Borrowed from another site

[QUOTE=Nick Danger;9186285]I think it's pretty clear...
First, when 2K Elizabeth said:

They of course can compile multiple games.  They just chose not to.  I think the reason they chose not to is because steam required it be necessary to run steam in the background, even for store-bought dvd and even with single-player offline games.  The reason being Steam wants to get on, and be running online on, as many computers as possible.  They're also banking on most people not ticking the 'offline' option, so most civ5 players will have steam connected even when unnecessary -- many will have it on even when not playing civ5, but always on.

The why is pretty obvious -- getting on as many machines as possible, and being connected, benefits steam tremendously.  

--More market share: not only to be able to make more deals like the one with civ5, but it also helps keep competitors at a disadvantage, and makes it harder for new competitors to enter.

--More information collected: their privacy policy is too long to quote here (see [url]http://www.valvesoftware.com/privacy.html[/url]) but here's a part:

"By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below." (emphasis mine)

--More 'eyeballs' on its ads, so it can sell/charge more advertising.

etc.

While it's valuable for steam to be able to (exclusively?) sell the DD/DLC for Civ5 it's likely even more valuable that steam be installed and running on the number of pcs that will run civ5.

My guess is this was presented to the civ5 devs from 'on high' and not of their initiation, and I take it as a sign that the 'suits' (Dr. Johnny Fever 1978) and not the gamers are calling this (and other?) shots.

So my hunch is that this deal is really about getting steam on as many computers as possible, and 2k is getting a cut for forcing this on civ5 players.[/QUOTE]

Again - mods based on direct content taken from a paid DLC release would probably be between the company that made it (ie, not valve/steam), and the modders.  I mean, isn't this already common place?  Or do people normally take direct content from a paid releases, and release it as is free to the community? 

Also, I suspect that the number of people with absolutely no internet connection, but who buy the latest video game release, is pretty low.    

Anyway, interesting post Tas - but what ads?  I only see ads for games on Steam itself...I even loaded up Steam to check, but I didn't see any.  Am I missing them? 

Frogboy:  Given your acknowledgement of Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior, using its deep pockets to under-price its product to eliminate competition (like OS/2) then, when they've destroyed competition, to then start dictating prices and terms ... I wonder why Stardock seems bent on helping it further this by using IE as a basis for Impulse instead of Firefox, Opera or another browser?

You should see what he said regarding DLC and modding...

Pretty obvious that you don't know much about the Civ modding community.  Right now I could have Civ 4 vanilla (no expansions) and download mods for all the civs included in the expansion packs.  I could also download mods for any of the buildings and whatnot that were added.  I mean, it's not all that difficult to mod in a new civ or building.

So now if they continue with the DLC model of selling off new civs here and there, their financial interest is to shut down these mods.  Before they couldn't, but now if all mods have to be "approved" and go thru Steam it's not hard to leap to the next step of what can and will happen.  And what about the various bug fix mods that actually fix bugs in the game.  Do those also not get approved because they may or may not cause stability issues.  I could go on.  Besides the fact, who in the heck is actually "approving" these mods.   It's something to be very worried about.

Just to touch on the "approval" question, I think I have an answer there to confirm the process.  A friend of mine went for a job at 2K titled "Civilization Community Manager" a month ago.  He needed lua, xml and c++ skills.  Part of the role was to check uploaded mods to ensure no copyrights were breached, that the code was not malicious, and that no new processes were spawned.

He was going for the mod approver job.  (He didn't get it, they hired from internally).

EDIT:

The job ad: http://jobs.gamasutra.com/jobseekerx/viewjobrss.asp?cjid=21432&accountno=362

Wait - so you're saying people have copy/pasted the content from BTS and put it directly into the original?  If so, that's pretty nice of Firaxis, I figured copying the leaderheads and all the art styles and code that went into released content would of been copyrighted.  

Did Stardock let modders copy/paste all the content and code from the SINS expansions into the original?  If not - they could really learn something from Firaxis, because as you say, Firaxis lets their modders do.  

Otherwise, I don't know how you could of got something else out of "direct content from a paid release, and release it free to the community," aside from that - and with an added insult on top of it!     

Edit - 

Very interesting Dale. 

Mods will continue for the forseeable future, but will have to go thru 2K to be 'checked'.

Will there be other criteria for approval - such as not replicating or being too similar to DLC (even DLC they might someday but not currently offer)?  Will copyright prevent making mods that resemble parts of other games?  Will mods have to be DL'd from steam or 2k only, and not from sites like CivFanatics?  Will non-reviewed mods be able to be installed and/or will they break the game?  How long will approval require?

I can see mods like the HoF one being fast-tracked and having relatively little problems, but some of the others...

If all mods need to be checked and must go thru 2k, that's a big change.  After their decision to force steam even for store-bought dvd-installed single-player games played offline (that sure is a mouthful, better acronymize it - SBDISPGPO) I'm not sure how much trust to extend them.

Is this the beginning of their morphing community mods into publisher-overseen DLC -- some offered free, some for pay?

Well since I got bashed i went and started up as many of my steam games as I could from the .exe and about 60% of them launched without starting steam and the others launched steam before starting, Plenty from this decade heck Bioshock2 didn't load the steam client.

So i'll take the hit that for games tightly integrated into Steamworks you launch the client even when launching the .exe but you can go into offline mode and start the steamworks games just fine as well so there is no need to be connected to the internet the entire time your playing.

Of course their doing this to get you to look at the client and potentially use their store, are u that shocked by capitalism? Heck personally I am more of a partial socialist in my world view and on the list of capitalism run amuck this doesn't even qualify in my book. All I see is Steam getting in early on a market pretty much any idiot saw coming in 1997 and holding on to alot of the current marketshare because they have a good product. And its what 75% or so and competition is moving up namely Impulse and D2D.  And Steam is a good product, granted it has flaws namely in the patch release management area (sometimes redownloading an entire client) but its pretty darn good otherwise.

Also if this is about Civ5 having an exclusive deal for download distribution via steam then I kinda get that but why isn't everyone screaming bloody murder over all the console exclusive titles, I mean heck thats not a small change to an executable thats a hardware specific it ain't ever going to work anywhere else thing. Plus exclusive deals are signed all the time in all sorts of industries. Is Sins, EWOM, or GalCiv available on Steam? There is a little bit of hypocrisy in all this.

And you know if Steam does get too big the anti-trust suits will come from everywhere and it'll get broken up or possibly even some good will come out of it like the integration being forced into an open standard. I mean thats really the goal here to have lotsa different services and one standard for your friends list. heck with Blizzard getting in on all of this and all the facebook integration happening you might just see facebook taking over as the friend list and steamworks losing alot of, har har, steam. These things always work out in the computer world.

I mean of all the things to fight about this is kinda crazy I have Impulse and Steam both sitting in my systray 99% of the time my computer is running and both services are great. Are people that afraid of technology? Can someone actually point out an argument that doesn't revolve around not wanting to run a 16kb process on their rigs? Or have to deal with one-time internet activation for DRM (offline mode works just fine). And personally I agree with Brad, I don't see the point in DRM beyond something fairly limited ( but would rather have it through a service because that way you don't lose cd keys 5 years down the road). But one-time internet activation being so horrible people won't buy civ5? Thats just crazy.

The second Steam requires you to be online all the time while your playing or throws ads up in games your playing I'll be glad to join the bandwagon but for now this all just sounds a bit farfetched.

@jam3, I think that most folk would want to avoid getting the anti-trust stage of things, and want to make sure that no-one ever gets it into their head that constant-internet-check is an acceptable form of DRM (Hi Ubisoft!). 

I use both platforms and am generally happy with both.  However I think that, if anything, Facebook has demonstrated how quickly a company which is generally trusted can spin around and bite you in the rear unless it is actively and vocally opposed whenever it toes the line. 

For digital distribution, I think this is one of those moments where it's good to stand up and say, hey, wait just one gosh-darned second here!

As to why people are screaming bloody murder... well, here are some CIV specific reasons, which I've seen over at the civfanatics forum:

1. Requiring an Online connection for a single player game - online-check DRM isn't that onerous when you're playing online already in a FPS or some RTS or MMO.  But for a single player game, which folk are going to play on the go, or when their net goes down, it seems a rather poor choice.  Combine this with steam's... somewhat spotty offline mode (at least, in my personal experience) and people get annoyed.
2. Day 0 DLC, in the form of Babylon and their steam exclusive deluxe edition.  This is the nightmare scenario a lot of civver's discussed when DLC was first becoming popular.  It's a fun sore spot.
3. Official / Unofficial moderation of Mods through a Steam-style Hub.  No-one knows how this is going to work out in practice, and folk are worried that 2K will try to monetize mods as DLC.  Nothing has really been done to soothe these worries from 2K, and folk are getting nervous.

I thought you might say that. It gets even worse. If people do mod, and the mod mimics stuff that is in one of their DLC or other paid add-ons, they will be sued!

Please, 16kb?

The new Steam client is often better- usually hovering between 6-12mb of ram. However, when it online mode, it can randomly (and I do mean randomly) balloon. Usually it gets into the 50mb territory, with it once going up to 100mb. This is me not playing a game (or touching it), the Steam overlay is disabled, and the friends list isn't signed in. And it's in mini-mode.

Furthermore, I shouldn't have to install/load a client to play a game when I didn't even buy it through that client.

Lets remember that if you actually take content from a DLC and rerelease it as a mod, they definately will try and ban/remove/stop you since your distrobuting thier copyrighted materials without permission.

Considering that many (many!) mods have copyrighted material I can see 'false' drama being made (which my earlier failed joke post refrenced but was seriously far too vauge).

If you can still install and use manually then there wont be any problems.

As a side note: I would think elemental's offical mod distrobuting methods would have a similar "badness barrier" for mods. Lets just hope they don't try and censor sexy elf and dirty furry mods along with the "MyFirstCopyrightInfringementMod" mods.