Steam and ETW

**fenir** · 02-26-2009, 06:50

I was out and about today. Doing work and stuff. I was waiting for a client, who was running very late. And decided that with my new found free time i would play the demo.

I opened my laptop. And clicked the ETW demo shortcut. All expection of a good naval battle. And low and behold. It needs an internet connection, and to connect to steam.

the demo has to "phone home". How Orwellian.

That really pisses me off.
If i want to play a game. or a demo on my puter. I better damn well be able to with out having to ask permission. Which is what this is doing.

Nothing worst than waiting 4 mins to load a game/demo.

So sega has become an underhanded privcy breacher.

Yes i know. Section 69. But how low can you go? Prying into the lives and habits of your customers? Thats disgusting.

Expect some good cracks! Because i am not phoning home every two seconds so you can record my details. or my habits, no matter how minisule.

Perhaps we can view this as an encumbrance?
Oxford Dictionary: A burden, An impediment, an annoyannce.
With the cost of ongoing internet?

sincerely

fenir

**fenir** · 02-26-2009, 07:10

"Dude" a verification takes one go. Not when you have played it twice with internet and steam running.

Wake up!
Do you not see what is happening? Information is power. And we have Sega and steam playing big brother.

They ARE, recording every bit of marketing and personal information about you. And they will use it.
And the main question is are they going to do this with the game?

Sincerely

fenir

**DEY123** · 02-26-2009, 07:17

I believe there is an offline mode...

go under file menu and switch to offline. It says this is for playing while disconnected.

**fenir** · 02-26-2009, 07:29

I believe there is an offline mode...

Yes, then it phones home the moment you go online.

I will wait and see what the game says. Whether it says you have to install thrid party software before use et cetera...

Sincerely

fenir

**A Very Super Market** · 02-26-2009, 07:29

Fine. Do whatever you want, say whatever you want. I know well enough that no one is going to convince you, and you had better realize that you aren't going to convince anybody else. Why did I even bother? No idea. Why are you even on the internet. That isn't a question.

**quadalpha** · 02-26-2009, 07:55

Sorry, I'm not quite seeing what the matter is. I imagine the most that happens to that data is a few numbers get shifted in their aggregate usage statistics, rather than anything remotely personally identifiable.

**lars573** · 02-26-2009, 08:16

Originally Posted by fenir

"Dude" a verification takes one go. Not when you have played it twice with internet and steam running.

Wake up!
How brain dead can you be? Do you not see what is happening? Information is power. And we have Sega and steam playing big brother.

They ARE, recording every bit of marketing and personal information about you. And they will use it.
And the main question is are they going to do this with the game?

Sincerely

fenir

Put it to you this way, it's either steam or SecureROM (or something like it). Which do you hate more? Also steam isn't verifying anything. That's a one time thing done during the install. No when you boot up steam it connects to the steam servers for updates (if you haven't for a long time and you have multiple steam games, that takes a long time and can crash steam) and to throw some adds at you. That's it.

**MStumm** · 02-26-2009, 08:21

Originally Posted by quadalpha

Sorry, I'm not quite seeing what the matter is. I imagine the most that happens to that data is a few numbers get shifted in their aggregate usage statistics, rather than anything remotely personally identifiable.

Well Team Fortress uses steam to keep track of your playing time, score and achievements. So it is possible that the info they are getting is personally identifiable.

**irishron2004** · 02-26-2009, 09:27

Personally, conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this. How much of my firewall am I going to have to open for Steam? How many little cookies are they going to leave behind? Anybody with Steam look in your cookie jar? I want the option of whether to have my game registered. I want to get updates when I want, not when they decide to do it for me. Is this going to be another autoupdater running in the backgroung I am going to have to disable?
George Orwell, how do you do.

**Daevyll** · 02-26-2009, 10:30

Hmm, I was under the following impression:

- you can choose between buying the game in a box (thus not needing Steam at all except MP perhaps) or downloading it through Steam
- if you download through steam, you download it once and then do not need to connect to Steam again in order to play SP

Is this correct? Or do I get Steam even with boxed version? And it needs to be running for SP too?

**Sir Beane** · 02-26-2009, 11:55

These are the facts:

When Empire is installed it will need an internet connection once, to verify it is a legitimate purchase. After that you need never connect to the internet again.

If Steam is online it 'phones home' to check for updates, not to verify your game.

If you are playing the game with Steam online it might record your Steam Achievements and playtime and that is it.

Steam is not some kind of evil third party software designed to get information. Millions of people use it everyday without incident. If it had sinister connotations we would know about it by now.

We do not need another discussion/flamewar about DRM and Steam so regretably I am going to have to close this thread.

Should you wish to discuss the issues surrounding Steam as a DRM platform then please do so in the Backroom where they can handle the heated discussion, thank you.

Thread Closed