[wave]

Just signed up for steam as got a free game with my new graphics card and picked up empire total war for £5. They've got portal available for free at the moment so added that as well. There is an FAQ on running in offline mode but haven't tried that yet.

I'm conservative and dislike Steam altogether. I want to see a DVD and manual!

Yeah, one with your name in it preferrably I guess ;)

I'm sure the game will get a boxed version, but I think it's fairly certain you'd still need Steam to activate the game.

The £5 copy of Empire Total War was a DVD one that needs to be activated via steam. It seems to be the way a lot of things are going rather than use SafeDisc or SecurROM use steam.

So you think Civ5 cannot be played without Steam? I'd be appalled!

Not 100% sure, but it may be using Steamworks, so Steam will be necessary. While not great, I do prefer it to GfWL.

Or Securom...

Direct2Drive have a back to school offer of a $10 discount on games over $49.95 with the code SCHOOLSUCKS. It seems you have to order from the US site. I'm not sure how long the offer lasts. With the other offers that D2D have bundled in, it seems to be the best offer so far. They have also confirmed that it is a third party download so thay will just give us an activation code and we will download (and everything else) from steam.

I'll just wait till release date. Wouldn't be surprised if Steam would come up with a 10% release discount or something. That wouldn't amount to 10$ ofc but somehow I dislike pre-ordering.