Problem: I've already put down good money for it (well, £30 for Fallout 3 GotY + New Vegas), so I might have jumped the gun here.

Oh well, will probably wait for a Steam sale of the DLC around the time of the GotY's release.

Not really. To them it's just another pirate then. A pirate and paying customer is not the same as just a paying customer.
It's apparently fixed by verifying the cache.

I'll get New Vegas once it reaches a better price point - or gets on one of Steam's ridiculous sales. That's how I got the Fallout 3 GOTY edition after all.
That'll also give them some time to put out some patches, and some time for the fan community to start working on unofficial patches, since the fans are the ones who seem to be doing the most quality testing work at both Bethesda and Obsidian ..

I'm sure some think that way, but I don't really care. I don't support them because Bethesda are my best friends, I support them because I want more PC games from them. Everything is selfish in capitalism, there are no best friends or loyalties. If screwing me would increase their profit they would do so in a heartbeat, the Xbox exclusive period for the DLC is but one example. Screwing them to the point of giving them no money means less PC games and less quality in PC ports though, that is the thing pirates seem to be ignorant of.

So I support them for the entirely selfish reason of getting more Bethesda games on PC. That doesn't mean I will respect their DRM "games as a service" bullshit though.

Well the "pirated" copies would exist on torrents whether I used them to make a backup or not.

well.. I will

:D

serious post now:

Two things I have to say:

You are being unfair saying that people who complain about mods lead to bad games.

I want to bring an example for you:
Total War series

They were easily moddable and mods were EXTREMELY popular. People bought their games because they expected their games to be moddable.
Then came Empire and mods are/were (not sure about what's happening in this department now) not possible.
I believe that was a wrong move from sega as they removed a vital component from the game and all those complains were right. A public expected game to be moddable like the previous titles. Removing that aspect is no different than removing assassin units or upgrading towns.

Second thing:

I see a strange idea in your post. You game to put a check and say: I beat that game. That's fine and dandy and I understand the reason now why you won't use mods.

I and I would assume most people play to just enjoy the game. Fallout 3 mods allow player to enjoy the game even more.

My example

I abhor the original interface of F3. Console-crap made that way so it can be useful when playing on tv from a couch. doesn't have place on PC monitor . So I got a mod and changed it. It did make the game more pleasant. I could play original version and still enjoy the game. Yet i believe that simple mod made the game a bit better for me.

Another example is that idiotic Oblivion design for level scaling.
The moment I saw random thug wearing an armour similar to mine which I got from some extremely powerful demons was the moment the game became complete shit. One of the principles of RPGs is that you are nobody who grows up to become semi-god was completely ruined when a thug is still a challenge after 20 levels.

That's me and that's the stuff which irked me which i could fix with mods. Someone else had something else fixed.
I am sure you played a great game yet there was a bug/design choice which irked you. With Fallout 3/Oblivion that would be most likely fixable just by browsing the Nexus pages.

Mods are also giving you more for a buck. Which doesn't affect the "Check. I completed the game lets move to another one" idea but for many it doesn't matter.
More quests, new items, new lands. HL2 has that great amazingly written mod by a guy who got later hired by Valve, Minerva: Metastasis. Not sure what's your stance on HL2 but to anyone who loved the game that mod is a must. It is downloadable from Steam.
DOTA is also a mod to Warcraft 3
So was Counter Strike and Team Fortress


Thus my surprise on your 'screw the mods' point of view :) I also have bunch of untouched games (25 from gog, another 10 in retail and probably another 20 from steam. Rough count). The number will probably grow during Xmas. Yet i still got three mods for Planescape Torment (widescreen to destroy the pixalization, tweaks and fixes to repair bugs and make the gaming more pleasant like increasing the font size by 120%, and unfinished business adding bunch of new quests and few stuff) Without them... especially without widescreen I would not be able to enjoy the game as much as i do now as it aged graphically pretty bad.


but thank you. I did learn something from your post trusteft.

Ah, good point. I didn't realize the radio stations faded out for important occasions (although it really should have occurred to me). That's a nice touch. You'd think that a choose your music station would be fairly easy for them to implement. Watch some folder to see if it has whatever sound format they can use for free, then show it in the radio screen and cycle through the music.

If you keep the radio on you miss the awesomeness that is the Fallout 1 and 2 music.

Well actually for Dead Rising 2 and Lost Planet 2 GFWL is not used to activate the game but to check the release date, you still need to be online to install the game which stinks, but it dont even check the game serial number.

Still, it's online activation, of sorts.

Well except that you backup are total waste of disk space if you don't reactivate them on steam on every computer you want to .

It's like saying that the only difference between using DRM and DRM-free is the DRM part...
It is a similar inconvenience... (and don't get me wrong I don't like it at all, I would have preferred they used Starcraft 2 release date check method) but in the end it's an online activation even more lenient and user friendly than Steam, the activation unlimited and is not linked to any account, not even linked to a serial number, you can even sell the game if you want to.

Here's my beef with people saying GfWL is less harmless DRM than Steamworks, now that it's mandatory online checking. We don't know the limit. I know there was much hoo-hah about Bioshock 2 having a GfWL-applied 15 install limit, and I've also heard that it applies to other GfWL games that don't lock onto an account.

I understand that GfWL divides games into two classes.
1) Game is registered to one gamertag only, unlimited installs.
2) Game is not limited to one gamertag, but has limited installs.

While I don't have any evidence for this other than What I've Heard, I understand the developers that use it are in a similar position. At least with Steam, you know what you're getting in for if you see Steamworks on the back of the box. No such luxury in GfWL.

Until Dead Rising 2 though you didn't need to activate to play, making activation limits pointless and not a real concern. If there is a limit on the "release day check" for Dead Rising 2 though, then that sucks and is worse than Steam by far.

And contrary to what Gersen says I am pretty sure I had to put my serial code in to activate the release day check thingy.

RPS just absolutely slammed it. A lot of people seem to be disagreeing with them though.