Is this game a steamworks game?

[DarkestSoul X21]

Like if I get it retail, will it have all the steam stuff thanks.

[Aesir Rising]

Yes.
/10yesses

[Scared]

yes
5yeses

[JEWNICRON]

Yes
/2.5ys

[Creeping Death]

Yes, but you should know you'll still need to download around 2.5GB of files after the retail install.

Don't ask my why, its moronic...

[aleksanderstorm]

It's because they prepared a patch for launch on release day and after they had gone gold and started producing the retail copies. You expect the disks to magically have a patch that wasn't available when they were printed?

[Creeping Death]

It's because they prepared a patch for launch on release day and after they had gone gold and started producing the retail copies. You expect the disks to magically have a patch that wasn't available when they were printed?

No, I expect a release day patch to be maybe a couple hundred meg, not 2.5GB.

If that is really the reason, it makes me wonder how broken this game was on release.

[corhen]

whine more... preferbly by yourself
but yes, this game incorporates steamworks,

[Aesir Rising]

@Creep that wasn't the only reason. Most of the game sits in a relatively small number of zip format archives - the .SCD files in ..\Gamedata\.

If a file within those archives changed with a patch, I'm pretty sure this means Steam has to DL the entire file - not just the changed file inside the archive. It's a trade off with Steam. I suppose it's easier to verify a good installation when they do it that way. But that reliability comes at the cost of increased net usage.

Perfectly valid complaint though - if you buy a game disk, you should expect to be able to install from that and play- and perhaps DL the delta of whatever changed. I hope this information addresses your follow-on statement, "it makes me wonder how broken this game was on release."