Is it possible to buy new vegas in a store and then get a Steam emulator to run the game without activating on Steam?

I refer to Bansama's previous comment.

There is no legal way.

Then yes. : )

Steam IS the DRM on Fallout:New Vegas, so no, I doubt they'll remove the Steam requirement down the road.

If Obsidian were telling the truth that the game was going to be as moddable as FO3 then yes the FNV exe will be DRM free, it has to be to work with FOSE.

The makers of FOSE will have to make a New Vegas compatible version or it won't.

GECK is out on launch day. It's likely there will be a lot of mods including FOSE within days.

Guess I'm NOT getting the game then - there's NO way I'm going to make a Steam account.

I'll crack it as soon as possible.

I don't know, I own Farcry 2 in a box as I do almost everything. I assume they removed the DRM though as they did for all other versions... if you mean it launches without using Steam then that is interesting.

Anyway, that's not the same as removing Steamworks and there are no examples of that happening to a Steamworks version of the game. There are exmples of Steamworks being removed for sale on another platform, but not of removing it from a Steam version. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

It doesn't really matter though, honestly. What is the moral issue with downloading a cracked version and playing it outside of Steam? As long as you bought the game first I don't see how playing it could be considered in any way "wrong."

It is not wrong, it is within your consumer rights. Companies just have a habit of trying to crap on the consumer when they want oh, I don't know, a personal backup etc. It has already been ruled in Europe (I believe) that you can crack games and movies, etc if the DRM interferes with your experience and/or making a backup copy for yourself.

I can't recommend the yarr life, but if you buy the game I don't see how this should be an issue to avoid having Steam. It's not entirely legal in the US, but it is within your consumer rights, as I said above.

Sorry for OT'ing. Which reminds me of the Polish retail version, which had extra DRM in the fallout3.exe, so anyone who bought the original, had to say byebye to mods..;|

Yeah I remember that. It took a lot of effort to find a crack that would work, to actually be able to install mods.