Civilization V!!

[Beskar]

It's misleading. It won't update the game automatically, but nor will it let you play it until you have updated. As long as steam knows there's a patch for ETW you are forced to have it if you want the game to boot up; it always knows there's a patch because it checks that out during the install process. Placing steam in offline mode has the same effect. I tried a few times to find a way around to no avail. In the end I deleted the game and that's that, won't go back.

Updates were enforced by CA, that was the reason there. As for having to download 20 gigs when you have the CD? That was CA again,because they didn't ship the correct version on the disks. There are differences between games as the publisher has quite a lot of say with what happens on Steam, unfortunately, I learnt from experience that buying a game pre-order unless you can really trust the publisher (such as Bioware or even Blizzard) is a really bad idea.

Then again, I like the fact it auto-updates my games. So I don't mind that much. It is also very good for getting rid of mods and doing 'factory conditions' with ease. It is also cheaper than its competitors (gamersgate roughly charges you £5 more and doesn't have any of the steam advantages and a dodgy down loader too) and Impulse is like Steam but completely worse, with hidden charges, unable to even maintain a connection, even when I was at my other place, it wouldn't even connect due to the bad software (while Steam had zero issues). Also Impulse kept installing nonsense all over my computer which I couldn't get rid of. At least with Steam, it is all contained within the Steam folder, which I have in my "D:\Games\" section.

While you had issues with E:TW which made you have a negative opinion of Steam, it was misdirected, as it was CA's fault for the whole mess.