Steam release and preload Policy

• Posted by Ssarrasum Blackscale November 1, 2011 - 884 views

  I was doing some searching and poking around over on the Steam forums, for those of us who are getting the game delivered that route, I've found some dates that I thought people might be interested in.  If you are buying Skryim directly from Steam the game will "unlock" and become playable at 12:01am in YOUR time zone.  Thats right, you won't have to wait until a US time zone if you are in say Australia (you get it 6 hours or so before PST) or in Europe (8 hours or so after PST). 

  Additionally, the game will begin to "pre-load" on your system starting around the 9th of November, that way the only thing left to do at 1 minute past midnight on the 11th is to activate your copy and do the final patches and updates to start playing!

  This information was taken from validated sources on both the Steam support site as well as Pete Hines twitter blog.  For those of you who are getting the retail version for the PC, if you are picking up the game at or slighting before midnight on the 10th, you will still be able to install it early, however activation still can't happen until 12:01am on the 11th of November.

  Hope this is good news for those of you buying the game direct from Steam as I am.  Cheers

  *Addendum to Steam release from 11-2-11*

  It seems that Bethesda plan to release Skyrim by timezone wasn't within the capabilities of the Steam system.  The new system will be region based.  For all those customers in the US, the game will be released for play at 12:01am on 11-11-11 EST, thats right, EST which I believe is about 9pm 11-10-11 in PST.  Its assumed Canada will follow this same timing.

  Australlia will release at 12:01am Sydney time.

  There was little information available for Europe as of yet.

  Added on 11-2-11:

  For those of you using Steam that have in the past experienced issues with download speeds and/or product activation, I would like to present you with bits of information I think you will find useful. 

    Although a great many people use Steam to purchase games, most don't realize that they have a rather massive selection of places from which to download their content.  If you are having difficulty with maintaining a consistent download speed, the first thing you want to do is find out where you are downloading from.  You can do this by going here inside the steam client, starting with the menus at the top:  Steam > Settings > [Download and Cloud].  On the Download and Cloud tab there will be a drop down for Download Region.  Once you have this information you next need to check the steam servers to see which ones are the most heavily loaded.  To find this information click here.  On this web page what you want to look for is a server stack in your country or near to it, that has the lowest loading.  Once you have found a server with lower bandwidth load than the server you are presently on, simply go back to the [Download and Cloud] tab and change the region to this new server.  Your download / activation should switch to the new location and with any luck work much better.

    Another topic that has been brought up regarding Steam downloaded games is that modding them is more difficult, at least one user has stated that this is because mods must modify a games EXE file on your hard drive.  I'm here to tell you this is a falsity.  Any mod that modifies an EXE file for a game on your hard drive is a Crack, not a mod and you shouldn't use them.  Games like Oblvion, Fallout 3, Fallout NV and with luck Skyrim, have a tool that many modders have grown dependent on called a "Script Extender".  For Oblivion this was known as OBSE, for Fallout 3 it was FOSE, and for FNV it ws NVSE.  Script extenders may or may not be needed for Skryim, we know that Bethesda has added a lot of scripting functionality to the game this go around, but I'm sure the modders will know soon if they need more.  The major thing to know about all of these script extenders is that they DO modifiy the games EXE file so that it will load additional .dll's which contain the extended scripting command.  This modification to the EXE file is NOT done permanently, it is performed in system memory each time you load the game using the script extender, and is NOT a Crack.

  Wow, looks like my rant got a bit longer than my OP, so I'll stop there except to say that if anyone needs help getting mods and things to run on the Steam version of Skyrim, then send me a PM, I'm always happy to help.

  Added on 11-7-11 (7 Oct 11 for EU)

  Steam pre-load should begin at 12:01am on 11-8-11 in your region.  Check the Steam Store page for Skyrim.. Pre-Load should begin at exactly 3 days to release.  (11/7/11 Steam Pre-Load was delayed apparently by the hacking of the Valve forums)