Linking cracks or pirated software is not acceptable. Period.

I'm a bit curious where you found that since such terms are generally under NDA, but regardless, if they can patch it in, they can patch it out. They were able to get stickers put on all the Oblivion boxes to change the rating, surely they could put a "download the updated non-Steam installer from bethsoft.com" sticker on Skyrim if it came to that point. In the end, they made a choice--nobody forced them into anything.

Steamworks is hardly a critical component of the game, especially when it inhibits some customers from being able to run it. Apparently Steam even had some downtime today, which (thanks to the update) blocked a number of players out of the game entirely. The cat can't be put back in the bag as far as piracy goes, so at this point they're just pissing customers off.

After hearing about that I will wait a year or two before getting this game. The mods aren't going to be that great until then anyways. 

/

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/22/skyrim-patched-for-the-worse/

Frankly they patched an oversight as it should have shipped this way (required Steam to run the exe) being that it's a Steamworks game.

The whole uproar over this was pretty much directed at the "4GB patch" hack/mod someone had created.  The thing is that the modder updated the mod in less then a day and it's working just fine with the "steam required" exe.  So really there is no further need for uproar over it, it's a non issue at this point.  No other mods are effected that I know of.  There aren't that many extensive mods yet anyway until they release the Creation Kit (or whatever they're calling it).  The two mods I'm using and the several .ini tweaks I have weren't touched (obviously because it was just an exe update).

Well that's good to know anyway. 

Mmm, just bought the game last night.  I think it will sit on the shelf until a crack is available. 

@Kantock   i figured out the missing save game issue.  I run win 7, and have two hard drives installed.  C: is small, for the OS.  D: is large, for games, writing projects, etc.   Steam installed iself and can be accessed from either hard drive.   Here is the 'fun.'  If I start Skyrim for the c drive, I get a different set of savegames than I do if I start from the D: drive.   The savegames were not missing... just on the other harddrive.

@all;  Played 40 or 50 hours of skyrim.  Some glitches, bugs.  But overall, awesome.   Oh, watch-out, some of the daedra quests 'happen' to you without you knowing, at first, that it is a dadric quest.  And you sometimes have some, well, no so tasty choices.  

So many of the basic mods from oblivion have been incorporated, crafting, cooking, marriage (though it is bugged pretty bad in initial release), and an interesting take on alchemy and enchanting.  Pet peeve, avatar can only learn enchanting affects by 'disenchanting,' (reverse engineering?) a currently held enchanted item.  So, who enchanted the original weapon / armor?  Why can't my avatar?

Bards college is cool.  But not magical like in some FRP games.  

Graphics are awersome... truely... and the NPCs...   well enjoy them.

Best game ever.

I'm officially on vacation, I mean Staycation, for 11 days......boy is my ass going to hurt...better get a new chair.

We don't really need to know what you get up to in the bedroom...

It's only a "non-issue" because it's Steam DRM rather than any other DRM system. Anyone else patching in additional DRM would have been crucified.

Executable encryption does mean that any sort of scripting engine extension (as has been done for past TES games) is impossible until/unless they explicitly provide a library to expose the necessary hooks to support it.

While this is true, so what? Steam as DRM is way more acceptable to people for good reasons. All DRM is not bad, there is good DRM and bad DRM. Steam DRM is well-known, non intrusive, and dependable. And it comes bundled with two positive features as well - automatic patching and the social crap including achievements.

I'll be the first to admit that I prefer no DRM to any DRM, but if I have to choose, it's Steam DRM today.

Steam does have some down sides.  For example last night my internet was out so i decided to fire up oblivion (I like mods) in offline mode.  Unfortunately steam was waiting for next log in to finish patching so when i clicked to enter offline mode i got an update failure and steam closed ;\.  I tried to find a way around it but in the end was just out of luck.  Not being able to play the games I buy due to some strange bug = lame.  Luckily this normally is not an issue. 

I can't wait for mods for skyrim, but until then i just can't seem to stay interested.  I think a level up mod (I dislike the system in skyrim as much as the one in oblivion), and some kind of mod to give me something interesting to spend my mountains of gold on will make the game MUCH more interesting to me.

pretty much sums up my response as well...lol

Though to be fair this guy might would think an FBI search of his house as "non intrusive"... people these days.

Just a question about this "patch". Does it mean that i have to turn steam always online? For now i bought 1 version of this game. I installed it on my PC and for my wife on her PC. Now we both play it with steam offline.

And i´m absolutly not willing to buy two versions of one game for one household, although it is the best game in years for me.

Nah, you can still play it like that

ahh...okay, cool. Many thanks.

I'm a long time Steam user and supporter, and I find it...questionable to say the least.

Then again, a cursory check of just one torrent site showed me 15k+ torrents of Skyrim up.

Do the math. Tens of thousands of illegal copies of the best selling game on Steam, and probably 50% of the Steam user base or more using a modified .exe. It's not hard to figure out why they upped the DRM specification for the game on Steam. It may suck that Valve chooses to be that responsive with their DRM, but they have legitimate business reasons for doing so. I may not like them, but I'm not painting them as evil bastards for doing it.

Consider that if Skyrim had LAA in there in the first place, this may never have even happened. Plenty of hot-selling games on Steam get the crap pirated out of them on release, without Steam doing retroactive DRM upgrade.

Do you guys even realize there's an FXAA option in the launcher?

Who needs a mod?

You guys are right, I should have said "relatively". Because while it is intrusive, it is nowhere near as intrusive as many other DRM "solutions".

Not using any mods, the only difference I've noticed since the stealth patch has been a 10MB increase in RAM consumption. Now it starts up at about 101-102MB, it used to start at 93. The game runs the same for me. If there was a way before to make it run with Steam off, it would have been great. That thing eats resources like I eat pie. It can get up to 50MB after the startup peak, and stays at about 25 when the game runs. Considering I've got about 600-700 MB of free memory, compared to the recommended 1-1.5GB, that's still a lot.

Speaking of mods. How can I turn off that eye adjustment to light effect? I tried to disable HDR in the ini file, but it's still on. The effect is either very exaggerated, or it's on of the games that my card doesn't do HDR well on(it does that a lot). It makes fighting dragons really annoying at night, because any breath used in my proximity, even if it misses, still blinds me.