Hi all! I want this game, but I refuse like many others to buy via steam. Please Uber Entertainment give the world a chance to buy your game on a cd/dvd. Many thx to all who cares. /Mattias SWE
As much as it may be a concern for some, there really is little reason for Uber to do this. Selling a hard copy of the game is much more expensive and difficult for them, hardly worth it considering MNC's relatively small userbase (compared to a blockbuster FPS). Combine this with the fact that a vast majority of users like and use Steam, and there is little value in creating a boxed version. PS: If I may ask, what are your reasons for refusing Steam?
When I buy something I buy just that nothing more nothing less. and I don't want to have any crap programs on my computer and it is intrusive etc etc...
I'd say Steam is both, but the fact remains that since MNC uses Steam for the server browser, you're going to have to use Steam even with a disc.
Again, if I may ask, why exactly do you find it to be intrusive? It's a small download, and once you've set up an account, you can get rid of the shortcut, all you'll ever see is the "Steam is starting _______" and occasionally a small ad that is relatively unobtrusive. There is hardly any reason to dislike it, unless I'm missing something. Care to enlighten me?
I have written plenty of rants on Steam over the years and I would be still be Steamfree without MNC. Am I sorry that I got Steam? Hell no! Contras: - DRM, there are worse but it still is a DRM - it scans your hardware and sorftware for the Steam survey; I'm not too happy about this one - advertisements and store; k, that's not too bad Pros: - useful overlay to keep track of friends and to chat - it's easy to manage your games, one-click-install almost, few hoops to jump through - advertisements and store; WTF Jessep, that was in Contra already! Well, the sales are just stupifying awesome. Buy a AAA+ title from the last year for less than a movie ticket would cost you! Holy Mackerel!
Also, the Steam background service boots with Windows. It's an actual service, so closing the Steam Client doesn't close it.
I hate almost all DRM on PC games, but I don't mind Steam at all. It's one of the few services that seems to really try to be unobtrusive and genuinely useful. As for scanning your hardware and software, when they do the survey you can opt out of any local data collection. Every time you run a game or buy something they still track that but they need to for obvious reasons. The last one, the store and advertisements, you can set your game Library, friends list or a couple other options to be the default page to open to when starting Steam. You can also disable the pop up ads from showing leaving only the very small ads if you try to play a game that's still updating. Even that screen you can usually hit the "Launch when game is ready" check box and minimize before the ad even loads.
As far as Steam as DRM goes: Its usefulness (friendslist, game infos, news...) is much higher than the percieved DRM. I often have Steam open for no other reason than to chat with friends. Maybe I will opt out on the survey. My 5 browsers (webdev) would only screw up results anyway. And I would never switch off the advertisements! I bought 80+ games for less than 150 during the X-mas sale. If you cut the doubles and games I'm not really interested in that's still less than 4 for a game. You can argue about the service but you can't argue with the sale prices...
It being crap is your opinion, and it is not intrusive. I don't think of steam as DRM all that much (though it technically is), since it has none of the hassles that most DRM's have. You can choose not to let it scan hardware. You can disable pop up advertisements in the settings. You can set it to use your Library or another tab as the one that opens by default when you open the main steam window, instead of the store tab. The only advertisements I ever see is if I launch a game that isn't ready, and even then it's just telling you what servers are hosting the content you're downloading (in addition to the information about the download progress and button to update info). Generally says l4d for me. Yes it does close the service when you close the client. I don't think it even installs the service anymore. Or maybe only on vista. Either way it's not on my new win7 install. Indeed!
I think valve is honestly the most realistic when it comes to DRM. Because let's be honest in order for us to legally own anything we must have some RIGHT to it. Whether you get it on a disc or download it you are being given the right to use that software so really there has to be some way of MANAGING those RIGHTS to DIGITAL things. What steam does is try to make things a little better by providing an awesome service to make up for DRM. Like "Hey we know it sucks but we're gonna do our best to make things OK"
I'd really prefer to see this thread die, but I've been meaning to put this up for a while now. Can you think of another service which runs with your computer, collects your data, uses system resources, and is necessary to run other programs? It's called an OS. Obviously there's a lot of holes in this comparison, but think about it.
Are you suggesting SteamOS ? I would totally dual-boot that in a heartbeat ^_^ To be honest 90% of the time my PC is turned on to play games and all my games are either Steam games or added to steam for ease of access. The only time I'd boot across to anything else would be when coding or surfing the web. (The Steam browser is ok, but not the greatest.)
I really find it shocking that people complain about Steam when they continue to do things like sell ten great indie games for five bucks. I have never had any issue with Steam ever and the DRM is completely sensible given that it's a digital download service. Basically, if you own a computer and play video games you should have Steam.
