Question on Purchasing

No, it is also available at EBGames and Gamestop, and you can order a boxed CD and manual from SFI. The boxed version does not require activation via Steam; it just has a CD key printed on the CD cover.

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Mr. Flibble says...
Game over, boys!

If your in the States, I recommend buying it from a store or order it online and have it shipped. I bought it from EB, paied for overnight shipping and got it the next day. I've read that some people have been having problems with Steam, but they would have to comment on that.

I bought the boxed game from StrategyFirst yesterday (October 16). How long will it approximately take to be shipped to me? I'm in the US...

I can't wait to play it

I have another question... What's this Steam Smitty talks about and why he doesn't like it? I've never used it...

Steam is a service from Valve software that allows you to purchase, download, and play certain games. Some retail games, like Half Life 2, require it.

The problem is that you have to have an internet connection to install any Steam game, you can't buy any Steam game used, and if Steam goes away, so do all the games you bought on it.

That's really annoying indeed :|

No wonder Smitty didn't want to use it...

Why is Stardock better than Steam?

I haven't had any problems with Steam, short of the ambiguity as to when exactly the game would be released. Once the game is installed, you can play offline just fine. I was pleased that the patch came out roughly the same time for Steam as for the disc version.

I would also imagine that if Steam were to "ever go away," that they'd release an update allowing you to keep your purchased games independent from Steam. You can automatically back-up the data files to CD/DVD-R if you like, for the moment.

I'm a fan of downloading games just because I'm sick of storing and moving boxes and cases. Most packaging I find pretty superfluous anyway, though a recent exception is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where the packaging is a beautifully hard-cover bound book. I understand some people like to keep and display their game boxes though.

Even if you back your games up you can't reinstall them without Steam. And I don't like relying on an update that *might* come along at some point in the future.

Saying Steam doesn't seem like it'd go under is no help. I look at my games list and at least a quarter of them are from companies that no longer exist.

Heh, and probably 50-75% of my games are from companies that no longer exist. Valve just seems to actually care about its users as much as any corporate-entity can. Kind of like how I was fine buying Space Empires V at release, despite knowing it would be buggy, I trust that the developers are actually going to fix it into a near-perfect state. I personally don't mind putting some faith into Valve either because they have a good track record.

On the other hand, I would never ever again buy new-release products from EA, Ubisoft or Atari, because they can't be trusted to fix their products. Despite having glaring bugs, or often even being completely unplayable forever, they've started a trend of just cutting their losses and ignoring the people that got suckered into buying those particular products. It wouldn't be such a big deal if it were actually possible to return software.