Steam.......It Makes me Steaming Mad!

[Howard313]

Alright, I exaggerated on the title, I have no problems with Steam itself, it's a good little gadget for making friends and buying games, and as everyone knows those are the two most important things you can do in your lifetime....write that down.

I do, however, have a gripe with steam, sort of a fly in my soup, or thorn in my side if you will. When I bought Silent Hunter 3, I bought it off steam. Now this means two things.

1. I can run Silent Hunter 3 without using a disc or that complicated looking guide that someone decided to sticky on the top of this forum.
2. Every time I launch Silent Hunter 3, Steam feels the need to turn on as well.

Now the first one I can live with, I never was a fan of discs anyway they break they scratch and they steal your souls.....In short they are pure concentrated evil molded in to circular form.

The second, I don't know, I guess it wouldn't bother me as much if steam didn't bother to give me the SH3.exe file right in my folder. But does it really have to boot up every time? What if I just wanted to play Silent Hunter 3 and not look at Portal 2/Team Fortress ads the next time I closed out? You ever think about that Steam? Huh?!

To clear matters up my question is simple.

Is there a way to run the steam-bought version of Silent Hunter 3, without turning on steam itself?

[Feuer Frei!]

Here you go, read this:

Note that, as noted elsewhere, you don't even NEED Steam running to play it. You can run it from the .exe directly - which, of course, allows for Sh3Commander (et al) usage.

And if you are an absolute performance FANATIC, it's worth pointing out that Steam *does* run when you hit the sh3.exe. However, for purpose of internet connections, it's only needed to be 'online' the first time you run it to validate it. After that, Steam has an option to 'run in offline mode'. Just set that choice. Next time to run sh3.exe, you'll get a quick popup that says "Steam is in offline mode, which means many features like friends and server browser will not work", and it asks if you if you want to go online now, or just keep running it in offline mode. Just hit the 'start in offline mode' button, and you are in Sh3, happy as a clam, no internet connection needed.

THREAD FOUND HERE

One of a few reasons i don't use Steam.
In order to play a game i should be able to just click the exe and run game. No other utils/programs running in background, or at startup, which you then have to disable etc etc.
No thanks.

[Frontier359]

As stated above:

STEAM --> Go Offline.

That's how I run and record my game.

[Fish In The Water]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

In order to play a game i should be able to just click the exe and run game. No other utils/programs running in background, or at startup, which you then have to disable etc etc.

Exactly...

When you start running a modded-to-the-max game you need all the system resources you can get. The last thing you need is something else running in the background, especially if its primary function seems to be serving you ads!

[Frontier359]

Originally Posted by Fish In The Water

The last thing you need is something else running in the background, especially if its primary function seems to be serving you ads!

In offline mode, Steam uses a fraction of resources compared to online mode. The Steam app is blank -- no ads, no updates, no friend spam.

[Sailor Steve]

I don't use Steam simply because they somehow decided I lived outside their service area. I live in Utah, which the last I looked was smack in the middle of the United States.

Originally Posted by Howard313

I can run Silent Hunter 3 without using a disc or that complicated looking guide that someone decided to sticky on the top of this forum.

Old news. The most recent hardcopy releases don't require the disc in the computer to play. I bought one a couple of years ago bundled with SH2 for $10 US. No problems.

[Fish In The Water]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I don't use Steam simply because they somehow decided I lived outside their service area. I live in Utah, which the last I looked was smack in the middle of the United States.

I guess flyover country doesn't count, either that or they can't read a map...

[Krauter]

Or you could copy/pasta the SH3 directory out of Steam folder and into a personal directory so you always have an unmodded version of the game..

[thebigJ_A]

Originally Posted by Krauter

Or you could copy/pasta the SH3 directory out of Steam folder and into a personal directory so you always have an unmodded version of the game..

I've done this with several games I wanted to mod. Just copy it somewhere else, and your Steam install can be your vanilla one. Hell, you can even delete the Steam one.