Ah WON...second time that's been mentioned to me over the last seven days. Memories.

-HM

Does anyone really care if Steam is running in the background?  Is anyone's computer so crappy that they notice any kind of slowdown because of it?  I know I never do.

Mostly because Steam was initially designed to solve a specific problem. How do I ensure that everyone is playing the exact same version of the game with minimal time between 'conversions'. Everytime you launch a game it checks if the game has a new version. Which is why it needs to be running. These roots are in the old CS days as migrations between patch revisions were somewhat hectic affairs.

Thus the client not only downloads the game initally but keeps it up to date. WHile this may not be a huge issue with some games, for competitive MP games with frequent patches (CS/CS:S/TF2/CS:GO) this is pretty important

Of course you run into weird things like in Civ5 where patches would inevitably 'break' save games and the inabilty to control 'revisions' was problematic (though this is somewhat mitigated now by 'beta' streams you can publish via Steam).

That's more about companies incorporating Steam's DRM CEG into the exectuable.

"Techncially" you don't have to as with all the Steamworks features, but most devs/publishers throw it in (other throw more stuff just for fun)

I have to agree I recall vaugely that SoaSE didn't have any DRM, taht was kinda the point. It didn't even have the Impulse GOO thingy.

Whatever happened it wasn't because of the game

Quite correct.  The only 'DRM' that was applied was that you had to have Stardock Central / Impulse to *patch* the game.  If you didn't want patches...  and heck, I think they released at least one or two stand-alone patches before they went that route.

Check numbers on steam, you are alone

Except that the game doesn't have to do that. That's by choice of the developer.

I just tried it with AI War. Kill Steam, launch AiWar.exe. AI War opened, Steam did not. With Steam shut off there's no overlay or Steam achievements of course, but the game runs just fine.

Civ 5 probably won't do that, because they're using Steam for their multiplayer invite system as well and at that point it's easier to say "require Steam to be on" than to say "if Steam isn't on, don't enable the entire MP system of the game".

That's what I'd expect Galciv 3 to do as well. Writing your own versions of that stuff just for the tiny minority that are still not on board with Steam really isn't worth the extra developer effort and bugs.

GalCiv III "should" allow you to play your singleplayer (and hotseat?) experience without Steamworks stuff active (no Steam) and without internet connection. If you want achievements, friend lists, multiplayer... hit Steam.exe and there you go. One can dream, right?

My Steam games collection has been increased mainly because of free game (Bard's Tale) and free Steam keys for Kickstarter/Indie games (like FTL, Xenonauts, Shadowrun Returns...). Otherwise, it's a really small collection. Games like XCOM:EU, GalCivIII or Dawn of War 2 (with the initial GFWL+Steamworks combo) are worth all the useless features (to me) of the made-out-of-candy-DRM known as Steamworks.

Myself I had a personal experience where 'auto patching' of the game would have saved my bacon

I was playing Dragon Age2. Doing pretty well and I used Isabela a lot as my Rogue. About 3/4 way through the game, I'm noticing my main character seems to be attacking slowly. I thought well maybe I got some kind of spell cast on me. Oh and I did change my armor. Maybe it's just that. Further on my main character is literally moving like molasses. Attack speed even worse than a 2 handed weapons (and I'm doing a stick/board build). It's really confusing.

That was patched out awhile ago, but I never checked so my character was basically moving through molasses in combat because of Isabela.

Yes it was a game bug. But auto patching can, at times, save your bacon.

Certainly auto-patching is a double edged sword. It would have saved me in DragonAge2. But Ive also been victim to the bad side of that too. Civ5 patches were certainly extremely disruptive (though important as they included lots of good fixes generally speaking) because they usually broke saves. So yeah losing your save, or in some cases where major gameplay changes were introduced and destroyed your save even if it loads(happiness being local instead of a global resource) are problematic.

Not for me, and that is the difference between us.

Just to clarify something, I'm not a Steam-hater. I don't think Steam is evil, or any of that nonsense, some fanatics like to spout. I just don't like having to use it.

I tried Steam a couple years ago. First when Half-Life 2 came out, then again in 2010. About two years ago I stopped using it, because I didn't like the experience. It felt too restrictive for me. The whole "Agree to our new SSA, or say good bye to your games"-business last year didn't make me want to go back either.

If you like to use Steam, then that is fine. I'm happy for you. I, however, prefer to have a choice where to buy my games, and to have control over how and when I play them. With the continuing move to Steam-only releases, the former is less and less possible. Though there are gladly still exceptions. The latter, however, is often restricted through the Steam-client. It doesn't matter, if that is because of publisher-demand or not. The result is the same.

When FE:LH came out, I got a free Steam-key fo it, because I was one of those, who pre-ordered E:WoM. I liked FE, but not enough to go back to Steam for LH. With GalCiv, however, I am willing do so, because I love the series.

Frogboy already said in this thread, that a non-Steam release is not going to happen. So, all I'm asking for now is, that GalCiv 3 not require the client to be running in order to play.

That isn't unreasonable, is it?