Fallout: New Vegas for the PC will use Steamworks for its digital rights management, according to publisher Bethesda. According to Bethesda's Jason Bergman, Fallout: New Vegas is using Steamworks as its DRM solution because it provides a number of benefits including achievements, friends list support, and other features. Of course this means users will have to have the Steam client installed in order to play the game. There are worse methods for providing DRM like "always on."
While you will have to be online when you first install it, there aren't too many other restrictions you have to worry about. Users can install the game on as many machines as they want and after that first initial install you won't need the disc again; you can download it directly from Steam after that.
New Vegas is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment under the watchful eye of Bethesda Softworks and will be out this fall for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.
Source: Shacknews
Comments
Re: Fallout: New Vegas to use Steamworks
They are just basically ditching Games for Windows - LIVE to Steamworks in terms of DRM.
Re: Fallout: New Vegas to use Steamworks
This also means people can forgo the disc entirely and just buy it from Steam. Not to mention mod support.
Re: Fallout: New Vegas to use Steamworks
Why bring up mod support? If anything, Steam makes mods more difficult. Lots of mods modify the .exe, which you can't do for Steam games. Mods for Fallout 3 and Oblivion actually didn't work on Steam until they went and changed the Steam version of the game.
Re: Fallout: New Vegas to use Steamworks
That's not what I would call "true". In fact, it's exactly what I would call "lying"
The built-in mod functionality for both games worked fine with Steam from day one. As for those that used the script extenders (which is what I assume you mean by "modifying the .exe" -- something the vast majority of mods for Fallout 3 and Oblivion do not actually do), Fallout 3's Fallout Script Extender was compatible with Steam from the very beginning. As for the Oblivion Script Extender, the compatibility issues were resolved three days after the game was released on Steam when Valve updated the executable so that the DLL would hook correctly, and then provided the author of OBSE with changes to obse_loader.exe that would make the script extender know where to hook the DLL (while hosting their own changed version of the executable in the meantime).
In conclusion, stop making shit up.
Re: Fallout: New Vegas to use Steamworks
The only games where modding is more difficult is if the game was difficult to mod in the first place, such as with Bioshock. Both Valve and Bethesda treat modders VERY well.
Heh, in fact, one person who made a mod for HL2 is now helpign work on HL2: Episode 3