Steam and retail

Nope but you could give the copy you bought to someone else as a present and then buy the Steam version that way you have someone to play with too!

Downloading and installing the patch manually isn't THAT big a hardship, is it? Especially compared to the fact that Steam will dissapear LONG before you stop playing the game?

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

See subject. Steam still screams and dies everytime a game is released, its still requiring games to go through it, which means when it dies all of them go as well, etc. (I've pointed it out before, but something like half my games are from publishers/developers that don't exist anymore).

There is defiantly no way to do it.

Sorry

stem SE V work without steam at all

if steam die Devs could made patches that simply will patch the "dead steam" version

I think that if Steam ever dies, it will instead be bought by some other company who will have all the purchase records, etc, so you won't lose your games. It's not like Valve will just suddenly disappear one day, Steam along with it.

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With all these people, you would expect one of them to carry an iguana around...

Funny, that's exactly what happened to another digital distribution service. One day working, the next..gone. No warning, no notfication.

the dame we could say abou D2D service and other everything will come sometime to end
Steam is one of the better non invasive (like d2d ... ) digital distribution platform. Seems that it turn from FPS to startegy publishing last times

My complaint is with Steam specificly, not digital distribution. I even used digital distrubtion to download GalCiv2, so I could leave my collectors edition box unopened.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Any games bought through a digital distributor come with their own dangers, as each one of them retools the game in an effort to fight piracy. D2D is set up that the game will not run if it has been modified in any way. Valve requires that any game be authenticated by steam on loading. However, should either of these companies go down in flames (D2D before steam, I wager) we can only hope they have the decency to release patches to undue their copy protections and make those games compatible with retail editions.

On the Subject of digital distibutors, Gamer's Gate, a small one from Europe does not place invasive or limiting copy protection upon their games. If they would only get their hands on a larger (and better) library of games they would be an ideal choice. Still, the strategy gamers among you might find a worthwhile buy there.

Back to the current discussion though, I find I am increasing tempted to download my games rather than head out to the closest EB and pick it up. With a game I am really REALLY waiting for, the need to play it as soon as possible proves to be too much. I imagine others get this feeling sometimes and that is why purchasing and downloading games will become increasingly popular and at some point preferable. I think we will indeed look back and think of buying flat plastic circles as silly. Imagine what our grandchildren will think.

I hit activate a product on steam and registered my retail version of X3 with steam and can now download x3 on other computers using my steam acount so i think the answere to your question is yes

Doesn't work with SE5. You can plug the code in, but it says invalid.