can i play this without xbox/micro**** account?

[J384C RU5K13]

just wondering

[TheHuskyGT]

Do you use Windows? If yes: You already have an MS account.

[ph!l]

No it's one of their games that we've bought on Steam. Same for Ubi, EA, etc who have their own infrastructure for their games. Accounts, accounts and more accounts.

[DJukor]

If you ever had to use Windows 10 or Hotmail you already have an account.
Just log in to that.

[CascadeHush]

Originally posted by TheHuskyGT:

Do you use Windows? If yes: You already have an MS account.

Not necessarily. It's still possible to install windows 10 without an account. It's possible to buy a windows 11 laptop with windows already installed and activated and you won't have to create an account. It used to be possible to install windows 11 without and account but they keep making that harder to do, so I don't know if they finally closed all the loopholes for that.

[PanPan]

Online ? No

[the bat kite]

Here's a sob story: I originally bought Forza Horizon 4 on Steam before game 5 was...yet. It was just months away, as I recall.

I could not get FH4 to start, something to do with signing-in with Microsoft/Xbox, or whatever. The pop-up box was inactive completely. I went around and around with it until I thought I'd pop a vein in my brain. I didn't know there was a MS store back then. Xbox was just a gaming console to me. That's all I knew. Now, I have about a dozen games from over there out of their store. So I found about 3 "keeper" games between them and EA that I Iiked during each of the past 4 years.

So around 2020-21 I was just getting started on Steam - on anything...any store. I didn't know what was going on. But I KNEW I wanted that FH4 game ALOT.

So I %$#@ed around with it for an hour or more. There was no way I was going to be able to start the game based on what I knew about MS and Steam coming here together on a game. Steam was *surprise!* of NO help.

I handed the problem over to my tech savvy nephew to solve. 'Go beyond two hours of troubleshooting this game, I want to play it. It looks so fun.'

He is an Indian immigrant (student, now working visa) and hadn't played videogames in years, but he's like 30 years old, I'm in my latter 50s so I figure he'll solve it for me. Help me, I'm an old man who wants to be a gamer late in life!

He wanted to please me so much that he came and got me some time later and told me "Here it is Uncle!" You can play it here for free (you didn't lose your Steam money). And he was right, sort of. He signed me up for the Xbox Game Pass store. I was relieved. But I was mad too, because I found out that all the DLC I bought on Steam was lost. I had bought everything except LEGOs. I had gone past two hours so all my Steam purchase money was lost.

I bought the DLC (2nd time now) but now from Game Pass on MS's Xbox game store.

He couldn't figure out how to start the FH4 bought on Steam and found a way to get at least the base game for "free." I have seen many people go through this same trial over the past three years with FH five.

I did buy FH5 on Steam not long afterwards and by then I was all signed-up properly with Microsoft. So, no repeat problem. But the money I paid Steam for game 4 was all lost. It's their draconian refund policy of where even having a game turned on is counted as active gameplay ticking away. At minute 121 all hopes of a base game refund are lost. DLC sales are all final, as we all know.

Maybe someday Steam will act like a fair company and extend the time to, say, ten hours.
Maybe Steam will allow you a month or more *to start the game for the very first time* and if it is effed-up do more than give you a 'good luck' link to Ubisoft or whoever.

Maybe some years from now Steam Support will do more than give you a website link as their total "tech support" service and do their only other job: tempo-banning you when someone rude to you gives their moderator staff a heads-up on a "disrespectful" counter-reply made to them in the discussions forum that every game they sell has.

[BIGGIE_LION]

someone help i was locked out of my microsoft account i waited a week and went through all the steps they gave me but i think this happened because i play while using vpn, the account still does not allow me to log in, can someone please help?