Letting off Steam

Dear people at SI

I bought FM 2012 earlier this week. This has always been one of my favorite games, but I haven´t played it much for the past 3-4 years. Since I have recently started working far from home... and indeed far from any towns or „civilization“, I decided that FM 2012 would be the excellent companion out here. So I bought it, of course.

I installed it the same day on my laptop. I had never seen that Steam program earlier, but I finished installing and punched in the code on the back of the manual. I started the program and finished setting up and saving my first game... everything ready for the next trip to the highlands. In the back of my mind lurked some dark suspicion... I had noticed the link when I hovered over the FM icon on the desktop: „steam://rungameid/71.....“. Hmmmm?

When I was going to play the game this evening, the dark suspicion reveiled itself. I can´t play the game. Thanks to you guys and Steam. I have a CD with the game on. I bought it. I have the game installed. From the CD I bought. But I can´t play the game here, since internet connection is required. To verify that the CD in the drive is for real or that I am the owner of it or something. Well... I don´t have the required internet connection! I have AN internet connection, but due to security reasons, game servers and all sorts of ports are blocked. So the CD in my drive is totally useless, even though I paid for it. (And no, don´t start blaming others by gargling about strict policies and all that).

I am not a person that gives up so easily. I saw your instructions on how to set Steam to offline mode, so that I could play the game I bought on my computer when I like to. That again required internet connection to Steam servers. Smart guys you are, huh? Well... I sacrificed some megabytes on my mobile phone and seriously long time as well, to connect to Steam and followed the instructions on how to get Steam into offline mode. But did that work? No, because you launched a humongous patch for that game of yours (yes, yours and not mine, although I own a CD with the game logo on) and Steam wanted to update the game, before I could use the product I had bought.

Hang on... I should be able to download the patch from your site, install it and let that wretched Steam thing verify it. I got to your site, only to find this text:

You may be pleased by this announcement, but I am not. This is the last time I buy your product. Any of your products. This is also the last time I will use Steam and this is possibly the last time I will need the CD I bought with your logo on. What I intend to do, when I get back to the „required“ internet connection, is to let off some more Steam... all of it. There are always other means! When buying your products isn´t sufficient to use them, then something is fundamentally wrong. I bet you people wouldn't accept if you had to activate your car online, each time you intended to go to the grocery store or pick the kids up at school. Or get activation code via text on your mobile each time you want to use your microwave oven! You would probably try to crack the code for the microwave, if the kids are shouting for popcorn all the time... now, what do you expect us to do regarding Steam?

Happy holidays, people. Hope you bought something nice for the money I gave you!

You only need to authenticate it once, getting caught up in the patch download at the same time you were trying to get set up is indeed an extremely unlucky set of circumstances, but it is just that.

A few days earlier and you'd have been happily playing offline with no need for the net connection until you wanted the patch.

The Steam only route has proved highly successful and FM is just the latest in a long line of top titles to go that way, it's essential these days to check out exactly what's entailed when you buy any software, indeed some require a constant net connection to play.

I can understand your frustration. I don't like this marriage between Sega/SI and Steam either. And this version of FM is the first and probably the last time I want to be forced to open an account with a 3rd party company (or whatever you call it, Steam), to be able to play a game I bought. But I can also understand the games manufacturers problems with piracy, and that they are equally frustrated by the amount of revenue they are missing. Or in other words; gets stolen from them.

My main gripe with Steam I think is the way we are forced to update as soon as we go online with it, and there's an update that just starts downloading. No questions "do you want this update? Is it ok to start downloading it now? And beware; you can't roll back to the previous version once you have installed it, and neither will you be able to play the game anymore if you cancel the downloading process".

Would be a little more civilised, wouldn't it, to ask first? As it is now, it's just plain rude.

It's much like some other services I have seen, that forces you to log in with a Facebook account to get access? Facebook? I don't have a facebook account, and never will.

This Steam thingy is much the same. I don't want a Steam account. An SI account, fine, Steam no.

It's just plain rude.

No questions "do you want this update? Is it ok to start downloading it now? And beware; you can't roll back to the previous version once you have installed it, and neither will you be able to play the game anymore if you cancel the downloading process"..

This I agree with, the right place to make the point is on the Steam forums though, I'd certainly subscribe to any thread there suggesting it.

This I agree with, the right place to make the point is on the Steam forums though, I'd certainly subscribe to any thread there suggesting it.

Why? It's SI/SEGA's game, so it's their responsibility to get it sorted.

Why? It's SI/SEGA's game, so it's their responsibility to get it sorted.

No it's not, the problem is with Steam functionality so Steam have to do it and that means changing the whole model for one minority group of users.

What we'd have to hope is that it could be done reasonably easily and that the other 30 million or so users:D wouldn't object to it, I doubt they would make that functionailty available for just one game.

No it's not, the problem is with Steam functionality so Steam have to do it and that means changing the whole model for one minority group of users.

What we'd have to hope is that it could be done reasonably easily and that the other 30 million or so users:D wouldn't object to it, I doubt they would make that functionailty available for just one game.

Yes it is. If Steam won't change it then SI/SEGA should drop them.

But SI/Sega is happy with a 3rd party that treats their customers so rudely? I think SI/Sega has much more clout and influence here. It is SI/Sega's responsibility to say to Steam; "Don't treat our customers so badly"

Pity, try to keep some half sensible discussion on the table and it just reverts to the same old rubbish.

Steam worked for FM12 in a big way regardless of the problems it caused for some people, and obviously you'd expect the problems to reduce year on year as people get used to it and Steam and SI get used to each other.

It's worked that way for titles many times bigger than FM so there's no reason to doubt it.