Going gold?

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

I fall into that camp... and not because I think Steam/ Game Spy, etc, to be dodgy but because I like to run a clean system. Equally, I don't like DRM's which install drivers, even though I never had any noticeable problems with the first LOCKON Starforce DRM, I did find my system ran better after SF was uninstalled. Reporting home factor plays a part as well.
I very rarely have any software conflicts and like to keep things that way

I have had some odd hardware behavior since installing a Starforce CD, but what finally pushed me hard away from CD's was the copy protection on Bioshock, where you couldn't install off the disk more than three times. To the best of my understanding the Steam versions don't have that restriction.

That said, Ubi did manage to get the call home DRM for Assassin's Creed 2 into the Steam version, probably because of how tightly they integrated it into their game. That managed to eat a couple of my saves too. Very annoying.

Overall I've found the Steam DRM to be less invasive and install fewer hidden drivers than the current cycels of the CD based DRMs, simply because most companies are fine with Steam's Log-In system as the primary DRM.

Now D2D, they apparently encrypted the data files for their edition of "Sword of the Stars", and managed to up the turn cycle time from around twenty seconds normally to about twenty minutes. Kerberos e3ventually figured out what was wrong, but htey had all manner of grief getting D2D to finally unencrypt the files they weren't supposed to have been encrypting in the first place.