Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Two original games not included in physical CE?

The DVD contains a steam installer, so yes, steam will have to be installed
to be able to download the game.
This is mentioned on our larianvault page, but apparantly not on the amazon
page.

The game does not contain any DRM though, Steam is just used as a download
and update platform.
Once the game has been downloaded, you can copy the game and uninstall steam
if you want.

To answer your specific questions:
1. Is Steam required to install Divinity:Original Sin from the
Collector's Edition?
>> yes it is required (install steam, activate game via steam with steam
key)
2. Is Steam required to update D:OS from the CE?
>> most likely a first day patch will have to be downloaded once installed,
yes
3. Is Steam required to play D:OS from the CE in multiplayer?
>> you can play d:os in multiplayer via connect to ip or via LAN on the drm
free version (without steam).
if you want to play with other users on steam (without connect to ip - so
via the steam lobby framework), you will have to login to steam.

We apologize for any confusion and thank you for (trying) to purchase our
game .

Kind regards,

Octaaf
Larian Studios

Hm... In that case I have also one question (as someone who has just one game on Steam):

When I get the physical disc of D:OS: Do I have to install the game from the disc and then activate/update it on Steam? Or can I just type in the activation code on Steam and download the whole game from Steam (without using the physical disc at all)? The reason why I am asking is because the DVD drive in my laptop had to make place for a second hard drive...

I don't see why you'd need the disc, the code/s entitle you to the game and once Steam accepts them I see no reason why you couldn't just download the game and install it without the disc. Larian have specifically said they have not implemented any DRM on the Steam version of the game and once downloaded you can even uninstall Steam without issues so I'm 99% certain you won't need the disc...hopefully I'm not completely off on this one.

Some people prefer installing off the disc because the game can take upwards of 15 hours to download at slower broadband speeds, or they're being mindful of data caps.

I don't see why you'd need the disc, the code/s entitle you to the game and once Steam accepts them I see no reason why you couldn't just download the game and install it without the disc. Larian have specifically said they have not implemented any DRM on the Steam version of the game and once downloaded you can even uninstall Steam without issues so I'm 99% certain you won't need the disc...hopefully I'm not completely off on this one.

The game will be on the disk.

A required update doesn't mean the game will not be on the disk. It means after Larian has to send the version to the manufacturer to make the DVDs they are still going to be fixes made up until the actual release.

2. Is Steam required to update D:OS from the CE?
>> most likely a first day patch will have to be downloaded once installed,
yes

I must admit that response does make it sound like the disc includes an installer for Steam and nothing else. While that sounds (and is) ridiculous, I have seen other games go this route as well.

I don't see it as ridiculous simply because I understand they are insanely busy and their schedule now must be insanely long hours with little to no sleep and that's not even counting the problems they've run into lately. I very much hope they see a lot of success with this game, these guys deserve it.

But the process of pressing the game to disc is handled by a third party manufacturer. It's not the like the developers are cranking out copies of the game on disc in their spare time.

If you're going to put Steam's installer on the disc.. put the game's installer and files there too?

I guarantee that the response I posted above is true. If you guys have further questions, and it certainly seems that way, you can contact their support for D:OS on this page:

http://www.larian.com/divinityoriginalsin_support.php

I am also curious as to their answers!

This part also seems to answer the question of exactly how many copies of the game come with the CE. At first glance one might assume 3 copies (one on the disc + two extra steam keys). Now it sounds like there are just two steam keys and no copy of the game on disc, one of which you will (apparently) be required to consume to activate the game on Steam.

At this point I'm pretty concerned about how exactly this is all going to play out come launch day. Steam will not allow you to add the same game to your library twice, and yet many of us already have a copy of the game on Steam. I'm worried that many people are going to be stuck with CE keys for Steam that they can't add to their account.