Then you have basically 2 choices.. don't play the game and make your opinion known with your wallet (the most effective way to communicate your opinion to a company) or use a crack to remove the Steam prerequisite. Is that still legal if you own the original game, i.e. crack your own game to remove a certain feature?
You don't own the original game. You pay for a license for unlimited use of the game. But one term of use is you're not allowed to use a crack to hack into it. So, yes, it is illegal to do so. I realize European courts tend to rule differently, but that's still officially what it says. And while you have to run steam, it runs silently in the background with minimal use of the processor and can be run offline (you don't have to be online to run civ, just to activate it).
You can bet your ass there will be DLCs for the game for a "small fee".. special buildings, monuments, parks and whatnot.. this has become the norm for new games to make some extra money besides selling the game.
Awesome news. I hope it will be easily moddable. Sim City 4 + Rush Hour + Mods was so amazing. Loved it. Happy Emi!
I'm fine with DLC provided it adds enough content to be worthwhile and the base game is fun without it. Many add cosmetic-only DLC, which strikes me as completely pointless.
Don't underestimate the need of people to have everything and pay for it with micropayments.. many Facebook games provide a huge income through DLCs and it's why the exist. The producers are betting on the need of people to get results faster and have shinier things and it's only a dollar or so.. that's nothing, right? It's up for everyone to decide if they want it.. i have no problem with that unless the DLC is needed to win games or puts my opponents at an advantage because they decided to shell out an extra buck. If the basic game i bought is balanced for everyone i don't mind if the other's have a specialized suit of armor, a special car, house, pet or whatever.. it's a cosmetic choice. However it stops when it affects gameplay.
Funny you should say that... because you won't be able to do that with SimCity: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/28/simcity-requires-internet-connection-to-play-will-be-sold-outsi Just like that, SimCity gets dropped from my "must buy" list.
Depressing part is that if it fails, EA will think it was because it needed more multiplayer. Idiots.
Ah crap.. there had to be a dark spot in this, didn't it? I really don't like to be forced to do something to be able to play the game.. what if i only want my endless hours of single play tweaking without someone at the other end of the world somehow messing up my plans? Bad move... at least give us the option to enable/disable multiplayer.
You don't have a stable internet connection? I agree it's less than ideal, but 90% of my decision is going to be based on whether it's a good game. I don't think internet will account for much.
No, I have a stable internet connection -- I'm just stubborn and don't like being FORCED into having to log into a service for no particular reason. Guess I'm just silly, but I'm just one of those people who doesn't like/need to be plugged in 110% of the time. Or, like I said, being forced to do something... because it's there. Cheers, -CM-
Whether I have stable internet connection or not doesn't matter, what matters is that I don't like being treated like a criminal every time I want to play I game that I bought. A one-time activation over the internet? Okay, that's less than ideal but I'll put up with that. But every single time? No, that's the line for a lot of us. The big publishers keep pushing and pushing with their DRM, they want more and more control over how we play and when. This is it, I'm not giving another inch. There are some practical concerns, of course. My connection is reasonably stable, but every once in a while it does go down for a few hours. Not to mention gaming on my laptop which might not always be in a location with an internet connection. Why can't I play a SP game I purchased in those instances? Why should I be inconvenienced for owning a legal copy of a game? EDIT: See, this is the path that EA wants to bring us down, banning people from games they've purchased for modding them, even just the single player part. Why? So that we pay for their DLC, not free mods made by the community. This is part of the purpose of online verification on launch.
And here it goes.. there is not even a demo out much less any founded, hard facts apart from the few tidbits and people are already claiming they're out. Some things never change
While steam usually allows offline mode and I don't know why they wouldn't do it in this case, I'm always confused at people posting on the internet who complain about having to be on the internet to play a game.