Creative Assembly confirms Total War: Rome 2 will require Steam, but not always-on DRM
By Jess Colwill on October 4, 2012 at 3:06 pm
In an interview with Eurogamer, Creative Assembly’s lead designer James Russell has confirmed that Total War: Rome 2 will use Steam but will not be required to be always online. “It’s always upsetting to see your game being pirated,” Russell said.
“Certainly we do suffer from that. We’ve got a lot of players who haven’t necessarily activated. But at the same time it’s arguable how much that harms sales. We don’t like our game being pirated and so we take steps to try and stop that happening. We wouldn’t want to take draconian steps to alienate our core player-base that are buying the game.”
At the same time, though, this confirmation was established after Creative Assembly refused to rule out taking the plunge into always-on DRM. “I wouldn’t comment on ever, but it’s certainly not something we’re planning to do for Rome 2,” Russell said, leaving the possibility open for the future.
Source: Eurogamer
Total War: Rome 2 introduces Cleopatra, politics, stabbings
More like J.R.R. Martin's Game of Romes 2: Total War
Total War: Rome II sets franchise pre-order record
Proverbially buggy at launch yet oh so coveted.
Total War: Rome II to be released on September 3
Pre-order now for DLC, of course.
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Er – Steam IS always-on DRM.
There is an offline mode, you just have to have run the game at least once.
Steam’s offline mode says hello.
Also, an Internet connection is only needed once for Steam activation. That said, you will want to be online most of the time to download patches.
Damn you Subw00fer!
There was a guy on reddit who listed all the Steam client updates which referenced fixes to the offline mode. It was a rather long list. With that many attempts at resolving the occasional issues people have with it, somehow I’m not too confident that offline mode will actually work at an unexpected moment.
As for piracy, stop worrying about it. Games are pirated on Steam all the time, you can’t stop it short of draconian measures. Focus your attention on those who are actually buying your games and encourage others to do so.
Yep, you can use offline mode for exactly as long as you never want to access any patches/new games/multiplayer. So in other words, you have to go on-line to get normal functionality.
So I guess Steam is Always-On-Unless-You’re-Happy-With-A-Crippled-Game DRM.
Because Steam is closed source, we have no way of knowing whether it simply caches everything while in offline mode then transmits it to the mothership when you go on-line.
And the DRM itself is, of course, “always on”, which is what I was referring to. You can’t play your Steam games without running Steam.
caitsith01,
Look, what I have learnt is that if you complain about Steam too much people will belittle you and accuse you of being stubborn/unrealistic. So it’s not worth commenting too much about Steam and its DRM. Having opposing opinions is not what other people like to hear.
Anyways, this fellow’s comment on “I wouldn’t comment on ever” disappoints me. He should have the balls to rule out always-on DRM entirely. Maybe he’s not in the position to do that, I dunno. But using harsher language to denounce the possibility of the idea rather than leaving a bit of a gap open would have been nice.
I’ve also been caught with the problem,
my internet is offline so I load up steam to go into offline mode thinking I’ll be fine, but then gotten the error “You must be online to use offline mode”.
and I’m thinking if I had an internet connection right this minute I’d be online not trying to use your damn useless offline mode lol.
ElectroTyrian – I agree, some people will never accept that Steam is DRM.
I just think GON itself shouldn’t get sucked in by marketing speak such as “this game has no always on DRM!!1!11! PS it requires Steam…” Basically GON is giving the studio a free plug for this feature, instead of critically examining its claim and observing that Steam IS DRM.
Wut, I hope you weren’t referring to me, as I never said Steam wasn’t DRM.
I’ve only ever had to use Steams offline mode maybe 2-3 times, it’s always worked for me, I know that’s not what everyone experiences, but it’s not as useless as it claims.
For patches/multiplayer you kind of have to be Online regardless if you use Steam or not.
people claim*
Hey GON, get on that edit button for god sake.
Fixed. And duhhh. :P
There is an interesting way my friend found last year to get offline mode always work. It involves setting everything to auto login then you can copy the clientregistry.blob file and rename it to _Offline for example and keep that copy for offline use and that file will always work in offline mode regardless of any other steam settings.
Oh and also you must have autologin set for offline mode to work properly (as far as I know) so that’s why having that blob file copy (with it set to auto-login) comes in handy.
Yeah no. See, I can download a patch via Firefox without having to run any spyware to do it. Or games can include an auto-download feature for patches. But if you choose to use Steam for your game, you are locking people into doing all this via Valve.
Surprisingly, I was able to patch and play Quake III on line without using Steam once upon a time.
In other words, Steam isn’t the only way to get online. It’s DRM.
Sorry, kids! I don’t get paid to critically analyse anything, I just report what I hear!
Besides, if I WERE to critically examine it, I would observe that Steam is a far less draconian measure than some games have, and that you should probably accept a happy medium where offline mode works for the .5% of time you aren’t on the Internet anyway, rather than damning a company that is trying to protect themselves AND give you what you want at the same time.
*puts on tinfoil hat*
Ahhh, I see!
Why should I though? Various indie developers can sell their games either directly on their websites or via the Humble Bundles without requiring DRM at all. GOG sells all their games without DRM, even things like Alan Wake and ARMA 2. In our enlightened times it’s hard to side with publishers for pushing DRM anymore. It’s not like we NEED their games to survive, and there are enough non-DRM games out there to last a lifetime anyway.
With such a glut of entertainment, you can afford to be picky.
That’s all fine, but Steam is till DRM that you have to have ‘on’ all the time.
Yes, yes, anyone who dislikes the idea of being forced to run redundant third party software on their PC which phones home to transmit unknown data to said third party must be crazy and paranoid, right?