Yea ... I agree its FIRAXIS/2K that will be approving or dissapproving mods.

Also, if they have a strong modding community (after all this mess) it would be logical if they coordinate their patches/ patch schedule with the modding community somehow.

Making it easier?? (I don't code) for mods to upgrade to newer patches might be a fixation of Civ V if, again, they wish to make a steamworks game modifiable.

Because obviously we won't have the luxury of making 6 digital copies of Civ V, one being Vanilla and the other 5 having different code ... unless I am missing something.

 

 

Thanks.  I'm just going by what 2K has said in other forums that mods seem to have to go thru the Steam system to be approved.  I apologize for mistyping it as Valve.  Just because it's 2K doesn't change the situation.  So far, the way 2K seems to be setting this up, it's sending alarm bells in the mod community.  If they allow mods to be used without having to be approved like Apple does for iPhone apps (which is the direction it seems to be going right now) then that is a great thing and will certainly help.  But doesn't change the fact you can't run multiple patch versions of the game, which is pretty key for much of the mod community.

But can you not understand the fact we don't want Steamworks for a primarily single player game?

I just want to chip in here and say I hate Steamworks simply because I thoroughly resent being forced to install a 3rd party program in order to play a game single player.

 

Its rediculous and stupid. And morally questionable as well.

 

I wont be buying Civ 5 either if this is the case.

 

Its a real shame.

 

Is Brad Wardell aka frogboy involved in Civ 5 like the OP said? If so, in what way? And is he going to ya know object to this?

He was going to purchase and mod it before it was revealed that it was going to requre Steamworks.

 

So nothing in an official capacity then lol. Okay. Shame.

 

I thought he said after elemental he was going to focus on mods in general, not just for Elemental but other games. Sort of a mini-retirement thing. I say mini in that I didn't think he was actually going to step down or anything.

"Even Steam haters will agree that Steam is better than Ubisoft's DRM. But from a business standpoint, there's no reason not to support Ubisoft games. They're not an online distributor."

 

True about the Steam Hater's(=ME) saying that Steam is better than UBI's DRM. I won't buy UBI games from the Store/Impulse/Steam or anywhere else its sold because of their invasive DRM. It is also true that there is no reason for Impulse to not sell UBI game. But like I said, UBI is loosing TONSSSSS of money with this DRM thing they have, but what do you want to bet they say it was because of piracy in the end?

so civ v will be like assassins creed 2 in that you need a constant connection to their server to play single player?

 

that would be bad.

No. Steamworks/Steam isn't as bad as the Ubisoft scam... It's not going to boot you out of the game because your connection flickered. Saved games should still be local, and other things make the two pretty different.

I absolutely love the Civ series...I think I can live with it.  It would take a lot to keep me from Civ V.

I love the Civ series too, which is what makes this entire fiasco all the more bittersweet.  Then again, I've yet to see anything indepth with Civ V, and if they take Civ V the way that most companies are taking their games (i.e. make them as pathetically simple as humanly possible) then it's simply another series and developer who lost my buisness through bad design and business decisions.

I will play Civ IV ( huge mode database )  and Elemental ( i hope the single player part will be good ) .

You guys know that SD and all the other digital distributor can file an antitrust lawsuit against Valve for forcing customers to install Valve's DD software and no other ones.  I believe the last time a big giant company got its ass sue, it had to modify its business practice.  SOO why isn't Stardock and Gamersgate doing such a thing.  Look, Steam is not going to go away because of the lawsuit, but it will give consumers more choice for certain.

Because they aren't a monopoly yet, because there is still the brick-and-mortar option for sales, and a large majority of those do not require Steam.  If Valve continues to act this way and claim ever-larger shares of the marker, then yes, there could be a possible lawsuit, but not as things are now.

Technically speaking, there is no anti-competitive behaviour in play on Valve's behalf in the eyes of the law.  Impulse can sell games with Steamworks API/DRM and Stardock make a profit from this, however they simply opt not to due to the fact that it then installs Steam on a users computer when the user bought it via Impulse.  There are no laws governing this.  The fault for this decisions then falls to the Developers who opted to use this service, and thus the fault is not Valve's rather the Developers.
For anti-competitive laws to come into play, Valve must establish itself and it's services in such a way that competition is no longer practically achieveable or has clear intention of doing so.  Although it's behaviour is unethical, in that it's using popular games as a Trojan Horse for it's service and essentially cutting out it's competitors in doing so, it's monopoly only occurs due to the behavior of other services as they choose not to sell games with Steamworks.  Microsoft had similar practices in play to achieve a legal monopoly, then in order to assume 100% dominance of the market they began to operate in ways considered illegal.  Valve, founded by ex-Microsoft employees, would be more than capable of avoiding this problem.