[Les]

For those who were asking or wanted to know, yes you will have to install Steam, and activate via Steam, even a retail, store-bought, DVD copy of IL2:Cliffs Of Dover, as we've been told specifically by an Ubisoft representative you will need a Steam account in order to play, even off-line.

This would have been more clear earlier, if it wasn't for the fact that the game will use SolidShield(Tages) DRM validation as well, which theoretically meant, if you never intended to play online, you could have just unlocked your game by submitting a code through the SolidShield system. That's neither here nor there now though, what's done is done. It's up to the publishers to decide what sort of DRM measures and multi-player features they want to implement, and it's up to the customers to decide now whether they can live with having the Steam client installed on their system.

I went through this decision-making process myself several years ago when I went out of my way to buy the retail disk version of Red Orchestra to avoid having to use Steam, only to find (due to lack of research) that even the retail disk version required activation through Steam. At that point, despite being annoyed at the lack of choices available, I decided to bite the bullet, install Steam and see what happened.

And what happened? Not much, just spent way too many hours playing a @#%^ing excellent game online, until the community faded and I got too pissed off too often by niggling annoyances that are just part and parcel of playing that kind of game online, and uninstalled it.

Steam stayed installed though, as I began taking advantage of it's special offers on other games that it's sales made affordable to buy, download, play through and discard (or keep installed as simple time-wasters). That was about five years ago now.

I'm not the kind of person who just installs programs willy-nilly, I like to keep a fairly lean-running machine, and there is other stuff I could have installed that I've chosen not to because I haven't been able to keep track of where it is and what it's doing. Steam isn't one of them. For me, it's pro's have outweighed it con's.

Something else I've come to realize is, if I'd never played the original IL-2 series, manually downloading and installing and patching it and flying online through Hyperlobby etc. If I'd never done all that, and saw it for anew today, and it was a Steam download only title, I wouldn't hesitate to buy it.

But, conversely, at least part of my resentment over the involvement of Steam in the new series is a nostalgia thing for the fun I've had over the years running the original IL-2 series the old-fashioned way. It's something I've grown attached to, there's history there, personal and shared, and if something's going to mess with the continuation of that, it had better be bringing with it some real benefits, or be keeping itself the hell out of the way as much as possible.

Also, Steam, with it's convenience and mass-appeal, is at the same time, for me, associated with cheapness and disposability and crass commerciality. And these aren't characteristics I readily associate with something like the IL-2 series. Yes, IL-2 is just a 'product', but it's also, essentially, a labour of love and something that I believe deserves, and has been given, more respect and dedicated attention than what it's going to get when it's inexorably linked up with Steam.

It may not mean much to anyone else, but as I look at it, there is also an aspect to all of this that is like the ending of an era, which is making moving on into different areas harder than it might otherwise be. The original Il-2 series managed to stand, and continues to stand, on it's own, even within the flight-sim genre, and it deserves to.

But the new series that's just beginning, is being born into a different world. And not an easier world for it's kind of thing. And quite frankly, f*#% anyone who abandons it now. It's like the child of the father you fought side by side with for years, through all those battles, all those victories and losses, look after it and give it a chance to grow into something that can make it's own place in a world more hostile towards and dismissive of it's kind's existence than ever before.

In this context, Steam is nothing. At worst, a mere hindrance , an extra button to push or background process running, nothing compared to what getting over it can facilitate and allow to keep growing.

Those of you who are abandoning the new IL-2 series are effectively abandoning the future of combat-flight-simming and leaving it to the wolves. It will only be a self-fulfilling prophesy if all that you feared about it's being compromised, or it's outright demise, comes true.

There's also absolutely no chance for the development of any work-arounds to the 'issues' some people are currently having if so many people bugger off now it has a negative impact on what Oleg and company can afford to do in the future.

Anyway, I've spent so long writing all this I've had time to remember how unimportant the whole subject is in the wider scheme of things, and what a strange form of entertainment this is.

Que sera sera.