Assassin's Creed II Forum

Can someone tell me what's that all about "steam powered games" which run through crossover games?

Artemy Nazarov wrote:

Can someone tell me what's that all about "steam powered games"
which run through crossover games?

Hi,

Some many games titles are available from different vendors, and in different media forms.
For example, some games are available on CD/DVD, and also available a 'digital downloads'.
When it comes to digital downloads, there is often more than one games distributor selling
the same title...for example, the game Flatout 2 -- it is available from direct2drive, also
from gamersgate and possibly others....it is also available from Steam.

Now...CD/DVD based games may or maynot work depending on which (if any) disc based DRM (copy
protection) has been employed -- some (but not nearly all) of these disc based DRM schemes
work in linux, but due to limitations in the Mac scsi driver design, most all disc based
DRM fails on the Mac.

So obviously, to avoid that problem one can use digital download games -- they still have DRM
built into them, but it all happens online (we don't have to access the physical disc media
which is where a lot of the problems are), and so most of them work this way....however....

...Games vendors who distribute digital download titles can (and tend to) use different methods
to negotiate the online DRM registration/authentication. As Steam is an officially supported
application, pretty much all their builtin DRM mechanisms work in crossover (there are a few
exceptions), but you may encounter different problems/issues when trying to install the same
digitally downloaded game from another vendor...and these releases of the same game may or
may not work in crossover...so...

When you see that tag "[i]The Steam version of this game is known to work with CrossOver Games,
but please note that this application is unsupported in any form[/i]", it invariably means that
someone here (customer/advocate/codeweavers staff|Ninja) has determined that game title works
with the Steam release of the game, but other releases of the game from other digital download
vendors and/or the CD/DVD based releases may not work depending on the exact situation with
any specific title itself....ie; many digitally downloaded games from other vendors -do- work,
but many don't for one reason or another.

Hope this helps..

Cheers!