
The workarounds function by placing a DLL in the game directory which provides the same API functions as the Steam API. Not in the United States unsure of the legality throughout the use of the world. There are no legal ways of running Civ 5 without Steam. I assume the "alternates" you refer to are not legal. There are ways around the installation of Steam but if you're particular about Steam being installed, I doubt you want to investigate the alternate avenues. However, all patches to the game are also deployed through Steam so if, at a later date, you wanted to update due to a bug you would need to re-enable online mode for Steam. You can put Steam into offline mode after initial authorization/authentication. Legally, installing Civilization 5 requires the installation of Steam. I have never used Steam before I bought Civ5 last week. Which you probably would not want to use anyway if you dont use steam. You cannot communicate with your friends on steam. You cannot have your in game achievements ranked. You cannot receive patches for the game while steam is offline. You cannot save your games on the steam cloud while offline (useful for continuing games at different locations). This may be un-palatable for your tastes but at least it is a 'neutered' version of steam which does not connect to the internet or use up your system resources. You will however still need to run the steam client in the background as Civ5 plays. The four points above cover many reasons people dislike steam. You can disable steam from running on startup. You can disable steam collecting anonymous information about your system/software. You can play Civ5 SinglePlayer/LAN offline without connecting to the steam server. You can disable all push pop-up advertising in steam. However, since steam is un-avoidable I find it more productive to offer advice to mitigate the effect steam has on your enjoyment and on your system, for in fact many gripes people have with steam are optional and can be disabled. People have legitimate gripes about steam, and these questions come up regularly especially on 2K's official civilization5 forum (2K Civ5 Forum ). of decay, dishonored, batman arkham origins, hitman absolution, civilization 5.
