The people who actually crack the games don't distribute them with bots and trojans and other crap. Believe it or not, the pirate groups are very reputation-based, so pulling a stunt like that is only going to hurt them. It's the individual seeders of P2P networks that load them up with trojans and junk.

I also don't see how this has any relevance. Crackers will crack anything, and Steamworks isn't new. The only recent sweet juice for them was cracking Ubi's new DRM. It took a while, but now Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed 2, Settlers 7 have all been cracked and distributed. Doesn't matter what Civ 5 went with, it would still get cracked and distributed on the first or second day or release (or earlier from a leak).

It's pretty obvious they went with Steamworks because it makes a bunch of things easier for them.

I knew my statement would rile some people up.  And that's not what I'm saying.  But the facts are that the majority of people that play the shooters are under the age of 30, easy and live via the "online community".  Not to say there aren't a good bit older folks, heck I cut my teeth on Doom and Quake myself however I no longer play online FPS because I don't have 10 hours a day to play to be any good, thus they are no fun at all to me.  BUT that is the audience that Steam appeals to, the XBox generation that has to have their online friends "always on" and there chatting them up and inviting them to games.  I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it (even though I'll never understand it) but that is what Steam caters to.  And they don't understand why anyone wouldn't like Steam or how anyone could game without people bothering them every 5 minutes to play some random game, which was my response to in agreement to the previous poster.

These are all things that a TBS single player gamer typically does *not* need or want.

You made the point here of the BIG difference.  Impulse Reactor has nothing to actually do with Impulse.  It is simply there and can be ignored just like games of yor that had their own built in multiplayer engine or Gamespy or something.  You can't do this with Steam, it's always there.  My "tune" won't change, I and most single player gamers don't need any type of "community" or chatting up no matter where it comes from.  Impulse, Gamespy, home grown and even GFWL allows me to totally ignore the fact they are there and even uninstall them in most cases.  But with Steamworks actually built into the game and Steam required to even launch the game (offline or not), I can't easily do that.

All Civ 5 really needs to do is offer upon Install the option to *NOT* install or integrate Steam/Steamworks for those that don't want it.  Force a one time online authentication if they must, but don't install and run all that Steam crap I don't need or want.  Like in the old days...nope, don't need Gamespy thank you very much, don't install it.  But if someone does want it then by all means install it.  Or if I happen to want to do multiplayer later then it needs to install it and I would totally understand what that entails *and I would have no problem with that*.  That's all that needs to happen to Civ 5 and others like Fallout NV which doesn't have any multiplayer to put them back on my must buy list.  Of course this will never happen because Valve has bribed 2K and others to force Steam upon anyone buying the game.  Good business for them.  Bad for us, the consumer.

I'm sure you already know this, but your opinions, and people who share your opinions, are in the small minority of gamers. The money lost from people who are "OMG I hate online stuff" is more than compensated from the "Hey, Civ is on Steam and has multiplayer. I'm going to get it now!" camp. You might not understand online gaming, or facebook, or twitter, but that doesn't stop them from being multi-million dollar industries.

If anything, Civ 5 can be the MOST revolutionary civ yet because of the multiplayer. You can hate on Steam's always on feature all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that it's one the best online PC gaming communities, even now surpassing Xfire. All the things you hate about Steam are the reasons why it's so successful.

Good business for them, good business for consumers like me who are excited at the multiplayer prospects, good business for consumers who never had Steam, but with give it a shot to play Civ5. Bad for the minority of people who grew up on Civ, but refuse to change. The bottom line is this though: they will make far more money with Steamworks, than they would have without it.

This is an ignorant and arrogant statement. I have Steam. I use Steam pretty frequently. It's not about refusing to change. That you can't see that, well obviously you have spent zero second trying to understand what people are saying in this discussion and are now resorting to just talking over them.

"I and most single player gamers don't need any type of "community" or chatting up no matter where it comes from."

Civ is no longer going to be purely about single player. That is change. Bonscott over there doesn't like that change.

I know it will have an amazing single player, because that's what it has always had. Now, I'm excited at the prospect of multiplayer, and how easy Steam makes getting games put together (Steam has to be launched for every game, so I can even message my friends in other games to come play Civ 5 with me).

I fully understand what you are saying. I just think it's silly, and in the end, the only person who is deprived of anything is people refusing to install Steam for silly reasons, because you won't get to play Civ 5.

It's cool.

For the record, I'm not a huge Steam fan. I buy games on Impulse over Steam if given the option, pretty well entirely because Impulse games behave like retail games and don't require Impulse running to work (and don't require me to take a cab to the store, since I'm a 30 year old who owns a house but not a car).

But I don't get very worked up over Steamworks. Maybe it's because I'm a developer. I reuse frameworks and APIs whenever I can in my job, because they save me time, expense, and maintenance later. I don't do games, but the premise is the same. Developers look at all the functionality Steamworks offers them *without them having to build it* and see good things. They've got their multiplayer matchmaking, friends, communities, achievements (a selling point for some), and the other stuff Steamworks provides. Looking around, there's nothing else that offers a comparable featureset except GFWL, and everybody hates GFWL.

Given the option of using Steamworks or having the expense of building and maintaining all that myself? It's an absolute no brainer. Even more so considering the cost of building games keeps going up. Reducing costs by using a proven platform is just good business over trying to do all that stuff in-house.

I've got friends who primarily play single player RPGs on the 360, with over ten thousand achievement points. They're a selling point for a surprising number of people. My wife actually spent time grinding gold in Fable 2 to get some, at least until she started making endless money from houses or something.

I blame Microsoft. Fallout 3 used GFWL for achievements and such. Installing it, I had weird issues with needing to update GFWL with some odd patch that confused Vista, then getting it to sign in, and so on. They wouldn't have switched from that to Steamworks without a reason (and they're not alone, GFWL has almost no developer support anymore).

GFWL should have been the solution for all this, but Microsoft totally screwed it up. Valve came in and offered something better. At the moment, nobody else has a comparable option (Reactor isn't out yet).

Just look at it if you're Firaxis. You want to offer MP, matchmaking, a mod hub, and achievements. You need to keep costs down where you can, because 2k said so, and so much of the game is changing that your developers are already busy. Valve says "we have this platform that does it all, has been proven in dozens of games already, and isn't terribly expensive."

What do you do?

Yep, Tridus basically nailed it.

Every FPS player I know bar 1, is between the ages of 35 and 70 (oldest being 69).  Pretty arrogant and naive comment there mate.

As for Steamworks in Civ5, it's already been said and I agree with (as a code monkey myself): if you want to add features to a program, don't reinvent, use API's and Frameworks that already exist and work.  Spent the time you save on core functionality instead.

I'm going to enjoy my Civ5 on Steamworks.  

I and another friend have been Civ addicts since the very first Civ.  We both talked, we won't be getting Civ 5.  Change happens, yes, some bad, some good.  This change is way too "big brotherish" for us.  We are going to vote with our dollars and just pass on it.  And it also makes Stardock games like Elemental all the more desirable to us too.

Ya, and, the "announcememnt" sounds like it was written by an ex politian who's now a used car salesman.  You'll just "enjoy the benefits" of our permanent umbilical cord into your computer just for buying our product. . .   

But look at who's interest is being best served here -- Take2 and 2k's primarily, and Firaxis' somewhat (I say somewhat because they made decent $ doing it the 'old fashioned way' before steam).

Where do the player's best interests fit in?

Some players will benefit, some won't care, some will be hurt -- but what drives this decision is what's best for 2k/etc. 

2k is hoping/expecting that they'll gain more than they lose with forced steam, or at least break even.  2k's/Take 2's responsibility is to themselves first (as Take2 is publicly owned and fiduciary responsibilities...).

Anyone who's been around the block a few times understands this stuff.  Instead of being honest with us, 2k is blowing smoke up our keisters with claims that their forcing steam on us for single-player offline games is to benefit players.  That is what motivates me in this -- they're doing it for their benefit first and foremost, and their disengenuous PR-speak is disrespectful.

Something I'm wondering about -- is the cost saving from Steam being gobbled up by 2k/Take 2?  Considering how the net is changing the model for game publishing/distribution/etc., I wonder if Firaxis could go it alone without the likes of 2k.  Would the cut 2k/Take 2 and Valve take be enough to fund Firaxis to offer what it wants without Steam? 

Is it possible that the drive towards services like steam and publishers stepping in and dictating this stuff to game companies might be undone by the net allowing game companies to go it alone and keep all the profits?

Well, that's two programmers who've chimed in with the logical reasons for using it.  From the QA perspective, there are good reasons too.  Speaking as a professional game tester (and one who specializes in certification, where multiplayer requirements can be a nightmare), the amount of testing added to a product by going from singleplayer to multiplayer is absolutely colossal.  The time, coordination, resources, and technical savvy needed to do the work on a multiplayer title--even a simple one--are vastly more than single player, and that's when you ARE using someone else's framework.  When you're not?  I don't even want to think about the nightmares I'd have trying to adequately test a triple A title on a framework that is, itself, an untested framework.

It's one thing when games are as simple as "enter host IP address."  Those days are pretty well gone.  If you're going to have lobbies, matchmaking, or any of the other features players have come to expect, doing it yourself is inviting massive headaches, and major issues that aren't going to be found in test.  Just look at Demigod.  Stardock did their level best, I'm sure, and the multiplayer was still a complete fiasco weeks after launch. 

Unless you know for a fact your product is going to support enough simultaneous players to justify building a network platform as ITS OWN PRODUCT, not using an existing network platform is just asking for it, because that's what a modern gaming network platform is--a product unto itself.  Civ 5 will be popular, and it will be profitable.  It will not be Modern Warfare 2, Halo 3, or World of Warcraft.  Devoting the testing for what amounts to an entire separate product, for one release, just isn't worth it in this day and age.

I get some of the objections, honest.  I don't like Steam, generally speaking.  But more and more as time progresses, games will use Steamworks, or XBLA, or PSN, or whatever is appropriate to power their multiplayer.  It's been happening for a while--Civ 4 used GameSpy so they could avoid developing some of the network functionality.  It's more pronounced today, it's going to keep getting more pronounced, because the more expensive it gets to make games, the more developers need affordable middleware to save them time and money.

Love it or hate it, this is the future, gentlemen.  Welcome to it.

99% of the games I played on Civ IV were multiplayer. You keep talking like you can just lump everyone into some neat pile to brush under the rug here to dismiss. The sooner you stop doing that, the better.

That may be but overall the % of Civ 4 players that used Multiplayer was small.  The lead developer (Soren?) remarked in the press once how surprised he was how few actually used multiplayer despite all the time and effort they put into it.  That doesn't mean that people don't play Civ games mutliplayer (heck, it was there all the way back in Civ 2), but at least in the past, it was a minority of players.

To address a few general comments.  I totally agree that from a developer standpoint Steamworks is a great thing.  They can just tie into the API and be done with it.  The problem is not giving people the choice of weather to install it or not.  At least with GFWL (which sucks, yes) I can totally ignore it and never use it.  I certainly didn't with Fallout 3.  That's all the community wants, a choice.  If I don't want to use it or find no value then don't force it on me.

Totally different perspective from me.  Just about everyone I know that still plays FPS are well under 30 (and I'm on the other side of 40 myself).  I quit playing multiplayer shooters (and anything multiplayer really) due to all the crap in them, all the 14 yr olds going "th!s is suxors!!!1111!" and spouting obscenities all day long.  What a difference from even the Quake 3 days.  So seeing that all the time what else are people going to think?  FPS have nothing but brats running around with nothing better to do but belittle people is what people think.  And verified from people I know in my "real" life.  At least in the States anyway.

Heck, I could be totally wrong, but I think I'm more right on this one. 

Anyway, I've gotten myself riled up over the issue and offended people which I didn't want to do.  I shall stay quiet on the issue to avoid offending anyone else.  I've said my peace and nothing will change anyway so it's just wasted breath on my part.  Everyone have fun with the game, just a shame I won't be buying a Civ game for the first time in 20 yrs...