Steam is the RTW2 deal-breaker - here is why

[daniu]

This makes me think that you are not going to use steam. Then a question pop's up in my head, if your not going to use steam why complain about steam?

The other question that comes to mind is how he thinks he's in a position to judge a company's behavior as "unethical" when he's clearly giving up any moral high ground by pirating.

[King Philip II]

The other question that comes to mind is how he thinks he's in a position to judge a company's behavior as "unethical" when he's clearly giving up any moral high ground by pirating.

Do NOT put words in my mouth. I never gave you any incitament to accuse me of pirating. It's not an option to me at all.

[karamazovmm]

Do NOT put words in my mouth. I never gave you any incitament to accuse me of pirating. It's not an option to me at all.

the point is moot, why complain about a game that you are:

1) dissatisfied by a number of reasons, which isnt even launched yet
2) you are not going to use the only available medium to play the said game

if you are not going to pirate it, there is no logical reason for all those threads and posts that you make

Since ETW there has been a very minor campaign against steam here, it never bore into anything useful, nor will bore anything useful in the future

The only other option is to launch a game without DRM, since using steam has a cost, and they are clearly not going to license another drm, and with the said new drm there will be another backlash because of the said new drm. However no one in their right mind would launch a AA game without drm, comparing games launched without DRM and pushing against AA games gives us 0 results.

While you may express your opinion on whatever medium that you want and however you want, there is a limit when it bores nothing in return to you. There were from my take at least 6 threads about steam here, there are much more on S2TW, NTW, ETW, actually much much more on the latter.

Either you guys start to move towards another kind of protest, conscience gathering, or whatever the hell you want, or this is just going to be another futile frustrated gathering.

Apply logic, it serves you well.

Please daniu, Your post is really going beyond the bound,s of good taste.

mag there is only one way that you can play that game without steam, and you know what it is.

[King Philip II]

the point is moot, why complain about a game that you are:

1) dissatisfied by a number of reasons, which isnt even launched yet
2) you are not going to use the only available medium to play the said game

if you are not going to pirate it, there is no logical reason for all those threads and posts that you make

I have already replied to the "why" previously in this thread. If it's so easy for you to think that ppl will start stealing just because they are disappointed about a a new product of a series where they have been an avid fan for almost a decade, then that makes your entire reply moot.

There is a logical reason to why I'm posting about this. You Sir, just haven't seen it yet.

[magpie]

The other question that comes to mind is how he thinks he's in a position to judge a company's behavior as "unethical" when he's clearly giving up any moral high ground by pirating.

Please daniu, Your post is really going beyond the bound,s of good taste.

[SturmChurro]

This makes me think that you are not going to use steam. Then a question pop's up in my head, if your not going to use steam why complain about steam?

Attention.

I like Steam. I live in a rural part of Missouri, so it isn't like I can drive 50+ miles just to have a large selection of games often. Steam gives me that anytime I want, and great deals all the time. Not to mention I really like the community aspect.

[IlluminatiRex]

Attention.

I like Steam. I live in a rural part of Missouri, so it isn't like I can drive 50+ miles just to have a large selection of games often. Steam gives me that anytime I want, and great deals all the time. Not to mention I really like the community aspect.

We like the community aspects Churro

[MrChris]

Thanks very much MrChris for sharing your thought on this. I just wrote a long reply to your post but the internet whale (it's a Twitter joke) ate it. I'm too lazy to write it again, so just a few comments below. I reserve the right to reply in more specifics later.

re unethical conduct: as a previous poster mentioned then my point is not valid to others since I cannot prove it. It's still a very valid point to me though.

re Privacy laws: I could talk about this all day. Just because it originates in Germany does not mean that it's an issue for Germans only. In fact, I believ ethe issue has just been escalted to the european commissioner of human rights (she handles privacy laws as well). Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway and a few other countries are giving Facebook a hard time as well for the same reasons.

/KP

No worries, TWcenter can be a bit strange for me as well

I know people will always have issues and concerns about data handling, privacy etc but a lot of people fail to realise how much of their information is already out there anyway, for a company like Valve, good security measures and data handling make sense, if you get it wrong, like Sony did, it not only costs you a lot of money, but dents opinion of you, which is very important for Valve and why Steam has done so well

but as I said, things like Encryption are all standard, we always hear about when there are security breaches and panic, without thinking that most of the time nothing goes wrong. In all my time on Steam I have never lost my account or anything like that

The last thing I heard was a consumer rights group was taking the matter to court. What is however, painfully obvious from these things, is that these groups totally misunderstand how Steam works and furthermore how it NEEDS to work, let alone an understanding of PC gaming (and issues like privacy etc)

reselling a PC game for example is a moot point, with things like CD keys and online registration the reselling of PC games died out a long time ago, before anything Steam did tbh, and EULAs, while some of them are quite dodgy (Origin's used to be hilarious) are in place to facilitate the system running smoothly. For example, Steam being able to disable your account is a measure employed when someone is absusing an account, via phishing etc or they reserve the right to VAC ban you from games if you choose to cheat

I know it is not a perfect system and at times not completely transparent, but it is in place so Steam can function correctly.

You imagine the problem if for example you could resell a steam game, the whole model of how the system works with accounts, games etc would go right out of the window and people would be looking to exploit such a system. Steam as a platform is there to help developers and publishers by offering a direct path to customers, cut out as many middlemen as possible. Its why you see a lot of Indie games, or smaller titles launch on Steam and do very well.

There are features in place that are similar, that offer a degree of trading, for example you may collect items in games such as TF2 and wish to trade them with other people, this you can do. You may also receive a gift of a game for someone (you can basically buy a game on steam and give it to a friend as a present if you wish) and if you already had the game or didn't want it, can trade it for something else. There is also a steam trading cards system launching whereby playing a game can gain you rewards like items, money off coupons etc

If you could just resell a game at your pleasure it would have to be so heavily regulated, I could get a group of friends to each buy a certain game, then once we were done we could sell them on to eachother for virtually nothing so we could all play the game, the developers would get nothing from us.

I know people like the idea of reselling, but honestly, PC games are not console titles, we are not ripped off on price and overcharged, you can get PC games at very good prices, and if they are on sale on steam the prices can be ridiculously low. I don't support the idea simply because I believe that with a system like this, when you buy the game it is a commitment and because I want the developer etc to have my money, the reason the next generation of consoles has launched such an attack on pre owned games can be traced to the very same reason; we just got past it a long long time ago on PC. The only problem is when game makers do not release demos so people do not know what they are buying, luckily the internet has helped to alleviate that problem and also a lot of demos for games you can download right through steam.

Just want to say thank you Anna and MrChris for a couple of well explained posts on the steam subject.

No doubt I will have to use steam if I want to play ROME II as thing,s stand.
So I will be looking for help when the time come,s to deal with this system.

regards,

magpie.

No worries

Honestly you probably won't encounter that many problems, I assume you have an ok broadband connection at home.

With Steam there are however things to consider, its not perfect, often on release days of popular games the servers can get hammered, you imagine 1000s of people trying to download the game at once and it can get crowded.

This isn't always a problem of course (more if you buy direct from steam), when I got Shogun 2 for example it took me 3 tries before the game would install from the disk, that would probably annoy a lot of people, but I work in IT so I sort of understand these issues (basically when you install from disc the system makes a call to an authentication server, which needs to take place else it won't recognise them, and just starts trying to download the game entirely!). It sure as hell beats using Origin though, when I got Battlefield 3 (had to wait something like 24 hours before I could even try installing that) or the newest SimCity (I didn't get that) but people couldn't play it for up to a week after release lol

If you ever have problems downloading from Steam, you can go into your settings and try changing your download region, this basically shunts you to another server where you may get a better download rate.

You also want to make sure you create a good username and especially password, very secure and don't lose it! Also make sure the email address you use to register the account to is a safe one, and one that you use often.

There is also an added layer of security, called Steam guard. This makes sense for some people more than others, but basically you register the computer you use to play the game with Steam, so the system understands that "Hey this dude is going to be playing on this PC etc etc". If someone tries to access your account from a PC that you have not registered, so say someone steals your details and tries to login on the other side of the planet. Steam guard will kick up, and basically email you a code (because it notices that it is not the same machine), this person would then need to enter said code in order to login. This of course works great if your email account hasn't been compromised! But if that stays safe then anyone trying to steal your account can get very frustrated and will find the task completely impossible. This of course for some people may not be as helpful, since some people play on multiple computers (I can't remember if you can register more than one machine - since I only play on my gaming PC).

On top of that, if you are still really worried, you should keep proof of purchase of your account/first game. I still have my receipt for Half Life 2 for example, as well as all my boxes with the codes in (another good reason to buy boxed). If someone did ever manage to steal my account, you can contact Valve support, show them the evidence of your ownership, transactions etc and they can get your account back for you. They will notice for example that suddenly your account is being accessed from a completely different IP, maybe halfway across the planet etc

I've talked a lot about losing accounts lol but honestly its very rare, if you are smart, have common sense and keep your PC safe, as well as your passwords (NEVER give your steam acc passwords, usernames to ANYONE, not even Valve will ask for them - same with email) then you will never experience a problem. In my list of 150+ friends on steam I have never heard of one of them losing their accounts.

A lot of the features, you may not even use, or want to use, for me, using Steam, being able to message friends, is something I cannot really do without, before you needed to have stuff like Xfire going as well, but not now I have Steam. You can create groups for your friends to join etc, there are steam workshops for a lot of games, that are basically where people upload content like mods etc that you can try out (very popular for example with games like Skyrim, Fallout etc)

I never used to bother with screenshot taking (I think you can even do video these days - I've never tried that though ha) for example, but with Steam, its hassle free; they even store them all on the cloud so you can see them anywhere

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...ls/?id=6024159

like my good friend here

point is, Steam offers a lot in terms of services and features that can be really great but on the other hand, you don't have to use them at all, you can ignore them or disable them etc

That isn't my username btw, in case anyone was wondering :p MrChriskipz is basically just my profile/display name, so no shenanigans can arise from knowing it. I also have quite a few screenshots if you are bored enough to look :p

i think its rather sad that just because the majority of people have lighting fast internet, those or a majority of those users think everyone should have it and if they don't have it there is something wrong with them, and their problems should not even be looked upon or considered. this type of ignorance really pisses me off. as it stands, not everyone has fast internet and because of this steam hampers their playing experience greatly. If that reason is not valid enough then you guys need to take a long walk off a short bridge..

As has been pointed out, you can still purchase the game retail, at which point the need for the internet connection basically becomes connecting to steam, authorising the copy of the game and then should you wish (you can stop it) updating the game. I have lived with Steam a long time and my line speed has never been more than 3mb (next month I am getting Fibre Optic, I may actually buy games direct from Steam then ), I know there are people with slower connections than that for which it may present a problem, but not one that would stop them playing the game entirely.

That reminded me of the Battlefield 3 Alpha ha, you know I downloaded that from Origin at a mighty speed of 57kb/sec (was a fault with my net apparently). That took me a long time, and this was when you couldn't even pause a download on Origin as you can with Steam (sometimes you pause a download on Origin and you lose about 10-20% when you next go to download, as it downloads the game in large chunks).

edit: oh yes and because people keep talking about "background processes" and the lovely ram that will be taken up

in my task manager

Steam is currently using 50,800k

and Origin is using 66,444k

and with 4GB of ram that basically makes no difference

[fightermedic]

didn't buy a AAA game for 2 years now, but supported several kickstarters, one reason for that is all the DRM that is being used
if some companies don't want my money, i'm happy to spend it elsewhere...
rome 2 with steam -> no money from me, it's that simple

[Nicolaos]

OP, on the one hand you criticize and don't trust their security measures, on the other hand you are mad at Steam that you can't log into your account without username, email and password...
What are they supposed to do if you lose all information? give you free copies although you have no proof of your identity? If you also forgot the username, you can't even proof who you are.

My advice for the future, for everyone. Keep and print the steam receipts after buying a product. They could serve as a proof if you ever run into trouble with steam.

[magpie]

Well Lesta if steam was not tied into the CA marketing format user,s would not have a user problem.
Childish or not everyone has a personal opinion regarding a companies way of selling their product.

As this is the TWC, member,s are entitled to express their view,s within the TOS boundaries.

[Eien]

Well Lesta if steam was not tied into the CA marketing format user,s would not have a user problem.
Childish or not everyone has a personal opinion regarding a companies way of selling their product.

As this is the TWC, member,s are entitled to express their view,s within the TOS boundaries.

Sure he has the right to express his views, and on the same note, be on the receiving end of criticisms, it works both ways.

[AngryTitusPullo]

Well Lesta if steam was not tied into the CA marketing format user,s would not have a user problem.
Childish or not everyone has a personal opinion regarding a companies way of selling their product.

As this is the TWC, member,s are entitled to express their view,s within the TOS boundaries.

Of course. Everyone has an opinion. So am I. But blaming Steam/SEGA/CA for user own problem is childish. Everyone also entitle to get mock for their childish views.

There are some valid and scary cases like Elvenkind posted some time ago (forgot where) but I don't think that's a norm or even something that happened to many others.

I say childish because the reasons given in my opinion is very childish. Yes it sucks it you live in an area where the broadband sucks, but that the same if you live in an area where there's limited or less electricity. Yes this is the 21st century and there's area even in my country where electricity comes from generator.

In the world where there are actually people out there dying because of lack of food, complaining about methods of DRM use by a game company is indeed childish.

T
My broadband speed is on average 4.4 Gb I hope the speed will increase soon due to line upgrade,s in my area?
Regarding my main concern,s and steam.
First and foremost I mod just a habit I gained over the years. Never could get a game without wanting to change something in it.
So I assume one will have to make up a special folder to keep a mod in. If Steam updates the original it could make your mod unplayable?

Mine is slower. Seriously. It takes nearly 24 hours to fully downloaded Shogun 2 + all DLC + patches.

Regarding mods, base on Shogun 2 the methods is very much different than RTW/M2TW. We no longer have to overwrite the games data now to mod (much like the old mod folders). In many case once Steam updates some if not all mods are unplayable but it's no different when playing old mods with new patches in RTW/M2TW.

But from what I've seen from ETW until Shogun 2, mods can quickly update their mods after every patches. CA even announce in advance if there's a format change so that tool makers (and mods) can quickly update their item beforehand (which makes claims that CA hates mods is moot).

Of course the best time to mod is when the game is done and fully patched up. That's why it's easier to mod old games than current games. I still remembered the trouble when we tried to ported RTR 6 Gold to be playable with RTW 1.5 and BI 1.6

Also my other concern is how reliable is the off line mode.
In other word,s if your broadband goes down for any reason can you still play the game?

How often do you have to sign in with steam to keep your game working?
By that I mean can you play off line all the time? Stick the disk in the drive and just play.

regards,

magpie.

You have to log in to Steam before you play every time. But you don't have to be online except the first time. However reliable I can only say that I have 2 version of Shogun 2 now. On my pc it's always updated so it's current and I always online. On my laptop however I still have the version before the last DLC (Otomo clan) is released and it's still playable since I never turn Steam online on that laptop for nearly a year. Of course once I turn online then the game will download and update.

[StephanVos]

Steam is pretty good for gamers. I doubt Total war would have had the same financial success without steam. Plus, the sales are awesome. My only annoyance is getting mods to work. I would like to play some mods for RTW and M2 but never seem to be able to run them.

[andymate]

CA are looking to reduce the time it takes to release a product.

Going Steam free would mean they would have to find an alternative to host multiplayer. (At worst, they would have to program and setup a lobby then pay for the hosting of it, which is not really feasible long term)
Not only that steam offers steamworks (mods), discussion forums and all sorts of other jazz. It is the perfect platform for a total war game.

I am sorry to say but i can't see Total war games leaving steam anytime soon.

[Cresilia]

Sorry OP, but I love Steam.

Out here in the middle of nowhere, its just not easy to drive to store that sells games.

Steam allows me instant access to any game I could want. Furthermore it has been safe and reliable for me since I have started using it.

In fact I would be outraged if the CA launched Rome 2 without Steam support.

[gord96]

Sorry OP, but I love Steam.

Out here in the middle of nowhere, its just not easy to drive to store that sells games.

Steam allows me instant access to any game I could want. Furthermore it has been safe and reliable for me since I have started using it.

In fact I would be outraged if the CA launched Rome 2 without Steam support.

I would have to agree. Steam is awesome. The deals alone make having Steam worth it.

[Cresilia]

I would have to agree. Steam is awesome. The deals alone make having Steam worth it.

Oh don't even get me started on the deals. I love them, but they suck me in.

"What, of course I need the whole Men of War series for $3 CAD! Ima gonna play then so much!"

And I have never played them yet.

But still the deals are great, like regularly having the Paradox Interactive games 75% off!

[MrChris]

Well then...I have been a user of Steam for 8 years now, right from the start literally, we are talking pre Half Life 2 release...

Back then the service was new, and quite frankly was a pain in the ass, some of this was more from my own misconceptions though, and that Valve had not added in a lot of features

Nowadays though, I am glad when I buy a game with Steam integration, my one last remaining gripe is the enforcement of release date rules (if you get the game early you still have to wait etc)

And thats literally it, everything else I am happy with

so...

Steam is the TWR2 deal-breaker for me. In the recent Poll here ONE THIRD of the responders voted for non-Steam.

Here are my reasons for voting for non-Steam:

1) I don't like to give companies an after-sales backdoor into my wallet
2) I don't want a storefront on my desktop
3) I do not support unethical companies like Valve (they sell email addresses to 3rd party direct marketing brokers)
4) I don't want to have to be connected to the net
5) I don't trust their security (http://arstechnica.com/security/2012...alicious-code/)
6) I don't want anything running in the "background" potentially collecting my usage information with the intend to sell it to internet marketing brokers
7) I really don't want to give the founder a single penny, same reason I don't watch Tom Cruise movies.

It must be a considerable business risk for CA to have such a close partnership with $team. What if they have to close down shop due to, for example, a law suit? Valve Sued by German consumer group

/KP

1) Self control?... You can modify the settings on Steam to communicate with you as much or as little as you like, you are not forced into buying anything, the idea is however is that the choice is there. I myself rarely if ever purchase things directly from Steam, I bought Company of Heroes direct from them, something like Counter Strike Global Offensive, but otherwise I do not somehow end up spending vast fortunes on games. And even then I fail to see how I could, beyond new releases you can buy games for stupidly low prices; Steam Sales are famous for a reason after all, but that doesn't mean you have to participate. I get bombarded with more ads etc when I watch TV, but I don't run to my nearest supermarket to open my wallet now...

2) Then don't have the storefront on your desktop, here is a screenshot of my current settings tab



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

You can change it to open straight to your games library, your list of friends, heck you can even make it not open the steam window at all and just leave it running in the background

3) Unethical companies like Valve? I will say this, if you have been gaming on the PC as long as I have, you would be thanking Valve for everything they have done and built with Steam, the alternative is we are stuck with god awful companies like EA and their Origin platform, what a disaster that would be to have to endure that to play Total War. I play a game called Battlefield 3 a lot and if you want to know what a real mess can be made from these releases look no further. Oh how I wish I was able to have Battlefield 3 on steam and skip Origin.

Now here is the valve privacy agreement

http://store.steampowered.com/privacy_agreement/

Valve DO NOT sell your information to marketing companies, or information that can identify you personally, e.g. details, email address etc. Steam can however collect information on the specification of your computer (hardware, OS etc - what CPU you have etc etc) for the Hardware Survey, but even this is OPTIONAL (but by participating you actually help out PC developers by showing what people use) these results are even publicly viewable. Valve may collect this information themselves, just like every other company will, for example when you swipe your card at a supermarket, since it can help develope their internal systems (show what payment methods are popular, show trends etc). What Valve do is in no way out of the ordinary and they are subject to data protection laws in several countries. I would rather Valve have my information than a company like EA for example.

4) While you do need to connect to the internet at times there is an offline mode to Steam whereby you do not need to connect (this will of course impact some of the services that a game may use like multiplayer). However given the often ubiquitous nature of the internet this is not as major a problem as people make out. A lot of people use the offline mode to play their games just fine.

5) An article thats a year old? And on the intricacies of the Steam browser ha, if you are using that to go anywhere other than the store, or the odd trip to google while in game then I'll repeat the age old mantra of don't clicl on strange links... And thats not even the worst of it, http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/10/va...curity-breach/

However, would I trust Valve with my information more than Sony (oops we got hacked how many times?), Microsoft (yeh we get hacked a lot) or say EA (We lose usernames and passwords like car keys, and our BF3 server infrastructure has been under DDOS attack for a week, so you can't play the game!). Hell yes I would, you should know that any company with half a brain (except sony of course) encrypts your information, so even if Dr Evil himself took the entire Steam datebase of users, its useless to him, absolutely useless. And with Valve, you do not hear about the incident days, or maybe a week later (by which time it is too late) the founder of the company himself issues a service wide announcement, right to you, through Steam. Heck even a bank isn't that reliable...

6) As I said in point 3, Valve do not do this.

Steam can collect, if you allow it to, information on what kind of computer hardware you are running, this is so that everyone can see just what a typical PC is that is running games on Steam (so developers can focus optimisation etc, no use making a game to run on a supercomputer when only 0.1% of people have one after all).

Then it can collect information on how many hours you have played a game for profile purposes. However you can even turn this off by disabling the steam community in game or simply logging out (offline mode etc).

Valve does not sell marketing information and despite it being wildly illegal and against their terms of service, mainly because it doesn't need to. Valve/Steam sells products themselves as you point out, they don't need to sell information about their own system that they know already to other people (especially competitors).

7) You'd compare the nutjob (albeit a typically nice guy) Tom Cruise, to Gabe Newell? You should read up on the guy, if there were more of him we would be better off. One of the reasons Steam has done as well as it has, and hasn't resorted to underhanded and infuriating tactics (the ones that someone like EA etc pursue) is because of Mr Newell and the fact that the company is not shareholder controlled etc. Greed is not something for example that dictates his actions, after all, he has made billions already by making the best online distribution service out there ha...The thing you should understand about him is, he is not a business suit, someone out to empty your wallet or give you a bad time, he is a gamer, a games developer; if there is anyone you want making a game or running a games company, he is up there as on of the first choices.

As for the last point...

Ah yes Germany, a country that is often so paranoid about "violent" video games, that their government insists on censoring anything, you should see what the german version of TF2 looks like ha. Beyond German court rulings (which won't change anything) Valve is an incredibly successful company that basically cannot stop making money. And even then, they would get bought out, business evolves over time after all.

Honestly, I look back all those years ago and think of the way PC gaming was heading and where we are now, I literally dread to think of what it would be like if we did not have Steam. Honestly, I can't think of how it would be better, or even good.

I haven't - it would cost me more in lost time than the games cost, so not worth it.



Of course it's my own fault. I can't even remember the username and I have tried to contact Steam in the UK. No cigar, since I can't prove that the email was mine. In fact, they didin't even want to look into it.



Been there - done that.

As you have said, I am afraid this is down to you. Can Valve trust everyone that contacts support saying their dog ate their password etc? Of course not. You want Valve to be responsible with your information, your account etc and provide you with the service that they do, then you also need to be responsible with your own information.

Which means remembering passwords, usernames, maintaining access to relevant services (email) and not giving your login credentials to other people etc

Here is a question, Why do Sega still issue the TW games on disk if the so called vast majority of customer,s are total steam fan,s.

Why would the customer,s even buy the TW games in disk format?

That might tell you something. How much are steam asking for your ROME II digital download of umpteen Gb,s against say a disk set supplied by Amazon for your pre-order.

Now from a personal viewpoint I do not have a problem downloading patches online if I think it will fix a bug or add to a game,s working.

We have always had to do this in the past.

Just because you can buy the game on Steam does not make the disk obsolete.

Firstly, a lot of people like to own a box, I know I do, I always buy my new games boxed.

Secondly, sometimes it depends on price, as I have mentioned, while I do like Steam I do not buy new releases from them, this is because typically in Europe it would cost more. I order from a place called ShopTo in the uk and always get games at a very good price, not to mention quick delivery (arrives before release date).

You must also consider, that while a lot of people love Steam because of access (they may live a long way from shops, not have access to other methods of buying games). Some people may not want to have to download large games on their broadband line, Total War games have gotten big after all (10+GBs) which takes a long time to download, and for anyone not on an unlimited or fibre optic connection, that could be a problem. With a retail copy, you still get the game on steam but can install from the disk, then all you need to do is download updates if there are any.

Did I mention that even then, you can tell Steam NOT to download game patches (if for example you have a mod that you don't want to break).

Furthermore, if for example a game received a very large update, say 2-5GB, you can backup a Steam title to whatever medium you choose, be it disc, usb drive etc and then reinstall it later (say after a format) so you can basically then avoid the extra download as well.

Honestly, I know a lot of people here are wary of Steam, but I can also bet a lot of people here have never used it. Be thankful that Steam, with all of its excellent features and services exists...

And don't get me wrong there are great places like Green man gaming as well

but the alternative is, to either not have these services at all, so you lose out in terms of the multiplayer services that steam handles, the updating etc (these can make things better for CA) or you end up with a service like Origin and its funny because you all accuse Steam of being this devil program without seeing what crap Origin pulls on you, or what console users on Xbox live have to suffer because of Microsoft.

I am glad that Total War games are on Steam and that all their future titles will be; I'm afraid in this case and the concept of PC gaming as a whole, that this is the future, you need to get with the times because it will not change, and you will not receive a Steam free version of the game unless you are prepared to pirate it (and that would be very low of you to do so)...

If you have any questions on the service, feel free to ask away, and I'll show you anything (beyond my username and password of course, sneaky hobbits). But understand I would not defend the system like this if I was not completely satisfied with it either.

[King Philip II]

[QUOTE=MrChris;12880939<good post goes here>
[/QUOTE]

Thanks very much MrChris for sharing your thought on this. I just wrote a long reply to your post but the internet whale (it's a Twitter joke) ate it. I'm too lazy to write it again, so just a few comments below. I reserve the right to reply in more specifics later.

re unethical conduct: as a previous poster mentioned then my point is not valid to others since I cannot prove it. It's still a very valid point to me though.

re Privacy laws: I could talk about this all day. Just because it originates in Germany does not mean that it's an issue for Germans only. In fact, I believ ethe issue has just been escalted to the european commissioner of human rights (she handles privacy laws as well). Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway and a few other countries are giving Facebook a hard time as well for the same reasons.

/KP