why are almost all current physical pc games steam/origin installs?

ya it is online only. doesnt help that bethsoft deliberately released the collection as steam install games only even though all the games were released pre-steam and had game releases where the game installed to the bethesda directory in the program files.

it also doesnt help i was a console gamer for 17ish yrs since the psx.
 
they didn't mention the steam/drm "feature" anywhere before i bought the damn thing. what a bunch of liars and scammers these guys are.
 
yup, the official gamestop game page said nothing about it. and i had to preorder on the site cuz my local gamestop didnt have any more available for in-store preorders. and it also didnt help that being my first game purchase for pc w/ a new computer i bought earlier this year, that i couldnt get a straight answer out of anyone as to how exactly physical pc games worked prior to the game release.

http://www.gamestop.com/pc/games/fallout-anthology/123725
 
I don't have much problem with steam, at least I don't need to depend on a CD to be able to play the game in the future and I don't have to pay extra for online play like with consoles. Also I play in offline mode most times. The crazy sales are also a big plus, I can't care much about DRM when I am getting games at 75% discounts... At least it isn't securom.
 
i think the only good thing is the playing games without the disc is the only think i like about the whole situation.
 
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-4-pc-discs-dont-contain-full-data-partial-/1100-6431658/

my friend just linked me this. this actually makes me mad, and makes me realize the anthology collection i now have is likely the same way. i noticed that even after installing from the disc, there were dloads for each game. i originally thought it was just patches, after reading this i realized it is the rest of the game data for playing. ok, lets say the worst case scenario happens and steam goes out of business, what happens to all the steam games that people might have disc installs for, but missing data? if they absolutely had to do a system restore, how would they be able to play games like fallout if part of the data was dloaded off the steam server?
 
So if you don't like DRM, then you definitely would not like games on CD/DVD. The only real source of non-DRM games for PC is GoG. The DRM implemented on CD/DVD in the past was infinitely worse than Steam. They were virtual rootkits that disabled core functionality of the operating system. One of the worst was in the first BioShock game - SecuROM.

When I first purchased Half-life 2 as a Steam only release I went through this same mashing of teeth. However, the alternatives were much worse. Fallout 1 / 2 can be purchased off GoG as DRM free games. If you don't have a credit/debit card there is always just getting a pre-paid Visa from Wal-Mart.

Aside from GoG, your only DRM-free options are torents with all of the risks and problems that entails.

Because of frequent Steam sales, I don't have much issue with them since I haven't paid full retail for a game in quite sometime. There DRM is fairly unobtrusive and you can just play off-line most of the time. Frankly, I find the hours played function to be quite useful as before Steam I didn't have a real gauge for that.

The achievements can be fun in that they can spur you to try things you normally would not have bothered with. So, all-in-all it is the lesser evil.

But go with GoG if you cannot stand DRM at all.
 
Soapstone said:
i dont like it, why am i being forced into using a steam or origin install for a game on disc? why do i have to have said programs up and running on my pc for the game to run? my task manager states that steam uses heavy system resourses. even though i have enough ram that it doesnt cause too much problems.

i got the Fallout Anthology, for all the fallout games, all the games are on disc, yet i was forced to register before i could install any of them and once i did, they all got added to my steam library for dload, even though i was installing from a disc. i imagine i cant even loan these games to any of my friends like pc games used to be able to? i have a lot of friends that have never played a fallout game before.

considering that all the fallout games were released prior to the big push to steam and origin, why couldnt they just give us the original versions of the game that were DRM free? i am irate that pc games have gone this way. :S

why are console games technically drm free and loanable/sellable but pc games arent? obviously the discs are worthless as a collectors item for selling the anthology collectors edition due to the fact that the games are mine and mine alone and i cant put them up on ebay due to the registration code having been used, i imagine the mini-nuke collectors set could eventually be worth something with fallout 4 added to the collection, but it isnt due to it not being drm free. :S

dont get me wrong, i have no plans to sell the games/mini-nuke (even if i could), but i would love to know the value of this collectors edition w/ fallout 4 if it was drm free. console versions of games and collectors are loanable, sellable and are worth a lot of money at times.
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My favorite gaming topic, no sarcasm. Steam will always be DRM to me, and with Hines saying Fallout 4's physical versions will be shipping on only one DVD, with at most 8 GIGs of the 30 we'd need to play the game, Steam is quickly becoming a way for unscrupulous publishers and developers to devalue physical media under the guise of stopping piracy.

What's more, there's so little on offer with physical releases that, in some cases, the digital release looks better just because of a sale price. Think back to the last game you bought in store that had anything besides the disk inside the case. I'll bet you money the last one was a game released between 2012 and 2010. Even an manual is becoming a rarity these days.

As for that Fallout Collection, I was pissed when I found out the games were Steam-locked, more so because this was after Bethesda got the original three games back up on GOG, but for $4 more and without any extras besides the manuals. I got them before then, with all the goodies, but the new buyers who want them DRM-free, they're getting shafted.

Chromevod said:
I'm pretty sure that you don't. If you can launch from the .exe directly, as I was, then it means you don't need Steamworks in order to boot the game. So Steam is just the service you use to download the game. So you should be able to move it and use it without the use of Steam once you have the initial download.
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Correction: If you can launch a game from the .exe with Steam shut down, then the game is just using Steam as the distribution method. Most Steam games don't allow this however, and of those, many are single-player games. So, what purpose would Steam serve for them beyond DRM?
 
Steam is a very intrusive storefront/chat client. We could get by with just GOG and less bullshit.
 
Are they stupid? There is nothing developers can do to stop piracy. Origin, Steam, other DRMs, it doesn't work. Pirates will always find a way and all those efforts only hurt the buying customer, not the pirate.
 
TorontRayne said:
Steam is a very intrusive storefront/chat client. We could get by with just GOG and less bullshit.
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If publishers would swallow the pride and fears holding them back from releasing, or pushing to release, games with GOG. Steam tracks a lot of data for games, so that's also something they risk losing control over.

Askorti said:
Are they stupid? There is nothing developers can do to stop piracy. Origin, Steam, other DRMs, it doesn't work. Pirates will always find a way and all those efforts only hurt the buying customer, not the pirate.
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I noticed a lot of Twitter users telling Hines that when the announcement went live, but he and Bethesda as a whole, are not ones to consider opinions of regular folks, or pay attention to trends and cause and effect.
 
It's not just Bethesda. EA invests a buttload of money in DRM and what do they get? Squat, it makes cracking the game slightly harder, but it's still broken within a week or so from release. I also remember Rome 2, which pirates could play on the release day, before many people who have actually bought the game could due to Steam being under big strain.
 
Oh dear God, Rome II. The fact that Steam had no real refund policy at that time made the pirated version much more appealing, simply because you weren't at risk of being stuck with a clearly unfinished game. (Didn't that game have, like 52 or something patches within a year?)
 
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