Hacker News Reader

I resent them now for the same reason but on another game: Civ 5. I even bought that one in a box from a store.

and still had to install steam? ouch, yeah, that would irritate the crap out of me too.

Yes. DVD was pointless. Online steam was required. Worse still it happened to be down that day. The worst possible first impression.

Ultima Online launch day had a similar feel. Servers melted under the load of 1500 (maybe 2,000). After a weekend of reading the booklet and studying the map, I was able to login. Only to find that cave on the map I wanted to explore was between me and a dozen Ogres and Ratmen. Good times.

Steam was the first “online required” for offline play I think. Others like EA and Ubisoft followed shortly after but didn’t have their own stores until many many years later.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com