As long as DVD isnt damaged "used" game have same value to user as normal new copyOriginally Posted by Connect
As long as DVD isnt damaged "used" game have same value to user as normal new copy
I would take the game back to the retailer and explain the situation. If they refused to give you a refund the next option would be to contact 2K either by phone, Email, or snail mail. How ever your best option would be to phone 2K or send a snail mail.
All I want to do is play a game which I just payed $40 for tonight! Does this mean I am ☺☺☺☺ out of luck, and out of $40 from my pocket now? If so, I am HIGHLY irritate. So much so, almost to the point of anger. I know, it is my fault for not standing there, trying to read 3 pt. font on the back of a box in the middle of Wally's. It is my fault for assuming I can just purchase a game from Wally's, go home, throw it in the computer, and play. Man, was I wrong. What an idiotic waste of $40!
(I am more mad at my school than anything else, btw. But still upset over the requirement to connect to Steam to install the game.)
Your last option if you don't get a response from the above or they wont give you a refund you should contact your consumer protection agency in your state.
Also it isn't your fault it is 2K fault for not having the internet requirement on the front of the box in large print. Even EA and UBI have this on the front cover of the box.
Last edited by gene; 10-12-2010 at 07:20 AM.
So if they are so concern about the second hand market why don't they do anything about the consoles. Because the second hand market in consoles games is far bigger than the PC.
They are.
More and more console titles are being targeted for DLC. DLC is a strong weapon against the used game market as it increases the monetary investment for the initial user and decreases the money saved by the second buyer (as they get none of the DLC the initial buyer purchased).
Of course, there are even more devious schemes in place already. Mass Effect 2 shipped with a one-time use activation code for what amounted to a $15 DLC. The initial buyer got it for free. Second-hand buyers had to shell out the $15 if they wanted the content. Thus, if you are willing to ignore the content, there is no downside to a second-hand purchase. However, if you want that content, then the used price needs to drop to at least $15 below the current retail price in order to actually save you money.
Keep telling yourself that.
So.... how will "used" game degrade users experience compared to "new" copy?Keep telling yourself that.
Steam has me steaming. While all the Q & A's that have been supplied are great for those who make gaming their life's passion, I just want to load and play. Since I can't easily do that with V, I figure good riddance, unless they fix it good.
I returned my V to Future Shop and stood patiently toe-to-toe with the manager who only wanted to offer me store credit until he finally gave me a refund. This whole Mickey Mouse Steam load is nuts. If they ever decide to do a normal load, I'll be back athe sales counter buying in again. Till then, it's Hasta la Vista, baby!Hi, I am hoping a moderator, or someone part of the team that developed Civ 5 is still looking in here.
I am a long-time Civ 5 player. Been playing it since the very first iteration. I was in Wal-Mart a little while ago, and saw Civ 5 sitting on the shelves! Civ 5! It was $40, so I picked it up, not bothering to look at the fine print on the back of the box. I figured my system should be able to handle the game (which it does!)
Anyway, I get home to begin installing the game. But instead of installing the game, it wants to install Steam. Well, I do have a Steam account. Have had one now since the program came out. But I have uninstalled it a couple of years ago when I moved for school.
Well, the school I am still currently attending doesn't allow access to Steam. All the ports are closed. So I can't even update it in order to friggin install the game!
All I want to do is play a game which I just payed $40 for tonight! Does this mean I am ☺☺☺☺ out of luck, and out of $40 from my pocket now? If so, I am HIGHLY irritate. So much so, almost to the point of anger. I know, it is my fault for not standing there, trying to read 3 pt. font on the back of a box in the middle of Wally's. It is my fault for assuming I can just purchase a game from Wally's, go home, throw it in the computer, and play. Man, was I wrong. What an idiotic waste of $40!
(I am more mad at my school than anything else, btw. But still upset over the requirement to connect to Steam to install the game.)
If you insist that game (and related apps) installs are too complex, you should buy console.
Sorry, I don't know what buying 'console' means. All I know is that all my previous CIV releases were a snap to install. Now, it's taken up a life of its own. Frankly, I have better things to do than try to work my way through the smoke and mirrors of a Steam install.
The point I see here is one of customer respect.
It is unimportant who or what errors were made.
What I see here is that (given the story here) Steam is unwilling to do anything to make this right. It would cost Steam no more than the lost current sale to please a long time customer, and keep that customer buying in the future.
This attitude may be prevalent in some places, but is not acceptable where I live. Local retailers want happy return customers. Even the much maligned Walmart offers "satisfaction guaranteed", and one of Sam Waltons quotes is that a he wanted happy customers coming back often, even if they made less from them each visit.
A company can only screw me once, but 10, 20, or 30 years of repeat business is very profitable.
Thanks. But I just unhooked my computer, and tranported the thing across town to use my brother's net connection real quick.
Well, by d/l the game, and coming back and hooking it up all over again, it wouldn't work on offline mode!
So, I had to unhook the entire system a SECOND time, and drive across town again, hook it up, and start the game up, just to be able to play in offline mode.
Then, packed the system up again for the fourth time, and went back home, and hooked it back up.
All, after spending $40 on the game. Took me three days, and loads of pain in the ass just to play a stupid game.
In any case, Civ 5 is pretty cool. Just, 2k absolutely has GOT to place the damned requirements front and center on their cover, in order to save a lot of time, energy, and headaches!
I have read nearly this entire thread. I am new to steam only for the purpose of playing Civ V. I have owned every release. My question is do I need the disk? I have seen mention of the fact that the disk is only used in the initial install, but it seems this can be done if I purchase directly from Steam. I played the demo and liked the game except it moved very very slowly. Will having the disk solve that problem?
Thanks, and my apologies if I missed this point addressed somewhere else.
Disk isnt needed even for initial installation (after you register CD key to your Steam account you can install directly from their servers).
Activation over internet is currently standart for almost all games. It might be good idea to contact you University IT department and ask them to allow Steam on their network - if your proposal have support from enough student it will have decent chance of success.Thanks. But I just unhooked my computer, and tranported the thing across town to use my brother's net connection real quick.
Well, by d/l the game, and coming back and hooking it up all over again, it wouldn't work on offline mode!
So, I had to unhook the entire system a SECOND time, and drive across town again, hook it up, and start the game up, just to be able to play in offline mode.
Then, packed the system up again for the fourth time, and went back home, and hooked it back up.
All, after spending $40 on the game. Took me three days, and loads of pain in the ass just to play a stupid game. And I still cannot update the game with any new patches either, wihout going through the process of packing it up, and transporting the entire computer across town!
In any case, Civ 5 is pretty cool. Just, 2k absolutely has GOT to place the damned requirements front and center on their cover, in order to save a lot of time, energy, and headaches!
Not sure about possibility of mobile connection in USA (here in EU I can get unlimited data plan for 35€ per month), but it might also be good option.
Nah, I don't like the idea of a mobile plan. Most of them are too slow, or get too bogged down.
I mean, I don't necessarily oppose the idea of using Steam. I just think if a company is going to produce a game that is to be sold on the shelf, they need to do one of the following:
1. Print on the front, and quite prominently, the fact that an active connection to outside servers (such as Steam) is required to install the game.
2. Provide server space, or mirror sites to d/l the game, directly over the web. Ever hear of the game called Out of the Park Baseball? That's how they do it.
0r,
3. Provide the means to install directly from the disc, as traditionally done.
The director of student housing at my school will be in tomorrow. She was on vacation, so I couldn't ask her about it yet. But like I said in my first post, I am more upset with the school for blocking all of the network ports, than I am with 2k.
Thank you for the clarification on the disk not being needed. Will having the disk do anything to improve the speed of the game, or does it run off of steam's system after being installed (excluding playing offline, of course)?
Any benefit to actually having the disk?
Thanks
DVD doesnt offer any difference in games performance.
To improve performance, you can try:
1. update your GPU drivers
2. OC (overclock) your CPU and/or GPU
If you list specs of your PC here, we can look at how much performace can be improved.
Thank you. So it seems there is really no need/benefit to having the disk.
I use a Macbook with parallels running Windows 7. So far it seems to generally give me the best of both worlds.
Its better to install Win7 as dualboot (via Bootcamp) which will give you very significant performance boost in Civ5.
My eyes are too old to find the download button for Steam! It takes at least a minute to download the game! It takes too many clicks to go Steam icon>Library>Civ V, or double-click the shortcut I can make on my desktop, or single-click the icon in the Start menu, or highlight Civ V through Steam in the Start menu! I also live in the Stone Age so I don't have Internet access! Change gives me diarrhea!
This is what half of you sound like. Is it annoying to be required to get a program and account just to play a game (like some games requiring you to get a Windows Live account, or GameSpy), but it's necessary. Likewise, it's childish to refuse to buy a game for such a stupid, low-hassle reason. Not to mention Steam is an amazing program headed by probably the world's best game developer company (see The Escapist poll here).
Steam has 30 million users (as compared to Xbox Live's 25 million), and has seen sales grow 100+% for six years straight. It has 1200 games for sale, and continually has amazing deals (although they frequently do not convert USD to Euro form (which can be the publisher's decision and not Valve's) and so many games can be expensive for Europeans). They're doing something right, and it's certainly not the Civ V "ploy."
Also, you can create/burn a hard copy of the game through Steam if you want.
/end fanboi rant?
That is absolutely hilarious.
As for burining a copy of the game...are you saying I can burn a disk that would have the game just as if I bought it?
That DVD burned via Steam backup utility would be bettter than retail DVD because it would contain all updated which you have installed - no need to redownload patches again during reinstall.
Yes, it does take at least a minute to load Steam. It certainly took me at least a minute...or three...or 180. Then I was finally ready to load Civ V and run it...after a minute...or three...or NEVER. I gave up after a few hours.
You can talk all you want about the 1000's of games out there that use Steam; you can expound liberally about this land of magic; but all I want is to run a single %%%@@@*** game, Civ V. And I can't do it. So, frankly, Steam can get stuffed. As for it being 'necessary' to have Steam, why? It wasn't necessary for all previous Civ versions. What makes it necessary now?
As for burning a copy of the game via Steam, fuhgedaboudit. I think for many of us, the world pf pc gaming has finally been totally taken over by the techie-types who revel in the challenge of making an abortion of a process into a work of art. Me, I'm too old for that kind of brain overload. I enjoy watching The Big Bang Theory. I don't want to be part of it.
You should stop using 33K dial-up modem and get real internet connection.
1) One minute to download it. It takes me 20 seconds to bring the application up.Yes, it does take at least a minute to load Steam. It certainly took me at least a minute...or three...or 180. Then I was finally ready to load Civ V and run it...after a minute...or three...or NEVER. I gave up after a few hours.
You can talk all you want about the 1000's of games out there that use Steam; you can expound liberally about this land of magic; but all I want is to run a single %%%@@@*** game, Civ V. And I can't do it. So, frankly, Steam can get stuffed. As for it being 'necessary' to have Steam, why? It wasn't necessary for all previous Civ versions. What makes it necessary now?
As for burning a copy of the game via Steam, fuhgedaboudit. I think for many of us, the world pf pc gaming has finally been totally taken over by the techie-types who revel in the challenge of making an abortion of a process into a work of art. Me, I'm too old for that kind of brain overload. I enjoy watching The Big Bang Theory. I don't want to be part of it.
2) You're right, Steam doesn't work immediately for a small number of the people who use it (probably just don't know how to use it), therefore it's the devil incarnate. It wasn't necessary to have a legal system back in the day, but then someone decided getting murdered kind of sucks. It's called "change," or if that word is deluded for you due to American politics, "forward progress." Valve and 2K made a deal.
3) I'm not trying to insult your lack of modern computer skills; (I can use semi-colons, too!) however I am presenting to you a solution for your "problem" (aka phobia) of not having a physical copy of something you "own."
The success of Steam, Civ V, and a lot of other factors is user ability and computer/machine power (coupled with Internet connection speed/quality).
Don't recall the Civ 5 box saying broadband needed. Then again the box was fairly circumvent on what was REALLY required to play the game in the first place.
But thanks for telling us Rebel44 how we should do things, Are you perhaps sending out checks to pay for the "real" internet connection?
Yes, I pay for my 16(down)/8(up) Mb/s connection which doesnt have any data limit. It cost me 12€ per month
doublepost.
Last edited by Connect; 10-19-2010 at 09:06 AM.
You should stop telling people what to do and how to play their PAID FOR products.
Listen, buddy. If you could realize the fact that your beloved program is stealing all your ownership and gives complete control to the publishers, you would stop advertising that cataclysmic program and fight against it, like any rational person does. It's always the buyer's fault, never the program's. I agree that the buyers make a giant mistake: buying games which use steam to restrict access to their investments.
Also, please note that "change" is not always for the best. So stop supporting changes like you have no choice. If they pass a law tomorrow to require you to be raped each time you want to play your games, would you support "change" the same way?
And the DVD back-up is completely useless without the program. You have to be connected to the internet AGAIN each time you want to install the game. What a load of crap. I don't need to ask permission to USE SOMETHING I HAVE PAID FOR.
Where people live doesn't concern you. If a person pays for something, he should be able to use it whenever he wants. Fighting for the freedom to use your products is not childish. Blindly supporting a company that deliberately locks and holds your games hostages IS.
Who cares about obscure polls that obsessed fanboys like you immediately assault to defend their precious company that keeps all their games hostages? It's just like paying to get raped. "HERE, HAVE MY MONEY AND YOU TELL ME WHEN I CAN PLAY, OK?". How about you buy a car that you can only drive after you phone to the car company to ask permission? You would like that, wouldn't you? And if the car company closes, you can no longer use your car.
steam is a plague on PC gaming that is (be)headed by the worst company ever to appear in the industry because it tries to take away all the control FROM YOU. You can't do ANYTHING without them spying on you and your PC.
Have fun while you can with this apocalyptic program, because when it finally shuts down you will realize no one will give a crap about the fact that you just lost thousands of dollars worth of games that you will NEVER play again.
By the way, your user name is ironic. It should be "BULLSH*T" because that's all you said in your entire post.
Ahh, at last, someone who understands! :warm feeling:
Strange how times have changed: didn't we all just love to slam Microsoft (and any other company that got too big for its boots)? Microsoft used to be the devil. Now, if you're big and abuse your customers you "must be doing something right" and everybody who falls foul obviously deserved it. If you don't have the minimum requirements for living in the year 2010 - superfast broadband and a Steam account (with credit card, etc.) - then you quite clearly don't deserve to play Civ V. Despite having already paid for it.
Civ5 isnt sold as product, but as a licence - just like pretty much every game sold in last 10+ years. If you dont like licence conditions, you have a choice not to buy such game.
I have 100meg ADSL.
Current commercial ADSL technology isnt capable of delivering 100Mb/s so you either have other type of connection or you are liar (IMO second option is much more likely).
Funny. Console games are licenses too, but you don't see crap like requiring internet to play them and tie them to bloatware programs that spy on your computer. You should think about that before you embarass yourself even more.
By the way, it's spelled "LICENSE". Repeat after me: L I C E N S E.
Actually, you do.
Digital titles on the XBox360 require an internet connection and an XBox Live account. They are activated through a process very similar to Steam. The big difference is that they are stored on a platform which you are given drastically less access than PCs allow. However, the same process still occurs. The purchase is revalidated for updates. Time playing the game is tracked by centralized servers. They require the internet just as much as Steam does.
Bloatware? What sort of criteria makes something bloatware? I suppose its the same as the people who define Steam as "malware", namely: "Software that I don't like". Certainly its not this definition and this doesn't seem to describe it either. The Steam client acts as a store, a game library manager, and a multiplayer support tool. To that end... it's basically Gamespy and a store. Or Battle.net and... nothing. Or XBox Live.
As far as actual software bloat goes, Steam is actually pretty lean. Not only is it a small application without loads of capabilities that users haven't asked for, it consumes a small amount of memory, hints the OS to swap it out when memory is running low, and doesn't eat up extra disk space with temp files or collections of DLLs.
Steam is less bloated than the majority of software in the world.
Steam "spies" on your computer less than Windows does and, unlike Windows, gives you the choice to opt out of the "spying". Considering the fact that it not only tells you that its about to "spy" on your computer, but then proceeds to show you all the information it gathered, where the information is going to be displayed, and supplies a link to the (legally binding) privacy policy protecting the use of the "spied" data, one might begin to wonder exactly what your definition of "spying" is.
A metaphorical skit:
Adam: Hey, Bob, can I have your phone number?
Bob: Sure. It's on the fridge.
Adam: Is this it? 999.555.1337?
Bob: Yes, that's right.
Adam: Cool. I'm just using this for a spreadsheet I'm making? I'm counting the number of people in the 999 area code. He's a signed contract stating that I'm not going to give anyone else your phone number. Want a copy of the spreadsheet?
Bob: NO! QUIT SPYING ON ME!
Then Adam walks away, wishing that he had fewer friends who were on drugs.
Actually, it's worse. Much worse. Civ5 is sold as a subscription which isn't like pretty much every game sold in the last 10+ years. I didn't cave in to the marketing and buy this game. I wish other people would have done the same. From the looks of it I think it's safe to say this game is the Windows Vista of the Civilization series.
More like Windows ME.
Well, I do agree with your post, for the most part, except that with any intellectual property, you agree to pay a licensing fee in order to use said intellectual property. You can never "own" said property.
If I take a photograph and place it one a free photostock web site, anyone who wants to use that photo without the copyright watermarks all over it, and in higher resolution, must pay a licensing fee. I still own it, no matter if you paid a fee to use it or not, and you are not free to do whatever you want with it, such as distribute it around for profit. You need a contract for a commission in order to make a profit off a photo someone else takes, and you still only jointly "own" it with said artist.
In any case, I do agree that it is inherently bad to sell a game on the shelf without specifying that you need an active internet connection. Even worse for those (beyond their control) who cannot connect to servers, due to restriction from their ISP (like in my situation.)
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