If i buy KSP from steam do i need steam to play it?

[scorfatchu]

I have a home computer and a school computer, the school computer does not allow steam. I am in an Aerospace class and we are doing a KSP unit in a few weeks. If I buy KSP off of steam for my home computer can I log in to the Official site and install it on my school computer without installing steam?

[sal_vager]

Hi @scorfatchu, you would only need Steam to download and update KSP, KSP does not use Valves Steamworks DRM, so can be copied to a flash drive and moved to another computer.

It should run from the flash drive, maybe a little slow though.

[legoclone09]

Nope, you don't need Steam to play it. Most people recommend moving it off of the Steam directory so it doesn't autoupdate and break all your mods.

[scorfatchu]

Am i able to download the game onto the computer from the Kerbal Space Website? or am i only able to run it off of a flashdrive?

[stibbons]

4 hours ago, scorfatchu said:

Am i able to download the game onto the computer from the Kerbal Space Website?

No. If you buy it from Steam you can only download it through Steam.

[Dafni]

7 hours ago, scorfatchu said:

Am i able to download the game onto the computer from the Kerbal Space Website? or am i only able to run it off of a flashdrive?

no, you dont need a flashdrive, you can run it off of anything you like. and yes, you can download it onto a computer. any drive works, really, hard disks, external disks, USB sticks etc.

when you buy it (through Steam or through the website, it does not matter) you will get a folder that contains the game and all its files. You can copy that around as much and to where you want, and play it from there. You can keep as many installs as you want, modded or stock or whatever.

[severedsolo]

11 hours ago, scorfatchu said:

Am i able to download the game onto the computer from the Kerbal Space Website? or am i only able to run it off of a flashdrive?

You have to download it through steam. That's not a bad thing though, the store can get overloaded when a new update hits, steam never has that problem (so far anyway!) Steam can also patch properly, last time I heard the Store patcher was still broken and you had to redownload the whole game every time.

Once you have it though, you need never open steam again if you don't want to. I believe the steam version has steam controller support (not 100% sure on that), but other than that there is no difference. You can just run it directly from KSP.exe (or KSP_x64.exe) and not worry about it.

As others have said - I highly recommend keeping your steam copy "clean" - that is no mods. Copy it to another directory and play from there, so steam can auto-update and you have a clean backup for updating/in case something goes wrong.

Edited January 31, 2017 by severedsolo