A Game I own on disc now requires me to buy it through steam because I shared a friend's library to try out a game.

[ThisGuySai]

So, I own The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on disc, all expansions. On disc, physical copy. Hundreds of hours in, love that game.

Unfortunately, I shared a library of a friend in order to try out a game (Borderlands). Turns out he had Oblivion as well.

I guess that Steam applied a bootstrap to my copy of Oblivion, and now I can no longer play it because steam thinks that I "Don't own a purchased version of the game"... Basically, steam is digitally robbing me? It now redirects me to the Oblivion Store Page, and tells me that "This game isn't ready to be played offline".

Anyways, this is bull****. Steam support has been no help. I don't know how to claim a hard copy of the game, besides posting actual pictures of it (Which, at this point, I'm actually willing to do).

Any and all help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[Marble]

The physical disc version of Oblivion is not tied to Steam in any way.

You can run it without Steam, or add it to Steam as a shortcut.

[ThisGuySai]

Originally posted by Canti:

The physical disc version of Oblivion is not tied to Steam in any way.

You can run it without Steam, or add it to Steam as a shortcut.

Thanks for the reply.
It doesn't seem like this is the case. This might tie in with an unusual problem I've had with Oblivion in the past; I cannot run the game off the launcher. I have to go in and manually launch the game itself.
Regardless of if I try and run it with the disc in, the Steam launcher pops up and stops the program from running. It treats it like it's no longer a physical copy. It's odd, because it wasn't installed with steam. But perhaps it's my mistake for trying to run the game from steam while I was sharing libraries with my friend. That probably installed the bootstrap.

I understand my problem is unusual, but I can't let this slip by. I appreciate any help given.

Does anyone know if there's a way to remove the steam connection/bootstrap from my physical copy? Would a re-install with the disc work?

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Was it previously added to Steam as a non-Steam game?

[Marble]

If you went through the install process through Steam, it might be trying to run the Steam version since that's what it detects as being installed?

Uninstall, then reinstall from disc. I can't see why that wouldn't work.

The disc version contains no DRM at all other than checking the disc is present.

[ThisGuySai]

Originally posted by Canti:

If you went through the install process through Steam, it might be trying to run the Steam version since that's what it detects as being installed?

Uninstall, then reinstall from disc. I can't see why that wouldn't work.

The disc version contains no DRM at all other than checking the disc is present.

Alright, I'll copy my save folder and give this a try.