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So I recently purchased a copy of DoW 2 gold edition which includes the Retribution add on, only problem being the damn thing has been a nightmare since I have bought it. The troubles first began when I came home, excited and jubilated I inserted the disc in and began the installation process. It was all fine until it asked me to type in the CD-key, which constanly did not work for me due to the fact it had already been installed by a previous owner. So I took it back to EB games the next and recieved a new CD key.

Finally, I think to myself it must work now! Unfortunately I get home and see to my dismay that the lady who had taped on the new key had accidently cut off the last three letters to the code. So I trudge my way back to the store and ask for a new one. Now this time around the key works! It makes me sign up for a steam account and begins loading the components off the disk. Once the installation is complete however for some reason it begins to download the game off the actual Steam site! This takes forever considering my internet isnt too flash, and takes nearly three days to download half of the game!

At this point I am clawing my own eyes out, I simply give up on the whole endeavour and return the game. I was wondering has anyone else ever had any problems with DoW 2 or Steam?

That is REALLY weird...My step brother bought the retribution disk, and it worked fine...I got mine through steam and it worked fine as well, but steam (for me anyways) likes to re-install my games all by itself....but it never took that long...contact steam customer/technical support (not sure which one would be better) and see if they can help.

The problem is updates. The original install disc does not come with the updates that have been released after the game came out, so when you load up the game for the first time, even through an install disc, whatever system you put it on will bring the game up to its latest version. While I feel for your CD-key woes, the downloading problem is normal.

You would think that releasing a Gold edition of the game they would have all the updates and fixes already on the disk, however they make you download nearly every update since the release.

Could always pause the updates and do them in chunks at a time if you really wanted multiplayer. Without them singleplayer would run fine.

Ummm I know this has been inactive for a while but how do you just play DoW2 without needing to patch it on steam? I bought a new copy and its all installed ready to go, just waiting on these damn updates.Everytime I press play it just keeps downloading.

Private_Joker wrote:Ummm I know this has been inactive for a while but how do you just play DoW2 without needing to patch it on steam? I bought a new copy and its all installed ready to go, just waiting on these damn updates.Everytime I press play it just keeps downloading.

The curse of the way DoWII was designed unfortunately. It works fine if you have it installed from release but if you need to reinstall it becomes a pain. The game is independent of Windows Live with Retribution but unfortunately I believe it still uses Steam Works for DRM, and cannot be separated from Steam (I don't even think patches are available through other means).

Well, you could turn automatic patching off (don't know if it is not allowed on some games) but then you'd be unable to access the multi-player component of the game which may or may not be a problem. I believe you just right click it in your steam library and go to properties -> updates.

Well its just fresh from the case, I put it in, signed up for steam etc. Then it started installing from the disk, once that was finished it moved the downloads section, where it has something like 300mb left to download. I just assumed that it was patching.