Steam must be running to play DLC content?

[unmerged(730750)]

I made a thread out in the general area about this with no luck, so I'll ask here. Do you need to have the Steam client running to play DLCs bought from Steam?

Background:
Windows 7 machine
Bought the CK II bundle from Steam that has all the DLCs released to date.
Installed CK II through Steam.
Using the Steam launcher, all the DLCs appear in the launcher UI. All DLCs function as advertised (or so far as I know).
If I launch CK II directly from the CK II folder using ck2.exe the game launches straight to vanilla with no DLC interface (this may be WAD).
If I launch from the CK II folder using ck2game.exe, the launcher interface comes up. It recognizes I have all the DLCs. I have all the DLC boxes checked. Launching the game from the launcher then starts vanilla CK II with no DLC content.

All the responses I get are 'launch from the .exe in your local install', which I am doing. I even copied all the files to a different drive and get the same result.

What am I missing / not doing or is this WAD? People are telling me it works for them, which is nice for them I suppose, but doesn't help me much. All help appreciated.

 

[AndrewT]

I just tried it and it works fine for me. I exit Steam, double-click on ck2game.exe which brings up the launcher. All DLCs are checked there, I run the game and go into SP. All 4 of the major DLCs show up down the bottom left of the screen (I didn't bother actually starting a game). I'm not sure why this would be different for you.

Do you perhaps have Steam installed in the system path (c:\program files\)? You could try copying the whole CK2 folder out of there to a user space, like c:\games\ck2\ . Or right-click on both ck2.exe and ck2game.exe and set them to run as admin, and to disable desktop composition.

Just as a matter of interest, why do you care whether Steam is running or not?

 

[unmerged(730750)]

I just tried it and it works fine for me. I exit Steam, double-click on ck2game.exe which brings up the launcher. All DLCs are checked there, I run the game and go into SP. All 4 of the major DLCs show up down the bottom left of the screen (I didn't bother actually starting a game). I'm not sure why this would be different for you.

Do you perhaps have Steam installed in the system path (c:\program files\)? You could try copying the whole CK2 folder out of there to a user space, like c:\games\ck2\ . Or right-click on both ck2.exe and ck2game.exe and set them to run as admin, and to disable desktop composition.

Just as a matter of interest, why do you care whether Steam is running or not?

I have Steam installed in a non-program files directory and have copied the files to a different folder and drive with the same results.

I dunno, I just don't like Steam always looking over my shoulder monitoring my game usage, I suppose. I will try playing with admin settings but I should be running as admin. Thanks for your response, though.

edit - Set to run as admin for all users and disabled desktop comp and it is the same. Short of uninstall / reinstall which I don't really feel like, I guess I'll have to live with Steam.

 

[AndrewT]

I've moved your main thread on this here, so I'll close this one off.