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I am looking into buying Skyrim, but I don't want to go through Steam. Does anyone know if I can buy it without going through Steam? In other words, I want to buy the disc, not download through Steam, or anything silly like that. Any help on the matter would be much appreciated. And, with any luck, I might be able to play it soon!

You can buy it at (probably) every single place that sales video games? There are literally thousands of them and most have online stores, so you don't even have to get up from your chair... I don't know what country you're in so I'm not going to suggest names, but in most of the western world finding a physical copy of Skyrim is about as hard as finding a can of Coke...

Your only legal option if you don't want to use Steam is to get the console version. You can get the PC version on disc of course, but you will need to activate the game through a Steam account to play it.

Yeah, I did some googling after I posted that and found out that you can only play the game after it's been installed through Steam. But I don't understand why it has to go through Steam for me to be able to play it. Steam has been explained to me, so I know how it works. Was Skyrim just made for Steam then? Is that why you can't play it without having to install it? It kind of sounds that way.....

Is there any reason in particular why you'd like to avoid Steam, if I may ask? I use it and it's fabulous. If you're worried about being bothered, you can always play offline...which is what I do!

Because I don't agree with their policies. Some people may use it, and that's perfectly fine, but I don't agree with it, so I won't.

If you can play it 'offline' to Steam, then what was the point in even having it installed through Steam, if you never have to use it again?

Oh, I see! I was just wondering.

I suppose for the construction set sort of thing, but to be honest, I'm not entirely sure. I use Steam because I enjoy not having to track down physical copies of games, and being able to move them from computer to computer at will and rather easily. Beyond that, I'm not very sure!

Uh, sorry, I didn't mean to be unpleasantly snarky, I didn't realise you were talking about Steam activation and not just getting the copy of the game.

But what Avron said is right, there is no reason to fear Steam. I try to avoid feeding the future Skynet with all my personal information too, but I'm quite happy with the way Steam works. You don't have to allow it to access all your saves and stuff, and unlike some social media sites I could name, the options are NOT buried in some obscure and barely visible menu.

I don't like all the DRM trickery either, but as I understand it, in Skyrim's case it's just a matter of online registration.

Avron: That's what I want though: a copy of the game. True, it may clutter up the game case, but I'd rather have the disc in case I want to use it on another computer, the computer crashes, or something silly like that.

It's okay, dzio. I've only heard about DRM and I'm not really sure what it is. What is it, exactly?

So, I can't buy the Skyrim disc at my local gamestore and just play it? That kind of sucks.....I'll do some reading here in a minute and see what I can't find, if anything.

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and you can read more about it here. Basically it's all sorts of technology used to make sure the copyrights are protected. For example a game might have a limited number of instalations available, or you might be forced to log in to some online authentication thing before you can run it. It's not a very nice thing, because it basically puts the limits on how you use the product you've legally bought.

But if your main reason for buying a physical copy of the game is to be able to run it on a different compuer and not be affected by crashes and such, it looks like Steam was made just for you. Once you have a game in your library, you can download it to any computer you want (after logging on first) and you can also use it to store and update your current saves, so you won't lose them if something bad happens to your system.

But that's the thing, though. I don't want to have to use a third-party when playing it. I want to at least have the option of not using it. But it kind of looks like there's no other way around that. Darn. It kind of looks like I might not be playing Skyrim then. Welp, thanks for all your help guys. I'm going to go check out what DRM is!

And as my question was answered....Oh, Mods! *clicks fingers to signal your attention* Please lock this thread or make it go away, or whatever it is you do to threads that no longer have a purpose, please.

Aye aye, Captain!

Locked by request.