Java and Steam

Just a suggestion for SI, but this is either the second or third year that SI have used Steam to sell/run FM.

Every year, the vast majority of people having issues seem to stem from two things - Steam is not working properly or doing something to crash the game, or the installanywhere client that is based on java does not install the game properly, or it can't run, or people put the disc in the drive, run setup and nothing happens.

There are far more basic and dare I say standard installer packages for games that do not rely upon the java platform - something which I would suspect the majority of computers either do not have at all on their machine or have a version that is well out of date.

Steam is an online service that you must be signed in to before you can play the game. I have grievances about this approach. Firstly, you are relying on third party software to play a game. There is no need for third party software to play a game, and you shouldn't have to rely upon it to play.

The other problem of course is that if you don't have an internet connection or your connection is down, you can't play the game - without messing about in steam. This is something that the average computer user will likely not know to do or even think about doing.

I think it's time SI switched to a more standard installer and ditched Steam.

I used Steam last year and had no problems with it at all.

This year though, it's been a different story. The fact that you can't run the game without going through Steam is really, really disappointing. Not only have I paid more than I would have in a shop/online, but I've had to fiddle around for a whole evening getting the game to run and stop it crashing. When I eventually had to re-install Steam last night, I didn't realised I'd have to re-download the game as well.

For anyone who hasn't bought the game yet, I'd strongly reccommend just getting the DVD version. I won't be buying from Steam next year, certainly.