I just bought the retail special edition, steam errors

[CX gamer]

Because 11/11/11 falls on Belgium's national holiday, I would get the game on 10/11/11, one day earlier. In the afternoon today (9/11/11), I got a text that I could pick up the game. The shipping seemed to be a day early. I walked very fast to get my earliest bus, on a tight schedule. My legs were screaming from pain when I just nearly got my bus. But I just made it and got all 3 of the required busses on my schedule to pass the game store. When I got to my town, I hopped on my bike to sprint to my home, with a calculated average speed of 36 km/h, for just 1 kilometer. My heart-rate was around 180 when I got home.

I planned on uploading a pic compilation of all things that are discussed here, because there is some uncertainty. I took a picture of my receipt, to prove I was using a legal version, that I bought for € 50.

I boot my computer, enter the disk and close some unneeded processes in order to install the game the quickest. I speed through the setup and come to a Steam window. Now, I'm no fan of Steam, let me tell you why;

• Makes sharing games with friends very hard.
• Game launch times increased by over 5000%. (Where a normal game can boot in 0.5 seconds, steam needs to firstly boot itself, download updates for the game, prepares to launch the game and then finally starts launching the actual game.)
• Annoying steam updates constantly.
• Spammed with popup adds.
• No control over where I put my game data, it's all in the steam folder.
• Downloads updates automatically, without even asking permission first. I never saw a dialog requesting me to enable auto-updating. Afaik that's against gentlemen programming policies.
• Requiring internet at least one before you can play. Really, before I got internet on my chamber, there were a ton of games that I just couldn't play.
• The library is a mess if you've got a ton of games.

But okay fine, I enter everything steam needs to know, I come to the screen which says that it's going to install the next step. And then this happens;


My mood can be described as the following, time passing from left to right;


Really? I went through all that trouble, just to get notified that a lame excuse for a DRM tells me I need to wait to play? I would thoroughly like to explain my opinion of what I think about Steam, but I wouldn't want to get banned from this awesome site.
This reminded me of the horror that MW2 was, which killed the CoD series from that game onward. Hell, the cheap excuse for a console port wouldn't even let me alt+tab, something I would use a ton, specially for Skyrim.

So to turn this rant into a topic;
How do you feel about using a crack to play a legal bought game? Just to omit the usage of steam.
Is there another way? Is it okay to just download a crack and apply it to the legal game?

[MARS]

The game is to be released on 11/11/11. Getting it earlier, is not legal as far as I know. The Steam lock is the same for everyone, and a retailer selling you the copy earlier than he should shouldn't allow you to play, as far as I'm concerned. By that I mean that even if the copy was sold to you earlier legally, the game is technically still not released, which means that you can't play it. This isn't Steam's fault.

Also:
How does it makes sharing games hard? What do you mean exactly?

Game launch doesn't take longer than usual for me, unless there's an update...

They're not constant. Not even that frequent. Besides, it's a piece of software and it is made better by these updates.

Popup adds? Oh, you mean the news template? Yes, that's a bit annoying.

Yep, that can be a bit of a bummer. Still nothing serious though.

Most games download their updates automatically anyway.

Well, it's a DRM most of all. You can't really find a game that doesn't require an internet connection these days, Steam or not.

Alphabetically sorted...not really a mess.

I understand that some people are just impatient and I know that some people have real problems with Steam, but you don't. You can actually play all of your games while some other people can't because of region changes etc.

I don't see the connection to MW2 either but...eh.

Using a crack for a legal game, isn't that bad in my book. I've done it a few times, when I lend my retail games to friends for instance.

[everar]

as long as it's for personal use for something you've purchased, and you're not detected, no corporate body will have moral stake in it, much less care. if valve detects cracking however, they have a responsibility to their vendors and can ban you from your steam library.

[Mucro]

OMG, they won't let you play a game because it isn't released yet? How dare them!

[The Tom]

I don't see what's going on here. You're trying to play Skyrim? You're aware that the little message in the box is in fact 100% correct, ie. it is not lying to you in any way, and Skyrim will not be released for a nother 48 hours or so? Also less on the discussion of cracks, no there isn't a crack because the game is not out yet. Did I mention Skyrim has not yet been released?

OK, I'm sorry, I probably seem like a sarcastic fool, but seriously?

[Wolfie]

The text you got most likely is some guy who misunderstood, you can predonwload skyrim, predownload meas you dot have to do it i 11\11\11 withe vrey one eles but you do have to wait till then to play

I don't deal with cracks and IIRC talking about them is asingt the rules

[everar]

The software is distributed, preloaded & encrypted on lots of machines and there have been lots of cracks for steam preloads in the past. That does not make it any more worthwhile though, and you're far more likely to download a trojan or lose your steam library. Not educating people on where or how to do it, just the consequences and realities of doing so. Think of it like sex ed if you wish, as it seems people that don't know the truth will stumble into greater problems and in greater amount.

[CX gamer]

The game is to be released on 11/11/11. Getting it earlier, is not legal as far as I know. The Steam lock is the same for everyone, and a retailer selling you the copy earlier than he should shouldn't allow you to play, as far as I'm concerned. By that I mean that even if the copy was sold to you earlier legally, the game is technically still not released, which means that you can't play it. This isn't Steam's fault.

Also:
How does it makes sharing games hard? What do you mean exactly?

Game launch doesn't take longer than usual for me, unless there's an update...

They're not constant. Not even that frequent. Besides, it's a piece of software and it is made better by these updates.

Popup adds? Oh, you mean the news template? Yes, that's a bit annoying.

Yep, that can be a bit of a bummer. Still nothing serious though.

Most games download their updates automatically anyway.

Well, it's a DRM most of all. You can't really find a game that doesn't require an internet connection these days, Steam or not.

Alphabetically sorted...not really a mess.

I understand that some people are just impatient and I know that some people have real problems with Steam, but you don't. You can actually play all of your games while some other people can't because of region changes etc.

I don't see the connection to MW2 either but...eh.

Using a crack for a legal game, isn't that bad in my book. I've done it a few times, when I lend my retail games to friends for instance.

Sharing games used to be just to give someone your CD. Now you need to give them your account, risking it completely, while you can't play simultaneously as your friend.

Game launch of CoD4: 0.5 seconds, game launch of (bad game) MW2: 20+ seconds. Because steam needs to boot first, login, give me some annoying message sometimes, preparing to launch the game and then initiates the actual loading time, which is around 0.5 seconds also.

At least every week there's an update. And I get an annoying popup every time it happens.

Yes, the update news thing, it is annoying as hell.

I wouldn't have said 'most', but at least of those games, it lets you know it will, and usually gives an option to disable it.

Agreed. I miss the days that CD verification was all that was needed.

My alphabet sucks xD But yeah, can't argue about that.

Also I forgot to mention that steam breaks the standard windows GUI, and I hate programs that do that (iTunes, Xfire, ..). It kills consistency, thus makes the operating system harder to use.

The text you got most likely is some guy who misunderstood, you can predonwload skyrim, predownload meas you dot have to do it i 11\11\11 withe vrey one eles but you do have to wait till then to play

I don't deal with cracks and IIRC talking about them is asingt the rules

No, the woman said that they got the shipment early and were allowed to sell them already. I didn't complain.

I may sound like a little bsh for saying all of this. It's just that if it wasn't for steam, I would be playing Skyrim now.

[Wolfie]

No, the woman said that they got the shipment early and were allowed to sell them already. I didn't complain

What she did was ilegal tehn if you got a CD...if i understand you corectly

NO one besides those with ilgegal copys, can play skyrim right now, evrey where I know what they did was illeagl

if someoen told you other wise they lied and you should blame them not steam

I may sound like a little bsh for saying all of this. It's just that if it wasn't for steam, I would be playing Skyrim now.

And so you blame it for a lot of things becuse you cant play skyrim before its out?

if it was not for the day it comes out we would have it, is that bad? no

[The Tom]

OK, frankly I've seen enough. This is not a post about Skyrim, it's descending into a discussion on Steam as well as cracks and the like which is not allowed here, no matter how 'legal' they may be.

Skyrim does not come out until Friday. End of story. See you then.