Playing Games without a CD/DVD

[sheroo]

Having watched Tom's recent video review of the 900D, he was once again championing the cause of the optical diskless system. I completely get it from an aethetic, cable management & simplicity of use pov.

My little lad enjoys playing Lego games:- Bionicles, Lego Star Wars & Lego Batman. These games all require that the original cd is placed in the drive. It's a pita having to always find the disk, & one day they are bound to get scratched up beyond repair, even though he is very careful with them.

So in Tom's vid he refered to different ways of playing games without a cd drive. Obviously you can use Steam and download the games, but he also mentioned no CD cracks.

I own the games mentioned above, and have the original disks - I'm only seeking a way to be able to play them without having to have the cd inserted into the drive. I don't want to use the likes of Alcohol 120 and Deamon Tools to mount images etc as this is too complicated for my son.

I just want him to be able to click on the game icon & play it without the cd. Does anyone know of a way that I can easily achieve this, making sure that I'm not downloading any nasty viruses & spyware etc.

TIA.

 

[SeekaX]

gamescopyworld.com usually works.
cracks themselves are completely legal as long as you own the game.

 

[UkGouki]

Having watched Tom's recent video review of the 900D, he was once again championing the cause of the optical diskless system. I completely get it from an aethetic, cable management & simplicity of use pov.

My little lad enjoys playing Lego games:- Bionicles, Lego Star Wars & Lego Batman. These games all require that the original cd is placed in the drive. It's a pita having to always find the disk, & one day they are bound to get scratched up beyond repair, even though he is very careful with them.

So in Tom's vid he refered to different ways of playing games without a cd drive. Obviously you can use Steam and download the games, but he also mentioned no CD cracks.

I own the games mentioned above, and have the original disks - I'm only seeking a way to be able to play them without having to have the cd inserted into the drive. I don't want to use the likes of Alcohol 120 and Deamon Tools to mount images etc as this is too complicated for my son.

I just want him to be able to click on the game icon & play it without the cd. Does anyone know of a way that I can easily achieve this, making sure that I'm not downloading any nasty viruses & spyware etc.

TIA.

the games you have all mentioned can be had on steam/origin etc gamecopyworld is good for some they use the steam launcher but alot are flagged as virus even though its a false positive..

 

[sheroo]

Do you know I never knew that all these lego games could be had on steam - thanks guys - looks like I'll be sending some of my hard copies back and downloading them instead...

Can I have a steam game loaded on more than one PC at a time?

 

[Vicey]

Yes sheroo. The way Steam sees it, the games are like a shared resource and the account that is logged in determines what rights you have to play. So you can very easily login on your account to any PC, install any games you have bought and then once you sign out there you can sign in on another PC and do the same thing.

 

[sheroo]

Cool thank you very much, you learn something new every day. I do have a steam account and used to play quite a lot of counterstrike many moons ago, but I don't do much gaming these days.

I take it that you can only play one instance of the game at a time though?

EDIT:

One more question - If I already have the discs, can I activate them with steam - its just they are cellophane wrapped, and if I take the wrapper off, then Amazon won't accept the return...

 

[SeekaX]

I take it that you can only play one instance of the game at a time though?

EDIT:

One more question - If I already have the discs, can I activate them with steam - its just they are cellophane wrapped, and if I take the wrapper off, then Amazon won't accept the return...

ofc only one instance works, else you could just share your account with other people

no that won't work i guess, you need a steam key. On the CD is only a CD key.

 

[slovenlyjimmy]

One more question - If I already have the discs, can I activate them with steam - its just they are cellophane wrapped, and if I take the wrapper off, then Amazon won't accept the return...

Yes, you should be able to. I've bought physical copies of games before, opened them up and popped the CD-key into Steam, which instantly recognises them and downloads the game, no need to ever put the disc into the tray :lol:

I've just finished building a gaming PC for myself and have completely forgone an optical drive, they really are not necessary anymore.

 

[Vicey]

Yes, you should be able to. I've bought physical copies of games before, opened them up and popped the CD-key into Steam, which instantly recognises them and downloads the game, no need to ever put the disc into the tray :lol:

I've just finished building a gaming PC for myself and have completely forgone an optical drive, they really are not necessary anymore.

This is really bad advice because this does not work for all games, only games that have specifically partnered with the Steam distribution system. The amount of titles that use that is very small (Some of the Call of Duty games, Unreal Tournament 3 etc).

You really cannot just be certain that a serial key will work from the physical disc in Steam because 9 times out of 10 it will not, even if the game is sold on Steam the physical CD Key is not guaranteed to work.

 

[SavageCupcake]

USB optical drive? plug it in when needed?

 

[slovenlyjimmy]

The amount of titles that use that is very small

I'm just going from my own experience, I've added quite a few games to Steam recently using this method (Skyrim, Borderlands 2 and Far Cry 3 in the last month alone) and I've not found one yet that does not work.

I know it doesn't work with every game, EA published games for instance, but I doubt it's a very small proportion only that will work. If it is, then I've clearly been very lucky.

 

[sheroo]

The 2 games that I've bought for my lads Birthday are Lego Batman 2 and Lego Star Wars the Clone Wars. Each of these titles are available on steam. So the question is do I crack open the cellophane and hope I can activate through steam, or do I send the physical copies back to Amazon and download via steam?

 

[Vicey]

I'm just going from my own experience, I've added quite a few games to Steam recently using this method (Skyrim, Borderlands 2 and Far Cry 3 in the last month alone) and I've not found one yet that does not work.

I know it doesn't work with every game, EA published games for instance, but I doubt it's a very small proportion only that will work. If it is, then I've clearly been very lucky.

You have been yes. Those games are exceptions because Skyrim and Borderlands 2 both use Steamworks which is Steams developer SDK to make distribution tie in with Steam and Far Cry 3 uses uPlay where by Ubisoft doesn't care what distribution system you use as you'll be installing uPlay regardless to play it.

You need to keep in mind these three games are all AAA titles and two of them are specifically designed with a "Steam First" approach where by they were designed to be activated on Steam from the beginning.

9 out of 10 games released on the market will not work this way. And I highly doubt these Lego games will.

 

[Vicey]

The 2 games that I've bought for my lads Birthday are Lego Batman 2 and Lego Star Wars the Clone Wars. Each of these titles are available on steam. So the question is do I crack open the cellophane and hope I can activate through steam, or do I send the physical copies back to Amazon and download via steam?

No, do not open them. Their serial codes will not work in Steam. Simply return them and purchase the games on steam.

 

[slovenlyjimmy]

Really does look like I was lucky!

Just found a list that Steam maintains detailing every game that can be activiated and downloaded via the CD-Key in the retail box.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7480-wusf-3601

It's a long list, but the Lego games are not on there.

 

[sheroo]

Cheers guys, looks like I'll be returning them... I'll also have a look at GameCopyWorld for the title that I already have.

 

[Snortan]

ofc only one instance works, else you could just share your account with other people

no that won't work i guess, you need a steam key. On the CD is only a CD key.

You can play the same game at the same time on multiple computers by setting steam in offline mode(just 1 computer can be in online mode) but then your saves won't be uploaded to cloud and you will have a different save on each computer, unless you're willing to copy it yourself.