Steamed!!!!!!

[Hauldren Collider]

God forbid the companies try to find some way of delivering better products to you. Nay, this is an invasion of your PRIVACY! Torches and pitchforks, now!

[Proteus_MST]

I hope noone of the european players at Apolyton makes the mistake of buying Civ V directly from steam, however...
obviously Steam uses its 1 US$ = 1 Eur equation for the Standard edition of Civ V,
meaning that we would have to pay 49.99 Eur for Civ V Std (= 63.19 US$) compared to 49.99 US$ for people from USA
(Civ V Deluxe strangely comes with a slighty reduced conversion ratio ... it "just" costs 54.99 Eur ( = 69.51 US$ ) compared to 59.99 US$ for people ordering from USA).
(although it looks like Europe is still better off than Australia in these regards...Australians get screwed by Steam by having to pay 79.99 US$ [Std] or 89.95 US$ [Deluxe])

Definitely cheaper to buy it at Amazon, with "just" 44.95 Eur ( = 56.82 US$) for the Std Edition inclusive free shipping (they don´t have the deluxe edition there... Just a Special edition, which comes with some goodies, like tin soldiers, but also sells at a much higher price [ 79.95 Eur] )

Addendum:
Looks like Amazon UK is even cheaper...
at Amazon UK Civ V Std just costs 24.99 GBP ( = 38.65 US$ ) ... even cheaper than the Steam prices for USA:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-2-Sid-Meiers-Civilization/dp/B003ELORWE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1283223906&sr=8-1

[rah]

What you say is true and I'm not denying the pervasiveness of this invasion of privacy. I am saying that I try to minimize this bull**** as much as possible in 'real life'. I dont use loyalty cards. I dont shop at stores where I'm asked my phone number, or I refuse to tell them.

I do buy a lot with cash to avoid some tracking but I save so much money using loyalty cards that it's worth letting them have that information.

And as much as I like not leaving a trail, I don't want to be that grungy hermit that's living off the grid in a lot of the futuristic novels that I've read.

[SpencerH]

I am not a hermit either. Occasionally grungy, sure, but not a hermit.

I guess my perspective is simple, I should be asked whether I want to contribute information about my playing habits. If that was done I would almost certainly say yes. However, it should be illegal for them to acquire non-public info from my PC without my consent. If personnel from Valve/Steam were looking through binoculars at what I'm doing on my PC it would clearly be illegal. Why is this behaviour condoned simply because it is less obvious than "window peeping"?

P.S. I like the new sig.

[Modo44]

However, it should be illegal for them to acquire non-public info from my PC without my consent.

Is there no info about that in the Steam terms of use? If there is, then they're not doing anything you didn't agree to. Don't like it? Vote with your money.

[Roman]

I have followed Civilization 5 up until it was announced that it will use compulsory Steam at which point I stopped. Now I am just checking in to see if by any chance this has been altered, since it is not close to the release date. Unfortunately, it appears that Civilization 5 still requires Steam, so it is now clear I will be skipping this game.

In fact, I am gradually moving away from computer gaming (I even didn't purchase Starcraft 2, due to the activation requirement), since an increasing number of games use online activation (or some variation thereof) and I am trying to minimize purchases of software that are dependent on the continued existence of a company to function/install/activate. Although I do feel a sense of sadness over the direction gaming is heading, it is probably just as wel, after all, there are plenty of other hobbies that are enjoyable and perhaps even productive to boot, so this is a useful push for me in that direction.

[Asher]

I'm genuinely amazed at how many people are so silly about this.

[Al B. Sure!]

I've discovered that certain people have a neurotic need to complain about something, especially in a video game context. If you go on the operationsports.com forums and look at postings in the Madden section or go to starcraft2.com and see what people have said on there... it's crazy. Like, really? You're complaining about that? Really? You're going to deprive yourself of fun because you want to make a stand against the evil corporation and their **** feature/policy that is nothing and has very little effect on you?

[SpencerH]

Is there no info about that in the Steam terms of use? If there is, then they're not doing anything you didn't agree to. Don't like it? Vote with your money.

It's always helpful if one reads the thread content since doing so tends to minimize inane comment.

[Asher]

His post is on topic and relevant. Your whining is just inane.

[BgT]

People trolling about Steam here need to get a life. Christ.

Steam isn't malware. It's awesome. If you don't want it, don't use it. It installs the game to the desktop as usual, you launch it and it'll play. Deal with it, find something else to whine about.

Go volunteer at a homeless shelter. Go learn an instrument. Do something, anything, more productive than ceaselessly whining about moot ****.

The only thing more annoying than "trolling about Steam" is the people that write posts like yours. No respect, insulting, self-righteous people that think Earth revolves around them. That think that only their problems are the valid ones, and all other problems and opinions are "trolling" and have zero credibility if The One thinks so.

In the future try actually help with constructive criticism. (see: posts written under username ID "rah")

It's called the Customer Experience Improvement program. It not only does that, it also sends the data you are using and how you use it. Which buttons you click and when. Your IP and computer name and username.

First remotely constructive words you have written in this thread. And of course completely wrong. Maybe that is the reason why you prefer insulting and humiliating people over normal discussion. It just tells a lot about your character.
What do you think I have done with my Vista laptop when I bought it? I turned off all this crap, no automatic updates, no customer experience BS,... You can turn off all of that and that is the difference that you fail to comprehend.

Every time you start typing characters in your web address bar in any browser, it sends those characters to Google/Bing/Yahoo/etc before you even hit "enter".

LOL, that is all I am going to say. You are clueless. I will try not to spend much more of my time with you. You better stay with insulting and being self-righteous about everything, it's what you do best, it seems. Friendly advice: try checking your browser's options sometimes.

Edit: I can't believe you are Canadian as I see now. In last 4 months I had only 4 cases of "I can not believe how arrogant some people are online" and all 4 were Canadians. Nothing against Canada, such a nice country, just an amazing coincidence. One of them was ripping on professional grade LCD price, because "for this price I would have expected to have less lag in games". Another one was defending his right to free downloading of NHL games from torrent sites, because "I am Canadian and my taxes fund CBC"

You only have to connect to activate it. (Obviously you have a connection since you just posted here) After that you don't need an internet connection, unless you change your hardware so much that the software thinks it's on a different machine.

Ok, all this is acceptable.

If you have windows 7 on your computer you've already accepted more intrusive software, is the point I'm making.

As I said, you can switch basically all of it. If you couldn't, EU would strike Microsoft with another billion fine.

Yes, you don't have to buy it, but at least have a real reason instead of just a negative knee jerk reaction to STEAM.

Some people probably do that, others don't. Even the guys from the first group, however, have some credible reasons.

And actually if I thought a boycott would actually diminish the possibility of software not being released like that in the future, I'd probably have some interest.

Fair point and I understand your position.

I'm betting that most people that are making the most noise will cave and buy the game.

I think I will wait and see how this goes. In the end I might do what I did with one other game, bought recently. The title doesn't matter, but publisher's name starts with U. There were so many problems with the online connectivity that I downloaded a pirate version. So I am playing a pirate version after I bought a licensed software.

And that is the whole point. Something is very wrong with the state of the industry if pirated game gives me much better playing experience than the original game. The publishers are missing that and they are shooting themselves in the knee with recent protections. The thing that I hate most is very clear - if I buy original game, I want to have at least as good gaming experience as the pirate. Do I ask for too much? 3-5% memory for the Steam client? How many of these "clients" we have installed all the time, each eating 3-5%? Online all the time? Rootkit that kills your CD/DVD player? (I have boycotted all games with that protection) What's next?

I have bought good games without ANY copyright protection and their decision was simple: instead of paying rights for the protection, we lower the cost of the game/development. Most games 20 years ago that I played were pirate versions, I admit. Civ included, before I decided to buy it to support the developer. I still bought all the games I really liked, like SimCity, Capitalism, Civ, even if I had pirated copies already. And I bought all the titles from these series since then. Publishers are so shortsighted and from my 9 year involvement in PC game development industry I can only say that things are getting worse. Part of the reason why I left, was also because I knew how often we were "cheating" the clients, covering up bugs to hit the deadline that publisher didn't want to postpone, our work being completely mass production oriented, adding shinny marketing/publisher requested additions instead of working for better gameplay and fixing the documented bugs. Disgusting.

Being forced to playing pirated game when I have bought original is just so insane. Why doesn't one of these publishers decide to release a big game COMPLETELY without protection and then we see how the sales will be? Let the game have some kind of identification for online play, but that's all. I predict that sales would not be lower.

Bottom line - I wanted to preorder Civ 5 and I am not able to do so after I learned that there would be some "new" protection system that might be good or bad. I will let others be lab rats.

[Hauldren Collider]

Where to start?

[Hauldren Collider]

In the future try actually help with constructive criticism. (see: posts written under username ID "rah")

Maybe I could start with this....

Maybe that is the reason why you prefer insulting and humiliating people over normal discussion. It just tells a lot about your character.

This is pretty golden.

You are clueless. I will try not to spend much more of my time with you. You better stay with insulting and being self-righteous about everything,

DING DING DING Oh man

Edit: I can't believe you are Canadian as I see now. In last 4 months I had only 4 cases of "I can not believe how arrogant some people are online" and all 4 were Canadians. Nothing against Canada, such a nice country, just an amazing coincidence. One of them was ripping on professional grade LCD price, because "for this price I would have expected to have less lag in games". Another one was defending his right to free downloading of NHL games from torrent sites, because "I am Canadian and my taxes fund CBC"

Argh now I'm torn...

Asher, I need help, what should I say to this guy? I'm having enough trouble breathing, let alone typing.

[Hauldren Collider]

By the way, "butthurt" is an appropriate tag for this article.

And Asher is definitely an expert on that

[Asher]

He's too stupid to live. Just ignore him.

He's probably composing a post about the faked moon landing in the OTF now. He's the type to do that.