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New Patch Locks Skyrim to Steam Forever and Ever

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Well, that's the first time I've heard of Steam making a game more crappy (MW2 excluded because it was like that from the start).

But really? I mean- how hard is it to enable modding in a Steam game? People do it to Half-Life 2 all the time, and one would expect that Skyrim would be the same way. You can have mods for Call of Duty 4 on Steam: why is this different?

I bet there will be a massive logout (to offline mode) spree before this update occurs when this news becomes more widespread, to prevent updating.
And rightfully so.


TL;DR:

Bethesda NEEDLESSLY gives PC gamers the middle finger.
 
People, this update does not hinder "normal" game modification. Only those that mess with the executable. And since there was only one mod affected as of now, LAA, and there is already a alternative for that, whats the fuss and rage about?
 
[citation][nom]steelbox[/nom]whats the fuss and rage about?[/citation]
Well, it also throws a wrench in the works of the OTHER mods currently in development; as I recall, there was already a Skyrim graphics extender mod, (to make the PC version not look so woefully dated and cut to console specs) and I was pretty sure that there's also a script extender in the works, just like how there was one for both Morrowind and Oblivion, that drastically increased the scripting programmability available in other mods.

A lot of mods need to modify the executable, or rely on other mods that do. (late in OB's lifespan, most good mods coming out REQUIRED use of the OBSE, which modified OB's executable) And before anyone tried to interject, no, the vast majority of people using these mods are using legit, non-pirated copies: with that much user-made content, $50US for a copy of the game is a steal anyway. And these mods I speak of do NOT aid in piracy of the game.

But, given BethSoft's choice to ignore the PC gamer in favor of the console kiddies, it's those third-party mods that make the game worth buying in the first place. Take most of them away... (or just delay a lot of them, as this will do) And that's a big middle finger to that entire market, and really hurts the justification for more people to buy. And do keep in mind that it's quite probable that Skyrim sold more on the PC than the Xbox 360; while Steam's exact sales figures weren't released, it is known that the game massively surpassed everything in Steam's history in terms of playing level, hitting 300,000 simultaneous players on simultaneously. (and even during slumps, hasn't dropped below 100k)
 
I am a consolegamer that wants to buy a gaming PC but even I can tell that devs are giving the middle finger to the PC community man. I love my ps3 and my Metal Gear Solid games but shit like this makes me think that those rumors that PC gaming is dying are not that far-fetched. Is not that PC gaming is dying more like someone is trying to kill it. I'm looking at you lazy devs.
 
[citation][nom]hoofhearted[/nom]What does the "more than 2GB" mod buy you?[/citation]
It's necessary to bump the graphics, ESPECIALLY the load/draw distances. If you pay close attention, you'll notice the game still has plenty of pop-in where it switches between low-detail "distance" stuff and full-detail "up-close" stuff.

To increase the distance where it loads the full-detail objects beyond the default (which is the only setting on the consoles) you need to allocate more RAM to the game than 2GB. The LAA patch is what makes this possible.
 
I think my game already got the patch. Does this mean I will not be able to play it in Offline mode any more? I would be ROYALLY pissed by that. From time to time I have found the Steam client to be unstable (even if it generally gets fixed), and I can't help but think maybe I should have pursued alternate methods of obtaining this game.
 
[citation][nom]steelbox[/nom]People, this update does not hinder "normal" game modification. Only those that mess with the executable. And since there was only one mod affected as of now, LAA, and there is already a alternative for that, whats the fuss and rage about?[/citation]

is it possible for the community to fix bugs with this in place, like they did with oblivion?
 
Bethsda should include support for more than 2GB of memory in another official patch. But then again, this is typical Bethsda, isn't it; they release a great game... and yet it's full of bugs and/or not properly optimized. Great, the game runs... CRASH! Awesome, it's up again... CRASH! One more restart; it's time to play again... CRASH! Yup. Great game, but their Quality Assurance is, well... not quite there.
 
Another reason why PC gaming is dying - I game mainly on a console now because I gbet fed up with STEAM requirements for most new games.

Steam is often slow to load games up... then it hogs bandwidth and resources running updates
 
The new workaround to enable SKyrim to see all your RAM works and all the mods that I got to enchance the visuals also work. There is absolutely no problem right now.

Just as the article points out, Bethesda made a small patch to simply make things harder, but its ok now.
 
Now that I think of it, it's kinda embarrassing that it's the year 2011, and BethSoft still makes Skyrim a 32-bit only game. Keep in mind that the LAA patch doesn't make the game use 64-bit addresses: it just ups it from 2GB to 4GB; the latter is the ultimate limit on 32-bit addresses.
[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]is it possible for the community to fix bugs with this in place, like they did with oblivion?[/citation]
It depends on the kind of bug. Most of the "bugs" found in the "unofficial Morrowind/Oblivion patch" mods are in-game content issues, such as a mis-aligned piece of architecture, (this was the source for >90% of the "thousands" of bugs OB's fan patch fixed) naming errors, etc. IIRC, the community patches for the game were entirely within the bounds of normal mods, and hence, yes, would work perfectly fine with this DRM in place.
 
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