Not happy -- Crusader Kings requiring Steam

unmerged(213039) · Apr 3, 2012

Just bought Crusader Kings from Gamefly. Got it downloaded. Installing it. THEN I see it "requires steam." :angry:

If I'd known that in the FIRST PLACE I would have bought it off Steam, or maybe not at all (I'm really really tired of Steam, it's just time for me to stop gaming if everything is going to require Steam). Now I have to mess around with TWO third parties to play my Crusader Kings game -- Gamefly, and Steam.

At this very moment I'm still going through all the hassle of trying to retrieve my old Steam registration.

Question: Does Steam have to always be running for me to play the game? I really dislike Steam, it's just spam running in the background I'm forced to run.

Worse yet, just philosophically, I paid $39.99 for this game -- is my ability to use it forever dependent on a connection to Steam?

This post is just a customer gripe.. but it's worth saying.. you're punishing the people who pay for the games. Steam is a real pain. Online activation is a pain. It's another game and topic, but I just went through a major hassle getting my Rome Total War working again. Now with Crusader Kings I've got 2 third parties to have to deal with.

/me is in a mood now, ready to throw some courtiers in prison :laugh:.. IF I can get past Steam gray boxes of annoyance and actually play the game..

Romtos · Apr 3, 2012

Not that it should be a requirement before buying a game, but a short look (or a post) on this forum would tell you the GamersGate version is the only version not requiring Steam, and we could have guided you towards GG.

Castellon · Apr 3, 2012

Hi Sorry you were not aware of the gamefly version requiring steam activation, I believe the only one that does not is the Gamersgate version.

If you cannot find your old steam account info, you can just create a new account, I know many people find it safer to have a different account their for each game they own.
You should check with them if this breaches any TOS first.

CK2 does not use the Steam Copy protection, so you do not need to stay logged in or even login to play each time if you use offline mode. Just to get it setup the first time.
Hope that helps a bit.

AndrewT · Apr 4, 2012

sixstrings said:
Question: Does Steam have to always be running for me to play the game? I really dislike Steam, it's just spam running in the background I'm forced to run.

No. You can run the game by double-clicking on ck2.exe .

Worse yet, just philosophically, I paid $39.99 for this game -- is my ability to use it forever dependent on a connection to Steam?

No, but that's how you have to get future patches.

This post is just a customer gripe.. but it's worth saying.. you're punishing the people who pay for the games. Steam is a real pain. Online activation is a pain. It's another game and topic, but I just went through a major hassle getting my Rome Total War working again. Now with Crusader Kings I've got 2 third parties to have to deal with.

Paradox say that 90%+ of their sales are on Steam. And their overall sales have never been better. So it seems clear that not many people share your feeling that using Steam is a "real pain" or somehow a "punishment". But if you can get Gamefly to refund your money, you could either deal directly with Steam or buy from GamersGate instead.

Klewer · Apr 4, 2012

So many people on here always calling Steam spyware, very laughable. If you don't like it, simple don't use it. Do your proper research as a consumer when buying a product.

You should be grateful it exists as it provides Paradox with the major portion of their income and funds the development of the games you love. I doubt they would be releasing the quality and frequency of games and DLC they are without Steam.

Darkrenown · Apr 4, 2012

Sorry you missed it, but the Gamefly page clearly says "requires 3rd party download" in the Specs & Requirements section of their CK2 page. If you clicked on the "view more requirements" button right by that it would have told you specifically it requires steam.

Castellon · Apr 4, 2012

Klewer said:
So many people on here always calling Steam spyware, very laughable. If you don't like it, simple don't use it. Do your proper research as a consumer when buying a product.

You should be grateful it exists as it provides Paradox with the major portion of their income and funds the development of the games you love. I doubt they would be releasing the quality and frequency of games and DLC they are without Steam.

It is not like people would not buy games if steam did not exist, they would just use other online retailers.
I don't think people complain that it exists, only when it is the only option, we solved that complaint by offering a steam free version available on Gamersgate.
Now most people can be happy, which is the way we like it.

Rindis · Apr 5, 2012

Castellon said:
CK2 does not use the Steam Copy protection, so you do not need to stay logged in or even login to play each time if you use offline mode. Just to get it setup the first time.
Hope that helps a bit.

And every other time you install it, after new system purchases, after hard drive crashes....

Castellon said:
I don't think people complain that it exists, only when it is the only option, we solved that complaint by offering a steam free version available on Gamersgate.

Glad this came up. I think I would have assumed that the boxed version wouldn't need Steam and gone through the same disappointment at some point. (I had just initially checked Gamersgate and had no idea that anything other than Steam would require Steam... but I see on the web store that the boxed version does require Steam.)

Just to throw an idea out there for the future, would it be possible for the boxed version installer (and maybe the various web download version ones too) to have an option for Steam integration? Default to link to a Steam account and get auto updates through it (I assume that's the point), and have an advanced option to not do that and not worry about having a Steam account/be online to install?

s1234567890m · Apr 5, 2012

Rindis said:
And every other time you install it, after new system purchases, after hard drive crashes....

Glad this came up. I think I would have assumed that the boxed version wouldn't need Steam and gone through the same disappointment at some point. (I had just initially checked Gamersgate and had no idea that anything other than Steam would require Steam... but I see on the web store that the boxed version does require Steam.)

Just to throw an idea out there for the future, would it be possible for the boxed version installer (and maybe the various web download version ones too) to have an option for Steam integration? Default to link to a Steam account and get auto updates through it (I assume that's the point), and have an advanced option to not do that and not worry about having a Steam account/be online to install?

so an option to not recieve patches? (boxes are virtually none existant btw)
also back your steam CK2 into a disk so you dont need to reinstall it...

unmerged(81596) · Apr 6, 2012

Oh lordy, now patches don't exist outside steam. Hint: you'd just use the same ones as GG that don't require steam as it is.

The problem, of course, would be DLC handling. Easily solved were Connect used, but sadly that seems to have been pretty much abandoned after steam changed their licencing last year.

Castellon · Apr 6, 2012

Connect has not been abandoned, We have someone working on it.
I don't know what is cleared for publication so I will let Marketing handle that but don't write it off.

unmerged(213039) · Apr 6, 2012

Romtos said:
Not that it should be a requirement before buying a game, but a short look (or a post) on this forum would tell you the GamersGate version is the only version not requiring Steam, and we could have guided you towards GG.

Well that doesn't help -- so I could have bought it from Gamersgate and no Steam required at all. I picked the worst option, Gamefly storing my cloud copy + steam to activate it. Could have just gone Gamersgate. Then again.. I'm only on Gamefly because they bought out Direct2drive, that's why I bought it from them I mean how many of these clients do I need to be a member of. One day I logged in and just poof all my Direct2drive purchased games were gone. I had to google news to sort of figure out that eventually my games would be migrated over to the new owner, then I had hassle signing up for Gamefly and it pulling up my purchase history from the other company.

And therein lies the problem with cloud copies, it's a "cloud" it can and will go poof at some point in the future, eventually. That's why I don't want to rely on Steam, that's another layer on top of relying on the online store. What if Steam gets bought out. It's too late now I've already paid, but I'm taking twice the risk of not having permanent access to something I bought (not rented) without anything to justify the risk and inconvenience of multiple memberships and spam clients.

I guess I have a "steam version" of the game, or do I have a gamefly + steam version, then I guess there's a "gamersgate version," and probably some other version that comes on disc (but yet requiring steam?). Do all the various verions have different patches? Sounds like a mess.

What this boils down to is, Steam is using monopoly tactics to force people to get signed up with them. Ultimately it's anti-competitive to other stores, now you've got different game versions for different stores -- some store versions requiring activation on a competitor's store, how does that make any sense?

Centurion1973 · Apr 6, 2012

1. Why did you buy anything from GF after they screwed up D2D transfer?

2. You dont need GF to reinstall game - its tied to your Steam account, so everything can be done within Steam client.

3. Steam isnt "spam client" and if you dont want to get news/adds from Steam you can easily disable them in settings.

unmerged(213039) · Apr 6, 2012

Rindis said:
And every other time you install it, after new system purchases, after hard drive crashes....

Ya, that's the problem. If you like to play with mods, you sometimes want to install multiple copies in different directories and be free to easily reinstall and get playing if you screw up your installation. I'll be afraid to try any mods now, I don't want to screw up this Steam install and have to deal with all that again.

Bottom line, the game costs 39.99. That is payment enough. But with this state of affairs, I'm required to:

1. Have internet service.

2. Run Steam's client and view their ads, and depend on Steam always being on and working correctly, to verify I bought the game from yet another company who in turn compensated Paradox. That's 3 parties, 4 counting me.

Maybe there should be another client to run, to verify Steam has verified I bought from Gamefly. And how about another piece of spam just to double check everything one more time.

Centurion1973 · Apr 6, 2012

sixstrings said:
Ya, that's the problem. If you like to play with mods, you sometimes want to install multiple copies in different directories and be free to easily reinstall and get playing if you screw up your installation. I'll be afraid to try any mods now, I don't want to screw up this Steam install and have to deal with all that again.

Bottom line, the game costs 39.99. That is payment enough. But with this state of affairs, I'm required to:

1. Have internet service.

2. Run Steam's client and view their ads, and depend on Steam always being on and working correctly, to verify I bought the game from yet another company who in turn compensated Paradox. That's 3 parties, 4 counting me.

Maybe there should be another client to run, to verify Steam has verified I bought from Gamefly. And how about another piece of spam just to double check everything one more time.

IIRC game can be run without Steam client running, so you can move/copy your install to another folder and do whatever you want with it.

You dont have to view any adds - you dont have to run Steam client to play this game and even if you run Steam, you can disable news/adds in Steam settings.

btw.: I dont see internet requirement as big problem for anyone living outside of antarctica.

s1234567890m · Apr 6, 2012

sixstrings said:
Ya, that's the problem. If you like to play with mods, you sometimes want to install multiple copies in different directories and be free to easily reinstall and get playing if you screw up your installation. I'll be afraid to try any mods now, I don't want to screw up this Steam install and have to deal with all that again.

Bottom line, the game costs 39.99. That is payment enough. But with this state of affairs, I'm required to:

1. Have internet service.

2. Run Steam's client and view their ads, and depend on Steam always being on and working correctly, to verify I bought the game from yet another company who in turn compensated Paradox. That's 3 parties, 4 counting me.

Maybe there should be another client to run, to verify Steam has verified I bought from Gamefly. And how about another piece of spam just to double check everything one more time.

about the internet thing retail boxes are not exactly a priority by the looks of things....

Wester told us that “this year we’re close to ninety percent of our revenue being digital. Retail sales are like a bonus for us now. We don’t really need retailers any more and that is a release because retailers have not been good for the industry. They’ve not been good for the creative part of the industry, for finding new cool games.”

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/06/p...don’t-really-need-retailers-any-more-says-ceo/

...if you want mods they can use the mod folder if they dont use that you can copy the game files out of the steam folder and they run fine... they dont use steam works DRM

Again in case you missed it you can copy the CK2 game anywhere on a flash drive, DVD, seperate harddrive etc and it will not say hey you need steam to run me....

also dont forget USERDIR.txt

unmerged(213039) · Apr 6, 2012

Centurion1973 said:
1. Why did you buy anything from GF after they screwed up D2D transfer?

2. You dont need GF to reinstall game - its tied to your Steam account, so everything can be done within Steam client.

3. Steam isnt "spam client" and if you dont want to get news/adds from Steam you can easily disable them in settings.

1. All my D2D purchases made it over to Gamefly, it just took a while. As for "why buy from them again?", well I'm trying to minimize how many online game stores I belong to. I used to only buy from D2D, they got bought out fine so I wanted to just stick with the new company that has my library.

2. If that's true, that I can just download this from Steam after the next hard drive crash / reinstall / new computer, then that's good. Are you sure about that though? It's Gamefly that has my purchase record.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I just want to minimize the myriad of online passwords and usernames I have to keep track of. This deal with Steam should be illegal, it's anti-competitive and monopolistic -- customers should be able to freely choose a competing store without penalty. Imagine a deal where Sears requires you to have your purchase receipt be stamped at Walmart to "verify" you bought the stuff at Sears. Doesn't make any sense. If Gamefly has rights to advertise this game and sell it to me, I shouldn't be forced to interact with their competitor Steam.

3. By "spam client" I mean it's running in the background.

We just have different views on this, the onus is not on me to disable things I don't like, the things shouldn't have been forced on me in the first place. Steam is just using this tactic to get a monopoly, forcing people to sign up with their store so obviously they're counting on everyone just giving in for simplicity sake and buying their games from Steam. <-- I don't like that, it's a monopoly tactic.

P.S. I'm sorry to be so negative, but the reality is that consumers of digital goods don't stand up for themselves. I'm not as upset as I sound -- it's $40, that's not a lot of money but it's not ten bucks either. The game is a blast, but I really feel like I'm just renting it now and didn't buy it. If I can't play it without net connected and Steam there to verify every installation then essentially that's a RENTAL.

Ekyman · Apr 6, 2012

sixstrings said:
2. If that's true, that I can just download this from Steam after the next hard drive crash / reinstall / new computer, then that's good. Are you sure about that though? It's Gamefly that has my purchase record.

Yes, all you have to do to reinstall the game is log in to Steam and redownload the game through them. Even though your purchase history is on Gamefly, Steam now has a record that you own the game.

3. By "spam client" I mean it's running in the background.

It's possible to completely close Steam so that it's no longer running in the background.

Imagine a deal where Sears requires you to have your purchase receipt be stamped at Walmart to "verify" you bought the stuff at Sears. Doesn't make any sense.

That analogy isn't correct, because Steam isn't requiring that games bought at other stores activate on Steam. It's completely Paradox's decision.

We just have different views on this, the onus is not on me to disable things I don't like, customers shouldn't be unnecessarily forced to interact with the 3rd party in the first place. Steam is just using this tactic to get a monopoly, forcing people to sign up with their store so obviously they're counting on everyone just giving in for simplicity sake and buying their games from Steam. <-- I don't like that, it's a monopoly tactic.

Although this can arguably contribute to Steam's future sales, it's not all on Steam. Steam doesn't require that all games sold on Steam do this, it's a developer choice to make Steam a requirement.

s1234567890m · Apr 6, 2012

1. All my D2D purchases made it over to Gamefly, it just took a while. As for "why buy from them again?", well I'm trying to minimize how many online game stores I belong to. I used to only buy from D2D, they got bought out fine so I wanted to just stick with the new company that has my library.

well since the majority of paradox customers are using steam (80%+) i doubt any new game will be other than steam or Gamersgate, (cuts down preparing patches to be distributed throught 20 other distributors) have a look at there last 5 or so published games

2. If that's true, that I can just download this from Steam after the next hard drive crash / reinstall / new computer, then that's good. Are you sure about that though? It's Gamefly that has my purchase record.

You activate it on steam, you have to do this to play the game after that it is added to your steam library for ever more

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I just want to minimize the myriad of online passwords and usernames I have to keep track of. This deal with Steam should be illegal, it's anti-competitive and monopolistic -- customers should be able to freely choose a competing store without penalty. Imagine a deal where Sears requires you to have your purchase receipt be stamped at Walmart to "verify" you bought the stuff at Sears. Doesn't make any sense. If Gamefly has rights to advertise this game and sell it to me, I shouldn't be forced to interact with their competitor Steam.

You could but then you would only be able to buy it from steam or GG, GF wouldnt have the option to sell it... This way you get to give money to the DD site you like, and make the evil steam use its bandwidth with out you paying them (diabolical)

3. By "spam client" I mean it's running in the background.

you dont need to run it to play the game, Ctrl+C Ctrl+V outside of where steam installs it and running the exe doesn't touch steam, heck running the exe while its in the steam folders doesnt start steam, adds only play if you exit a game when you run it throught steam

an asside dont 'delete' steam so its easier to patch, provide clean back up installs, and you can buy DLC. Just install it on a flash drive (or copy the steam install onto a flash drive, and only plug it in when you need to update your game, ive done this for a year or so

unmerged(213039) · Apr 6, 2012

s1234567890m said:
You activate it on steam, you have to do this to play the game after that it is added to your steam library for ever more

Not necessarily "forever more." Steam could go bankrupt, bought out, or stop working for any number of reasons. And then people can't get their new installations verified. I know it seems like a company will be there forever, or at least more than a few years, but as I found out with D2D -- it can be bought out and shut down just like that. Maybe the record of your purchase gets transferred, maybe it doesn't.

You could but then you would only be able to buy it from steam or GG, GF wouldnt have the option to sell it... This way you get to give money to the DD site you like, and make the evil steam use its bandwidth with out you paying them (diabolical)

It's off topic, but I just wonder what Steam's competitors think about this. Sounds like something the Federal Trade Commission should look into. It's monopolistic, unfair trade practice. If Steam is going to be retailer AND verifier -- then their retailer-only competitors cannot compete, eventually new consumers will just save a step and buy from the store that does the verifying.

Not happy -- Crusader Kings requiring Steam

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