Latest Skyrim PC Patch Implements Steam Requirement [New Skyrim PC Patch Makes Large Address Aware Third Party Patch Worthless By Tying Skyrim To Steam]

Posted on TFTS by Eric Abent on Tuesday, 22. November 2011 under: Computer/Console Gaming

Back before The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim launched, we were all told that the PC version was going to require Steam to play. When it arrived a couple of weeks back, many were pleased to discover that the game actually ran just fine without Steam. Unfortunately, all of that ended last night.

That’s because Bethesda sneakily released an 18MB Skyrim patch that ties the game to Steam. If you want to boot your game, you’ll have to do it through Steam now. But hey, no big deal, right? I mean, most PC gamers these days use Steam in a least some capacity, don’t they?

While it’s true that this little patch tying Skyrim to Steam shouldn’t be a big deal, it made a popular Skyrim mod completely worthless. The large address aware fan patch made it so players could bypass Skyrim’s cap of 2GB of RAM and put more of the RAM installed on their machine towards the game. More RAM naturally means more stability when running multiple mods at once, and helped prevent random crashes to the desktop while we wait for Bethesda to deliver an official patch that (hopefully) fixes the crashing sometime next week.

So, you can understand why so many Skyrim players were pissed off when they discovered that their copy of Skyrim now required Steam to launch. The good news, however, is that a new LAA patch has been delivered that workaround these new issues with the latest update, so even though there were bursts of rage earlier, everyone seems to be getting what they want in the end.

Were you running Skyrim with the LAA patch? If you were, you can click the source link below to be taken to the new version that works despite the Steam requirement. Head down to the comments section and tell us what you think of this little update and what, if any, mods you’re running while you play Skyrim!