Civ 5 requires Steam

[brohawk]

I am not happy at all. My friend got his copy yesterday and the game requires Steam. The last time I had Steam I had to rebuild my PC. I will not be playing this game until they remove that requirement. I hate companies that do this.

[Beavis]

When was the last time you used steam?.I think you will find that Steam is now really great,especially for saving your games without the need for physical media.

I have been using it for the past 6 years or so and I think you will find it has been refined quite a bit and a lot of TOG (and other players) use it.

You have to remember Steam is not releasing the game ,just the digital download of said game.

[King_Rocket]

Yeah Bro, its time to man up and give Steam Another go.
If the retailer didn't make it clear that Steam was required he might be eligible for a refund.

[brohawk]

the last steam game I had was Dawn of War II and it killed my system. That was the third time I have given Steam a chance. I am no longer interested in supporting crap software. There is no reason to have Steam, especially on a RTS game.

[Jakob_Pavlov]

Sorry that you have not had good experiences Bro, but I have to say that Steam is one of the most valued pieces of software on my PC. I have even paid more (and likely will do again) for Steam versions of games so as to have the full intergration.

[Bawheidbob]

Got to say it is a pretty poor 'requirement' what are the reasons behind it?

I have Steam myself but having things like forced on me would annoy me also.

[Kerogi]

the only annoyance i have with it is civ5 will prolly arrive 2moz, but because of steam it wont allow me to install it till friday :@

[Drac]

Steam is awesome and it's done more for PC gaming than any large chain branded brick-n-mortar game store ever has. It's also one of the better digital game stores around, the only ones that really compare are Impulse and GOG. It craps all over EA, Ubisoft and Direct2Drive's digital offerings.

Also, millions of people run steam and have zero issues with it. I find it very difficult to see how steam, which is all built on-top of an open source web-browser engine, would damage your machine to the point that you'd need to rebuild it. It's much more likely Games For Windows Live killed your system as that's also required for DOWII and it hooks into parts of the system for DRM that it really shouldn't be and can really mess things up. Steam's inbuilt DRM is much more passive and doesn't hook into any system level stuff for verification.

If a game requires Steam it's probably using Steamworks for multiplayer or in-the-cloud and cross-platform save games, like Modern Warfare 2 ect.

That being said, I can understand why people are apprehensive towards steam, but if you embrace it there's a heap of benefits. Think of it like Xbox Live or the Playstation Network, it's the game service the PC has been lacking and that Microsoft has failed to create.

[Zhul]

If installing Steam is mandatory does that mean if someone doesn't have an internet connection and buys the game they won't be able to play it (does it require a connection to validate purchase)?

[Jigoku]

It will require an internet connection to activate it and it will state that requirement quite clearly on the box.

Originally Posted by Drac

It's much more likely Games For Windows Live killed your system as that's also required for DOWII and it hooks into parts of the system for DRM that it really shouldn't be and can really mess things up.

I'm much more inclined to believe Drac's suggestion that GFWL is at fault than Steam. I've had Steam installed on all my systems since it was released and it has NEVER been the cause of a full system melt down.

Then again, I've never had an issue with GFWL either ...


(I do fully expect one of these two programs to completely destroy my computer in the next few days now though ...)