Well, I bought The Ship yesterday, largely because it was cheap and looked like fun.

Gah! Why didn’t I notice it needed Steam for installation??? I’d have saved myself so much grief.

Steam’s one of these anti-piracy systems I file straight under “penalises legal owners”, right next to CD copy protection systems (I’ve had my run in with their tech support people before when my copy of Neverwinter Nights didn’t work on my DVD drive).

I don’t see why I should need to have a net connection to register a game I’ve legally bought with a company database, just to play it. Not to mention getting stuck with yet another application sitting in my system tray, using up resources just to check for patches for a couple of games. I can do that myself thanks.

So, annoyingly, my copy of The Ship didn’t come with a CD Key. Granted, this is more the publisher’s fault than Steam’s, but it started me off ranting anyway. The end result being that my brand new, legally bought game is now a rather fetching coaster. If I’d downloaded an illegal copy, I bet I’d have been sitting playing it last night.

I’ve emailed tech support, but I’m just going to go and swap it at the shop for another copy as I’ve not heard back from them.

Following up on the issue raised the other day:

» Microsoft responds to stealth update issue | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com

Windows Update itself having to update is understandable, but if you’ve switched off the other updates, it should have the decency to check first.