Ive had steam since 2007.I currently have 63 games on it including 2 other MMOs. ESO is the ONLY game in 12 years that i have had problems with on the platform. Given my personal experience with Steam and a glance at the first 5 pages in these forums along with my personal experience with ESO, i would bet my savings account that Steam is not the problem.

idk wrote: »

Most PC/Mac players probably avoid Steam for ESO. Many purchased the game before it was even available on Steam. Why go through a middle person in order to play the game when you go log in directly? Never made sense to me.

I had all my other Elder Scrolls games on Steam, so it just seemed logical to keep them all together. I don't have to jump through any extra hoops, I just click the ESO icon on my desktop and it goes directly to the launcher.

The only time I might get delayed is if there's a Steam update I have to load first, but that's usually just a few seconds. And I'm not sure how buying crowns works on the stand alone system, but it's really easy to do in the game. It opens a Steam vendor overlay inside the crown store, and you can click your wallet and they are delivered right away. I also like the session logger that keeps track of my hours played, etc.

I've never really had a problem with going through Steam, even with thousands of hours played. Some folks may have had a bad experience, there does seem to be a lot of resistance to the service, for whatever reasons.

idk wrote: »

Most PC/Mac players probably avoid Steam for ESO. Many purchased the game before it was even available on Steam. Why go through a middle person in order to play the game when you go log in directly? Never made sense to me.

Because Steam offers features that the ESO launcher doesnt. Steam is to the ESO client what Minion is to ESO addons...on steroids.

I wasnt a fan of Steam either when i first got it. I was forced to use it because that was the only way i could play the game i wanted to play. No release outside of steam. But i got use to it and it improved over the years.

With Steam i can:
*Manage, download, update, repair, and play all my games from one place. I can set steam to update my games automatically, throttle the downloads, set priorities, manage local custom game files, and pretty much anything else with my games.
* I dont need to hunt for licenses or deal with pirate protection nonsense.
* I can download install and delete my games as many times as i want. No discs to keep track of, No storing games im not playing on my PC.
* I can install my games on multiple computers.
* Remote play. This morning my wife used my old desktop which has a beefier CPU and better graphics card to play the game. It did all the game processing. She then sat in the living room on her lap top and used her laptop to control her character on my old desktop. It made life easier on her laptop since a bulk of the processing was done on the desktop.
* Steam support. Without steam i have 3 options when dealing with a problem with a developer. Deal with the developer to fix the problem, let the problem go, or chargeback the product. Steam gives me a fourth much better option.
* ETC

I dont believe for a minute that Steam is the problem. However, all other games i play on steam update through steam. ESO is the only game i have to use their own launcher to update despite going through steam which is probably why it conflicts and causes issues. ZOS refuses to let Steam handle their updates so it is the black sheep in my library that i have to check for a patch.