Steam

[Zenicetus]

1) I can't give you a 100% accurate answer on this, but another Orgah probably can. I do not think that Steam remains as a background process once you close it down however.

Okay, it would be nice to hear some official word from CA or the Steam folks about whether it's a resident process when the game isn't being played.

Point 2) will create havoc if we have another 1.1 -> 1.2 thing like M2:TW.

E:TW needs to be manual patches, for modding etc.

Yeah, roll-back to previous versions doesn't sound easy if the DRM demands the most recent version of the game. I can't be the only one who has been burned by an update that broke something. Is there a work-around for rolling back to a previous game version with Steam?

Q1: Steam is a separate program & it stays resident in the taskbar.
You need to manually exit it from there (right click -> Exit), I do this but people who play lots of Steam games might leave it open.
Currently minimised to Taskbar its using 7-8MB of RAM, eg compare with Adobe Reader 9 with no pdf open & the ATI Catalyst Control Centre (ccc.exe) minimised to taskbar using nearly the same amount.
After the resident icon is closed down, Steam.exe disappears completely from taskmanager.

I avoid programs that stay resident in the taskbar when I only need them to run one single program. It's one of the more annoying things about Quicktime updates. Is there an option for right-clicking the Steam icon in the taskbar and telling it not to load on every system boot? Do I have to do that every time Steam updates itself again, like Quicktime?

To be clear, I can live with Steam if the only thing it does is launch the Empire game, and it stays completely out of my way when I'm not running that one game. I don't think that's too much to ask. I have zero interest in being a part of some Steam online community, or buying dozens of games through the Steam portal. I just want to buy this one game -- Empire TW -- if they don't make me jump through too many obnoxious hoops.