I've played a little bit of Portal at my friend's house, and I was hoping to buy the game, but I loathe steam. Is there any way for me to get a copy of Portal that requires no Steam account to install or play?
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Spoiler
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise. Kubla Khan -- Samuel Coleridge Taylor
I've played a little bit of Portal at my friend's house, and I was hoping to buy the game, but I loathe steam. Is there any way for me to get a copy of Portal that requires no Steam account to install or play?
Ouch... Why Valve, Why! You bastards! I played Half-Life through the whole freaking killing of the Nihilanth without ever once connecting to the internet! If I bought the game CD I should be able to play the game, period! 'Sblood, thou stinkard, I'll learn ye how to gust ... wolde ye swynke me thilke wys?... Magna Mater! Magna Mater!... Atys... Dia ad aghaidh's ad aodaun... agus bas dunarch ort! Dhonas 's dholas ort, agus leat-sa!... Ungl unl... rrlh ... chchch...
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Spoiler
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise. Kubla Khan -- Samuel Coleridge Taylor
Honestly, you're doing yourself a disservice by not installing Steam. It's a great service. I was skeptical too, when I first had to install it to play HL2, but since then I've definitely drank the Kool-aid. You can have in-game chat across games, using any game that supports Steam integration, plus there's constantly deals on games, and a fair amount of just plain free stuff.
I... I have to admit something... My name is White_Drake, and I have no functional private internet connection...
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Spoiler
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise. Kubla Khan -- Samuel Coleridge Taylor
Honestly, you're doing yourself a disservice by not installing Steam. It's a great service. I was skeptical too, when I first had to install it to play HL2, but since then I've definitely drank the Kool-aid. You can have in-game chat across games, using any game that supports Steam integration, plus there's constantly deals on games, and a fair amount of just plain free stuff.
Honestly, I find it to be a rather heavyweight program, though. I have since disabled the overlay and such, but I still dislike it. I mean, that thing takes up 125,804 K right now. My processor doesn't need that kind of stress. IMO, it's a service not to install it. Just my two cents (No offense to anyone who likes steam, I just rarely play it's games, so I find to be dead weight, the only reason I use it is for voice chat because my friend won't get Skype).
Isn't the orange box on consoles? You could get it that way, if you have consoles.
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If you have some way to get Steam onto your computer at all, you can run it in offline mode and play your games even without any kind of internet connection. Really, it's not a terrible service, as far as DRM type things go.
Honestly, I find it to be a rather heavyweight program, though. I have since disabled the overlay and such, but I still dislike it. I mean, that thing takes up 125,804 K right now. My processor doesn't need that kind of stress. IMO, it's a service not to install it. Just my two cents (No offense to anyone who likes steam, I just rarely play it's games, so I find to be dead weight, the only reason I use it is for voice chat because my friend won't get Skype).
That's an abnormally high amount of memory for Steam to be using in an inactive state. Mine is running 10000 kb to 12000 kb when not in active use. It uses a ton when it first opens (about as much as you've noted) but drops off quite a bit once its initialization is finished. Even when I open it to the library and start using it its only 36000 kb.
I think you might have it doing a bunch of updates or running other Steam processes at the same time.
Meh, Steam is DRM, simply put. Sure, it's not as bad as the stuff EA or Activision or Ubisoft uses. But that doesn't make it a good thing. In the same way that a kick to the knee is less painful than a kick to the crotch. That may be true, but it doesn't mean I enjoy getting kicked in the knee.
But yeah, I fear you are out of luck, White Drake, unless you want to become a pirate or something. Although the console thing NEO suggests might work, if you have a console.
Lousy Steam is the reason I've never played any Valve game (including Portal, Team Fortress and Half-Life), and for that matter, why I haven't played New Vegas, Deus Ex (the new one), any of the newer versions of Mount and Blade, and a host of other games, too.
If only Good Old Games carried those games, I'd buy them in a heartbeat. Ah, well.
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The problem with the more recent editions of D&D is that at some point the term 'player empowerment' was twisted to mean 'player entitlement.'
Honestly, I find it to be a rather heavyweight program, though. I have since disabled the overlay and such, but I still dislike it. I mean, that thing takes up 125,804 K right now. My processor doesn't need that kind of stress. IMO, it's a service not to install it. Just my two cents (No offense to anyone who likes steam, I just rarely play it's games, so I find to be dead weight, the only reason I use it is for voice chat because my friend won't get Skype).
That 125,804 has nothing at all to do with how your processor performs. It is how much RAM is being used, at that is very little. Unlike 8-12 years ago RAM is almost never a limiting factor on any normal usage of a computer (that includes multitasking and gaming, the unusual circumstances in this case is specific applications such as video, audio, and image editing mostly) Any computer that can even think about running any game in the last 8 years is not going to find that amount of RAM usage limiting. And if it is, RAM is dirt cheap right now, don't have a cup of coffee for 1-2 mornings and double your RAM (it really is that cheap).
Generally speaking Steam uses very few CPU cycles on its own, though how the overlay affects how a game runs is pretty hard to tell. I'm sure there are some benchmarks out there were people test it, but I'm going to bet there is very little difference. Very little to the point where if you could play the game before you can still play it and if you can't, the game isn't going to be playable with the overlay not there either. In all my time following the sort of news and activities where people try to squeeze the most they possibly can out of a game I've never heard of anyone complaining about Steam being resource intensive.
But yes, if you aren't playing games much, don't have Steam autolaunch and just have it connect when you want to start a game, it takes literally a couple seconds in the option menu to do that.
As for not having an internet connection... Steam works fine in offline mode. I know it likes to check up sometimes, but I'm not sure how often that is... I'm thinking thats in the weeks-to-months time frame.
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It's available for download via X-Box Live Arcade - that's how I have it. I'd assume the same is true for PSN.
If you have neither system and just a PC, though, I can't help you.
Zevox
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"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
"We each decide our own sense of right and wrong. The rest, I leave to my sword." - Yuri Lowell, Tales of Vesperia
Honestly, you're doing yourself a disservice by not installing Steam. It's a great service. I was skeptical too, when I first had to install it to play HL2, but since then I've definitely drank the Kool-aid. You can have in-game chat across games, using any game that supports Steam integration, plus there's constantly deals on games, and a fair amount of just plain free stuff.
I strongly disagree. I used it to play Terraria, and got a chance to also pick up Portal.
I despise the thing. I really, really do. It's an insane resource hog. It also hooks into places in your computer it has no right hooking into, in my opinion. It may not be as invasive as, say, Uplay, but it's definitely not something I'm going to be using anymore.
If you have some way to get Steam onto your computer at all, you can run it in offline mode and play your games even without any kind of internet connection. Really, it's not a terrible service, as far as DRM type things go.
Nope, you can't. You need to be online to switch into offline mode.
(I had it forced onto me when i bought Dead Island and Skyrim... you have no idea how pissed off i was upon discovering this during installation. Talk about needing to inform yourself more before you buy things. I don't use a single damn function of anything it does. So Polly got her thing. )
Portal and Portal 2 are both great on the XBox 360.
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I strongly disagree. I used it to play Terraria, and got a chance to also pick up Portal.
I despise the thing. I really, really do. It's an insane resource hog. It also hooks into places in your computer it has no right hooking into, in my opinion. It may not be as invasive as, say, Uplay, but it's definitely not something I'm going to be using anymore.
Yes steam is drm. No it's not an insane resource hog. If it's really hurting your performance that much then either there's something wrong or, to be frank, your computer isn't that great.
If steam is using 100mb all the time then there is something wrong with it. My copy uses around 40mb fairly consistently and I have a lot of games. On the flipside if 100mb of RAM usage is hurting your performance badly you need to go buy more.
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Awesome avatar by kaptainkrutch.
Do you really need a copy of Steam to play the boxed version of Portal? (that is, in The Orange Box)
Boxed as in PC? Yes completely.
I saw this thread and I looked at Steam running up with Deus Ex:HR (I finally got my pacifist achievement -.-) and it was running ~110mb. Now this doesn't bother me in the least cause of reasons listed above (RAM being plentiful and not being the bottleneck) but if you don't have a great computer I can see it.
This has become my mantra. I don't love DRM which is disruptive to play/ownership. But I do love a fantastic digital library, smoothly up to date games, and a great shop which holds frequent offers, and sells for less than retail as standard for many games. The fact that they may have single-handedly saved PC gaming* warms the heart too! There's no question they have done wonders for indie gaming and distribution.
* Have no stats to back that up, but given the sales volumes it does not seem like a stretch.
With Valve/Steam, it really feels like they set out to provide the best PC gaming service they possibly could, and let profitability be a secondary concern. Which is not to say they aren't profitable, just that the customer experience came first. Also worth mentioning for those that tried and hated it in the past, give it a 2nd try. It's come long way since launch.
Steam is to my mind the role model for all content delivery systems should be. Better than itunes for music/video, better than Amazon for ebooks.
[b][u][indent]The fact that they may have single-handedly saved PC gaming* warms the heart too! There's no question they have done wonders for indie gaming and distribution.
* Have no stats to back that up, but given the sales volumes it does not seem like a stretch.
However it is important to note Blizzard pretty much stops you from saying they win it single handed as their games constantly break best selling records for the PC (more so if you add in Activision's numbers although CoD never breaks pc selling records)
You see, Orange Box was released for Windows. And on it is Portal and some other cool games.
You can buy the Orange Box pretty easily. =I
And on the back of the Orange Box it says 'you must activate this product via the internet by registering for a steam account and accepting the SSA'. Seriously, I'm holding my copy of the orange box right now
So no, you can't play Portal or any other Valve game on PC without Steam. However as others have said you can activate it and then have it operate in offline mode. I did this myself while on uni networks. All you need to do is connect once and switch steam to offline mode, and it will stay like that until you tell it otherwise. (Also worth noting for those complaining about system hogging is that you can stop it loading at startup. Mine only runs when I need it)
Of course, this requires use of an internet connection for a bit. If you haven't got one you are able/comfortable using for downloading there is unfortunately no way to get it.
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Nope, you can't. You need to be online to switch into offline mode.
Yeah, I haven't seen this either. Periodically my router needs resetting to connect, and when that happens and my computer boots without internet Steam asks me if I want to just go straight to off-line mode and does so without issue. And from what I've seen in general, as long as you have internet the first time you launch the game then you are fine after that to play in off-line mode.
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For those saying you don't need to be online to go into offline mode, the reason maybe that you either have never gone back into online mode, or that all your games are up to date.
The issue seems to arise if Steam knows of an update, either for the Steam client or one of your installed games, then it becomes unable to switch into offline mode without some serious tinkering of config files. It is annoying yes, but not a showstopper...
Well, i've been running in one of my notebooks steam offline since last december. I simply put the steam client in offline mode, and made a backup in an external HD. Then copied the contents of the HD to the other notebook.
So, as long as you don't add a new game to that library, you can play it in that machine in offline mode technically forever. In this case, you simply will be unable to play portal 2 co-op mode, unless you are playing locally, if that mode is supported.
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