Milkflavour Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Hi, I registered here to ask a question. I have searched the forums and I can't find an answer posted. Sorry if this isn't the place to ask or if it's been addressed already but... I'm pretty much clueless regarding pc gaming these days. Haven't done it since the original x-com and fallout days so all this always online and DRM stuff is completely over my head... I'd love to order this game as it looks right up my street, however, I don't have an Internet connection at home. I can borrow someone's to download the game and get occasional updates but I wouldn't be able to play the game if it required me to have an online connection at startup or whatever. Does anyone know if it's possible for me to play this game or will ot be a case of (and not for the first time) no connection, no play? Thanks in advance... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tobbzn Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 It doesn't require an internet connection, so go for it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milkflavour Posted October 19, 2013 Author Share Posted October 19, 2013 Seriously? So I can play it happily without? That surprises me, most games sold these days for pc require an Internet connection... It's what's put me off pc gaming to be honest.... Awesome news, I'll be downloading it asap then.... Thanks for your help and super prompt reply... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean-Luc Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 You can get the game DRM free on Desura (http://www.desura.com/games/xenonauts) or via the Humble Store (http://www.xenonauts.com/pre-order/). Both will allow you to download the game and play it without the need for any kind of client (Desura does have a client but you don't have to use it) or internet. Both options should also give you a Steam key. Steam does have an offline mode and some of its game can be even run without the client (just click on the *.exe) I believe but there's no guarantee it will work out the way you want without an internet connection. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milkflavour Posted October 19, 2013 Author Share Posted October 19, 2013 Ahh.... Thanks man, Seems like humble or Desura is the way to go then... good news that... Still haven't got a scooby what DRM is... will have to look it up.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean-Luc Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Digital Rights Management, basically some sort of measure that ensures (or tries to at least) that your copy of the game is genuine and not pirated. These days it usually takes the form of a client requiring an internet connection to work through which you run your games like Steam, Impulse, uPlay, Origin, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milkflavour Posted October 19, 2013 Author Share Posted October 19, 2013 Ahh... well, fair enough I suppose. I guess they have to try something. Though making a product people actually want to pay for/that works might be a good start for some too... Hmm.. it does mean that folks like me are kept out of a large section of the market because I don't have an Internet connection. It's not worth me buying a decent pc for gaming because I won't be able to play most of the games, not even ones I've bought from a shop it would seem... guess I'm stuck with console gaming... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milkflavour Posted October 19, 2013 Author Share Posted October 19, 2013 So how's it come to this then? How come people have accepted this DRM/Always online stuff.. seems like a bit of a scam really. It means you're kind of tied in to a single retailer for your purchases unless you have a whole load of stuff installed on your computer... plus, there must be more than just me in the world without an Internet connection or who have limited access/pay for how much they use.. it seems like a bone move really... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorlom Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 Most games on gog.com and desura are DRM free Milkflavour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milkflavour Posted October 19, 2013 Author Share Posted October 19, 2013 Awesome, guess I'll have a browse through what they have to offer. Do they clearly state it on the product description? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean-Luc Posted October 19, 2013 Share Posted October 19, 2013 (edited) So how's it come to this then? How come people have accepted this DRM/Always online stuff... There's quite a bit of resistance to it actually but generally always online drm goes hand in hand with digital distribution (buying/downloading games online) and digital distribution is immensely popular because of how cheap it is and how large a market it reaches. So much so in fact that retail selling of games has become marginal and the loss of a few internetless customers is insignificant in comparison to the online market. It's revolutionized the process of making games (alongside crowd funding) and is one of the main reasons why a game like Xenonauts is even possible. Cheap prices (namely huge sales and discounts) and good, convenient service are why online drm gets a free pass in a lot of cases (I recently bought Bioshock: Infinite, a 60$ game, for 16$). However it's largely Steam that gets away with it for reasons mentioned above. uPlay gets a lot of criticism and I doubt people are thrilled with Origin but I'm not really sure. Distributors like GamersGate and GreenManGaming simply hand out Steam keys most of the time as does Impulse. As you may have guessed Steam has an almost-monopoly on digital distribution. Like Gorlom says GoG and Desura are drm free. In any case it's kinda complicated but a lot of good has come out of it and it's not a vendetta against people with no or limited internet. It's simply the state of the modern market. Edited October 19, 2013 by Jean-Luc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milkflavour Posted October 20, 2013 Author Share Posted October 20, 2013 haha.. well, I didn't think it was a vendetta... Thanks for the clarification. I guess it's been a pretty good thing for smaller developers then. I tend to only game on console these days and the online/digital distribution is actually a terrible thing for mainstream console gaming (not so much for indie games) in my opinion. Apart from the fact that there is a significant market for used console games, most titles are actually considerably MORE expensive to download from the psn than to buy a physical copy. It worries me because there's been a fair bit of talk about an inevitable move to digital distribution and, unlike distribution for pc games where there is at least a number of sources to choose from and thus competition/incentive to provide good value/tempting offers, no such market exists on console, and distribution is soley through the diferent systems' online services. I fear this might well lead to inflated prices and a situation whereby gamers are forced to pay those inflated prices as the physical copy market is forced out of business. I guess that'll be the day where I fork out a good chunk of cash for a gaming pc, as console gaming will have pretty much run out of positives. It's already a bit behind in terms of hardware, lack of customisation/modding etc and I can only see digital distribution making things worse in that case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wraith_Magus Posted October 20, 2013 Share Posted October 20, 2013 That's because the digital distribution over consoles is done by a total monopoly owned by Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo, where they can keep the prices high arbitrarily, because they face no other competition. There's also a certain degree of companies like Sony just plain being really, really stupid about how they handle their online marketplaces. (Helped along by that same lack of competition to force them to innovate.) They just price-gouge and never bring prices down or give players any real incentive to want to use their service. (They even started charging money for what was supposed to be a free service at first... and then offered a month-long demo of PSN as the "we're sorry we let all your online information get hacked" thing.) Steam/GamersGate/Good ol Games/etc. are all in competition with one another, and also have a good reason to undercut prices with constant sales. (Exception given to Origin, because that's just EA trying to establish a monopoly on its own games - and I refuse to use that service because of that.) You can easily get games a couple years old at prices 20% of their original price, and it ultimately does more good to the developers that way than any other way. I wouldn't buy many games full-price, but if I see it on Steam sale for $5, I'll probably take a swing at it. Since it's a game I wouldn't have bought at any higher price than that, it's better for the devs to get $4 for the game, (Steam takes a % cut, as opposed to a flat price that retail stores take,) than nothing out of me. (And anyone who regularly uses Steam has at least a few games they bought on sale they either only played a couple minutes, or never played at all, in the "I'll get to it eventually" bin.) Anyway, if we're talking about Steam, though, there are still some vociferous hold-outs. I remember the Bethesda forums were filled with everything short of death-threats against the devs for using Steam as a distributor for Skyrim. (And the death-threats were merely deleted and banned.) In the EgoSoft forums for their new X:Rebirth, there's been at least a couple threads on the first page with 4000 posts in it arguing about the "evils" of Steam, and a poll where people literally choose options like "I would rather self-immolate than ever use Steam" getting about 11% of the vote. (Incidentally, "I like Steam," gets 78% of the vote, and there's a range of middle-ground options like "if they include a no-drm patch" that gets the rest.) There are just plain some dead-enders that will refuse to ever use Steam for utterly bizarre and conspiratorial reasons. (I.E. People seriously arguing that Steam is going to delete their accounts and "steal all their games from them" just as soon as they sign up, just to be vicious. Because it's not like it's a company trying to make money based upon selling more and more games to people, or anything.) But anyway, yes, the most important thing to consider with Steam is that they really are responsible for Digital Distribution really taking off and making Indie Development (like this very forum's parent company) possible in the first place. (Including paving the way for most of its competitors.) Even relatively larger devs like Paradox (Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Magicka,) just plain do not distribute from brick-and-mortar retailers anymore. Hence, I doubt I'll ever come to hate Steam, even if they are doing some fairly stupid gimmicky things, recently. I.E. The Big Picture, where they're just trying to make a PC pretend to be a console... even though it does nothing you couldn't do with just hooking your PC into your TV as a monitor. That's silly, but a sideshow. (At least, hypothetically, however, it's a shot at the monopolistic practices of Microsoft and the rest. So I'll give them slack for that. If they actually force consoles back into playing fair with it - which I doubt it will take off, but if it does... - then it will achieve some pretty solid good for the console crowd.) The card thing they have now is more annoying, since people in forums are now always arguing over them, and the entire thing just reeks of deliberate ways to force people to use some stupid marketplace feature in exchange for some trivial .jpg. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPyro Posted October 23, 2013 Share Posted October 23, 2013 Somebody mentioned earlier that certain games run fine when downloaded from Steam even if Steam can't connect; just to confirm that Xenonauts is one of these Also, not sure if it is still an issue, but when you start Xenonauts and you get the game launcher, you may wish to tick the Disable Stats Tracking box. Xenonauts does some tracking of game statistics that are uploaded, and in the past this has caused issues for people with flaky Internet connections. They may have fixed this in v19; my connection issues got fixed before they released it so not sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milkflavour Posted October 23, 2013 Author Share Posted October 23, 2013 (edited) Thanks for your help guys, I'll be downloading this as soon as I get chance (and playing offline! ) Thanks for the info Pyro and thanks to Wraith for the interesting insight into the whole steam/drm thing. I guess I agree about the lack of incentive to innovate or provide value for money on console. A monopoly is never good for consumers. Interesting take on the Steam service. Your post is actually a petty decent advert for the system. I can't see how the service in and of itself is a bad thing or where the real hate comes from. Personally I really dislike the DRM thing but only because it severely limits my access to a wide range of games. I also don't like having choices made for me. However, the opportunities they provide for small, independent developers is great news for everyone. For steam because, as you say, many would be inclined to 'take a punt'on a game they might otherwise ignore, for developers because they have access to a wider audience and a cost effective way of producing and distributing the games they really want to make, and for the consumer because we're getting access to more innovative, original and interesting games, improved choice (beyond just the mainstream 'AAA' titles) and better value for money... I'll be interested to see too what impact the whole steam box thing has on the gaming market. On the surface of it it seems like it might be a good balance between the benefits of pc gaming and the convenience of a console. I guess it remains to be seen... in the meantime, I'll be enjoying xenonauts! Edited October 23, 2013 by Milkflavour Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wraith_Magus Posted October 25, 2013 Share Posted October 25, 2013 Well, if you look at some of the indie devs out there like the guy who does Spiderweb Games, (the Avernum series, etc.,) he out-and-out said that he charges basically half as much for his games on Steam than he does on his own website. (And that's before the games go on sale - and they'll go on sale for 50% or more off.) It's just because he was only selling to serious indie-game consumers when all he had to go on was word-of-mouth from other players of his games. When he got on Steam, however, slashing prices was the only way to go - not just because he was competing against a bunch of other cheaper indie games, but also because he was just plain getting so many more potential customers that it was better for him financially, anyway. There's a lot of games I just plain don't hear about until I see them pop up on Steam. (Xenonauts being one of them.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Russonc Posted October 29, 2013 Share Posted October 29, 2013 @Milkflavour...I am a old school PC gamer as well and I have learned to like Steam (but it wouldn't be as good if I didn't have a good Internet connection). I highly second the suggestion you look at GOG.com for there selection of DRM free, old school games....I'm sure you'll find some old favorites in the bunch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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