Even if I have to re-purchase Everything...

[LadyBaelcrest]

Just curious, what is so bad about Steam that you want to purge yourself of it?

Personally it's the looming shadow of Square Enix forcing people with Steam keys to authenticate through the Steam servers first is what's causing me to flee from the platform.

[Reimmi]

Personally it's the looming shadow of Square Enix forcing people with Steam keys to authenticate through the Steam servers first is what's causing me to flee from the platform.

I mean i wouldn't start over for that... sounds like a minor inconvenience, unless i'm missing something

I do know that i was recommended to -not- use steam when i started, so maybe it is that bad

[LadyBaelcrest]

I mean i wouldn't start over for that... sounds like a minor inconvenience, unless i'm missing something

Basically the story of authentication problems come from ESO where the authentication servers on Steam will go down and not be repair for some time in which people on Steam cannot log onto said MMO because Steam can't keep their stuff from breaking. The worst of these "outages" I've heard that it was down for a whole month and I personally don't want to know what effect even more traffic on these fragile servers will do to them. At this point I can't flee from Steam and pray that Square Enix reverses their decision because I'm waaay too deep time and money wise to make another account to get away from Steam.

[DumdogsWorld]

Basically the story of authentication problems come from ESO where the authentication servers on Steam will go down and not be repair for some time in which people on Steam cannot log onto said MMO because Steam can't keep their stuff from breaking. The worst of these "outages" I've heard that it was down for a whole month and I personally don't want to know what effect even more traffic on these fragile servers will do to them. At this point I can't flee from Steam and pray that Square Enix reverses their decision because I'm waaay too deep time and money wise to make another account to get away from Steam.

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but as somebody who migrated from ESO, I can confirm that I used to bypass the Steam related issues by simple making a shortcut to the launcher exe directly. It would ask me for password instead of automatically signing in, just like the standalone accounts, and I could log in even when Steam was down or experiencing issues.

Maybe this game will offer something similar? It's been speculated that they're doing this to appease Valve because Valve hates hosting games without DRM. However, many games with encrypted/protected executables do not actually need a constant internet connection to be played. For example, you can play Skyrim when Steam is in offline mode. If the updated client for Steam does only the bare minimum stuff to appease Valve, then who knows? Offline mode might be an option.

[MrThinker]

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but as somebody who migrated from ESO, I can confirm that I used to bypass the Steam related issues by simple making a shortcut to the launcher exe directly. It would ask me for password instead of automatically signing in, just like the standalone accounts, and I could log in even when Steam was down or experiencing issues.

Maybe this game will offer something similar? It's been speculated that they're doing this to appease Valve because Valve hates hosting games without DRM. However, many games with encrypted/protected executables do not actually need a constant internet connection to be played. For example, you can ply Skyrim when Steam is in offline mode. If the updated client for Steam does only the bare minimum stuff to appease Valve, then who knows? Offline mode might be an option.

So from what I've been told, the issue is that the game will require constant access to the steam authentication servers once this change goes through, as in your game sends info to the authentication server which then sends that info onto the game servers, and vice-versa. And because the info is being sent through the authentication server, it will be able to tell if you have logged into the game through Steam or not thus forcing you to start the game through steam. If the authentication servers go down like they were prone to do with ESO, there is literally no way for steam users to maintain a connection to the game servers, which is why there are so many people concerned.

Or so I've been told.

It seems to me that you may have actually transitioned from ESO before they made this change. Of course, I could be wrong.

[LadyBaelcrest]

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but as somebody who migrated from ESO, I can confirm that I used to bypass the Steam related issues by simple making a shortcut to the launcher exe directly. It would ask me for password instead of automatically signing in, just like the standalone accounts, and I could log in even when Steam was down or experiencing issues.

Maybe this game will offer something similar? It's been speculated that they're doing this to appease Valve because Valve hates hosting games without DRM. However, many games with encrypted/protected executables do not actually need a constant internet connection to be played. For example, you can play Skyrim when Steam is in offline mode. If the updated client for Steam does only the bare minimum stuff to appease Valve, then who knows? Offline mode might be an option.

Quote from the announcement:

After the change:
For Steam version service accounts, the FINAL FANTASY XIV client application will need to be started up from the Steam application's Play button. Any other method of direct startup will no longer be available.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...9d4dcbcf2c5f4d

[DumdogsWorld]

My point is, the Play button is still there when Steam is in offline mode. This boils down to whether or not they use an authentication server. If all it's checking for is whether or not you launched it through Steam, you can do that just fine.

[LadyBaelcrest]

My point is, the Play button is still there when Steam is in offline mode. This boils down to whether or not they use an authentication server. If all it's checking for is whether or not you launched it through Steam, you can do that just fine.

I cannot give you a 100% definite answer. You are technically right, but considering it is an online game that's now being forced to go through the Steam play button the insinuation is there that they're going to use their authentication servers, but until the thing is actually implemented we can only speculate without hard evidence coming from up above.