I weas shocked to find that Civilization V required steam to play. My computer already lags from Civilization IV (I guess that´s only my fault for having a thirty-two bit system, instead of sixty-four, but still...) and each turn on Civ V takes several seconds to complete even at the beginning; at least with Civ IV it took until the game was almost over. On top of that, I find that everytime I´m connected to the internet I receive advertisements. Now, I did not ask for ads. I did not pay their advertising department. I was not curious about whatever games steam had managed to acquire the rights to, I just wanted to play damn civilization. But I had to open two different programs to play one game. Plus, I had purchased a disk from a store that did not even have the game on it. Why did I pay fifty dollars for packaging, shipping, storage, sales tax, etc, when I only ended up downloading it anyway?

When I downloaded quake and it´s mission packs, I was also laden with naïve expectations. I thought that I was downloading the same program I had bought the first time (I lost my originial disk, you see, and though I needed only copy it from one system to the next I stupidly forgot to do it). Now it is laden with DRM--can´t be copied or even operated unless steam.exe is also running. Steam.exe takes up twice the amount of memory that quake ever did. It´s still not much, but it´s the principle damnit.

That's why I play good old games exclusively. :)

Yes, I am not joking.

I love GOG, but I also really like Steam. I can understand issues with their DRM policy and some minor quirks with the program itself, but it's always been a solid, cheap (usually) way for me to pick up games and keep my game library organized. Valve is an incredible developer anyway; you ought to have it if only to buy their stuff.

Granted, the account problem the OP had is pretty obnoxious. I've never had this happen to me before, but I'm currently having issues buying games as my login info is linked to a disabled email account. Their customer service really suffers from the lack of a phone line.

That one really rubbed me the wrong way. As far as I know, Civ 4 sold very well, so why did they feel the need to ship the sequel with Steamworks? Has PC piracy increased so much since 2004, or what?

It just seems to me like total disregard for the customers.

And I see your point as well. We are very understanding people.

Incidentally, I noticed you specified non-Valve Steamworks games. Do you make an exception for Valve games?

No, I don't buy Valve games, but I do see the reason they'd require Steam for their own games. Other developers? Not so much.

They just hope that they can get away with the DRM scam known as Steam.......
Just don't buy ANY DRM games; it's the only and exclusive solution...

Sacrilege!

lol - yeah, the only Valve game I 'own' is Portal. And that's only because they gave it away free a while back.

Steam kills kittens. GoG cures cancer. All hail GoG.

It's the bundled steamworks multiplayer features that come with the DRM. Makes the online much easier to manage and develop from the developers viewpoint.

For a high profile game like Civ 5, it probably saved a lot of money for fireaxis, since the tools are free.

Judging by it's sales, the majority of customers didn't mind at all.

you certainly do not need steamworks for the mp part, anyone who believes that is a true sheep.

You're playing Quake wrong if you're still using glquake or winquake in this day in age. Just grab id1 and use the source port of your choice.

Put quake.exe into dosbox if you want to stick it to the man. ;) Hell, you can compile the exe for glquake or winquake if you want.

I have over 100 games on steam. Other than the servers being down so I can'tdownload my games, I've never had a problem with it