Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA
I'm not entirely sure what fracicone is trying to say either  but I think he says that the game is installed from DVD, thus it can only backed up just like any other game based on physical media, and it's another story that the game (also) needs to be activated via Steam. That is, Steam backup won't work with it as it's not downloaded via Steam, only activated. |
Actually, wrong, wrong, wrong. I checked that myself.
See... the thing is, that EVERY Steam-activated game CAN be entirely downloaded off Steam with skipping the use of the DVD altogether. What matters is the key. Always.
I had an issue with FEAR 2 when I bought it. The second DVD wouldn't get read by the drive. So what I did was just activate the key and let Steam download the game in whole instead of just updating.
Of course steam backup feature would work on Skyrim. Either way, it's always installed to SteamApps -- if it's a Steam-activated game (which it is), it MUST be installed to SteamApps.
In short, using the retail DVD is only a shortcut so that Steam doesn't have to download the entire game -- it will only update it. But for reinstalling, you can either use a retail DVD, a Steam backup or just redownload the game via Steam.