just download all the necessary files from the service and don't have to look around everywhere for your disk.

It is so much better then the disk checks of last gen. You can even play the games offline if you want by setting steam to offline mode.

 

[Imp]

The DRM for Skyrim is really some of the best around. Steamworks allows you to install a game and then you never need to put the disk in again. In fact you don't need to use the disk to install the game at all. If you want you can just download all the necessary files from the service and don't have to look around everywhere for your disk.

It is so much better then the disk checks of last gen. You can even play the games offline if you want by setting steam to offline mode.

I remember Diablo II, what a piece of shit. The disc had to be in the drive and spinning 24/7 and I was always on battle.net. Glad that's over, but Steam offline isn't perfect, or I didn't do something right. Think it was Fallout Vegas that I couldn't play when Steam itself was down, and running it off-line wasn't allowed.

 

[Scooby Doo]

Hmmm I bet this will mess up the script extenders for skyrim though :\

 

[Merad]

Hmmm I bet this will mess up the script extenders for skyrim though :\

Valve openly worked with the makers of OBSE to allow them to support the Steam version of Oblivion.