Steam Gets Civilized
Some long-time Civilization fans are getting pretty steamed.
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Some long-time Civilization fans are getting pretty steamed.
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Steam Gets Civilized
- Thread starter Shamus Young
- Start date
"If they want to play the game they must install Steam, even if they don't want to play multiplayer."
So?
I don't get what all the fuzz is about.
So?
I don't get what all the fuzz is about.
Why should we not support the platform that offers the best value, excellent connectivity and a good friend system just because it might become bad in the future.
There are plenty of people who hate Modern Warfare 2 but none of them regret cod2 or 4.
Auto patching can be turned off and if you want to play multiplayer you would have to patch it anyway so thats not a major deal.
The steam client is one of the best if not the best. Impulse is a joke. I love soase but trying to use the impulse matchmaking was terrible. It uses irc as the group chat which is fine but not exactly user friendly.
Just because its "cool" to take shots at the big guy doesn't mean it makes sense especially if the competition is so far behind.
Edit: Also if it didn't have steam it would probably have an even more restrictive drm system that would need an internet connection at least once.
There are plenty of people who hate Modern Warfare 2 but none of them regret cod2 or 4.
Auto patching can be turned off and if you want to play multiplayer you would have to patch it anyway so thats not a major deal.
The steam client is one of the best if not the best. Impulse is a joke. I love soase but trying to use the impulse matchmaking was terrible. It uses irc as the group chat which is fine but not exactly user friendly.
Just because its "cool" to take shots at the big guy doesn't mean it makes sense especially if the competition is so far behind.
Edit: Also if it didn't have steam it would probably have an even more restrictive drm system that would need an internet connection at least once.
I'll be the first in the thread to be on the anti-steam side of the fence then.
The controversy is about having to install a programme that will do absolutely nothing for me bar sit there taking memory.
I have no intention playing Civilization online, mainly because the AI is superb and I am perfectly happy with playing the computer; and secondly I personally don't feel multiplayer is well suited to this particular game.
This is enough of an aggravation for me that I'm seriously considering not getting this game (and I've been a devout fan since the Amiga), I really am not willing to encourage a developing trend of tertiary software requirements.
The controversy is about having to install a programme that will do absolutely nothing for me bar sit there taking memory.
I have no intention playing Civilization online, mainly because the AI is superb and I am perfectly happy with playing the computer; and secondly I personally don't feel multiplayer is well suited to this particular game.
This is enough of an aggravation for me that I'm seriously considering not getting this game (and I've been a devout fan since the Amiga), I really am not willing to encourage a developing trend of tertiary software requirements.
I really don't get the argument about Steam basically being "always online DRM", it DOES have an offline mode, and you can set it to auto-login for you when you load up Windows, so really once you've installed it then you can just pretty much ignore it if you don't want any of the benefits Steam has to offer.
"Six years ago Half-Life 2 came out as a Steam exclusive. Fans of the series got a chance to figure out what the platform was all about, and then they had to decide if they were willing to accept it, or miss out on the flagship of all FPS games."
Not a bad column by any means but.. what? Half-Life 2 the flagship of FPS? Yes, I'm an admitted HL2 unbeliever but even if I stretch my imagination (and tolerance) as far as it (they) can go, I still can't see any truth in this statement.
Not a bad column by any means but.. what? Half-Life 2 the flagship of FPS? Yes, I'm an admitted HL2 unbeliever but even if I stretch my imagination (and tolerance) as far as it (they) can go, I still can't see any truth in this statement.
I myself use Steam mainly because it's an easy way to try games for $5-$10... BUT I prefer to have the option. If I'm paying full retail price for a game, I expect to get a disc, and the abillity to back it up and play it anytime I want from now until the stars go cold. As much of a juggernaut as STEAM seems to be right now there is no guarantee that 5 or 10 years from now things will be the same way. They could sell out to another company, go bankrupt, or any of a million other things... and when they do, they take my games with them. Now granted, I probably have spent a couple hundred dollars on Steam for all these little games that were on sale, losing them will tick me off, but then again that risk was mitigated by the price.
What slots me off is when I go out to a retail store, and buy a physical copy of a game, and then get home and find out that the game is basically a glorified download code. An example of this kind of thing is "Mount and Blade: Warband" which being a small developer I should have expected something like this, but I pretty much jumped at the oppertunity to own that game on disc and then (admittedly stupidly now) found out it still required STEAM.
The thing is that all the bellyaching in the world isn't going to change things. In general the game industry has learned to ignore the fans, because we'll buy the games anyway despite our complaining. Really the only way to stop stuff like this is going to be if enough people (by the millions internatioally) decided that they would stop buying games entirely until the industry changed it's practices.
What slots me off is when I go out to a retail store, and buy a physical copy of a game, and then get home and find out that the game is basically a glorified download code. An example of this kind of thing is "Mount and Blade: Warband" which being a small developer I should have expected something like this, but I pretty much jumped at the oppertunity to own that game on disc and then (admittedly stupidly now) found out it still required STEAM.
The thing is that all the bellyaching in the world isn't going to change things. In general the game industry has learned to ignore the fans, because we'll buy the games anyway despite our complaining. Really the only way to stop stuff like this is going to be if enough people (by the millions internatioally) decided that they would stop buying games entirely until the industry changed it's practices.
Steam, while browsing the store, is using 24mb of ram, roughly 0.7% of one cpu core and doesn't even touch my video card at all. In game, it offloads most functions to the game itself and uses even less. Offline mode cuts the RAM usage in half ontop of that. If this causes a noticeable slowdown on your system, I advise you to install it on a PC instead of a phone.
Well, To be fair to the competitors, Steam has taken pages from the Impulse play book with regards to sales.Acidwell said:
I love steam, I love valve, I also love Civilization. I have around 150 steam games, and I've not regretted the purchase of a single one. (around 3 were BAD games, but I got them for so cheap, i can't even be angry.)
I can understand though, why people who don't need steam for anything else feel. It's how I felt about rockstar social club when playing GTAIV, I HATE rockstar social club.
Steam is a blessing for those who want it's features. Steam is a curse for those who don't need it.
That said, as far as DRM scheme's go, just having steam as one is preferable to me than Securom, or pretty much ANY other DRM scheme out there now.
When it came out, i'd go so far as to call it the Flagship. It's not NOW but the genre has shifted towards the multi-player death-match since it's release.StriderShinryu said:
I think the problem here comes from the Civilization 4: The Complete Edition (it could be on the others, but I only have this edition, so if it is on others let me know and I'll edit accordingly). For those that did get the hard copy of the game, there was a little something on the back:
So really, whether you like Steam or not, this is already a step backwards from where the series was with Civ IV.
Though Civilization games have often appealed to people with lower-end machines, because they're not as taxing as games of the same generation.Emlyn said:
I do remember a time when "You have a program running in the background that takes up 12-40 MB of RAM" was a terrible burden.
Damn it why do i need steam, I don't play multiplayer(except local) and I hate auto-updates not to mention I despise having steam on my computer. The only reason I have it right now is because I need to for DOW2 and I hate the fact that it takes about 5 min for steam to launch, then update, then look for updates for the game, then it prepares to launch for another 3, then finally lets me play my damn game.
It isn't about what it consumes, its the point of having it there in the first place.JEBWrench said:
My rig has no issues with these things in the slightest - I think people are getting too hung up on this. I like how its a "concern" however.Emlyn said:
Perhaps I should have stopped at "The controversy is about having to install a programme that will do absolutely nothing for me".
To put it blunt, I shouldn't have to turn on my air conditioner to drive my car.
