Actually no, you never had to go online for a Stardock game (other than the betas of course), there was no "activation." You did however need to login via Impulse to download updates.

I have bought nearly all my games the last few year once hight speed internet become avlibel in my small towen. threw digitel distbution.

I have 2 complent about steam.

The fact that thay monke with the files of the a game often rendering the game incompatbel with devloper patches. Had a lot of trobbel with this on never winter night persistant worlds. when totel war empire cane out steam converted the game files to .pak files and it really sucked up a lot of sistem resorsce decompresing the game file has I played on my old PC.

The secend complant is more of a worry then a proven probblem steam collect a lot of data on you. currenetly valve does not use this data for any thing but there still collectiong it a simple change to eula and privacy policy can have them using all that data. if a change in compay leadrship happend valve/steem can launch a anti competer blize that puts microsoft and apple to shame 

Uh, it's simple, if its already up, you just click the steam button and go offline.  If your computer isn't even hooked up to the internet, like mine, Steam will ask you when you boot up, just say use offline mode.  I play that way every day on my laptop, and my laptop goes weeks without ever being hooked up to the internet.  STEAM doesn't require games to be online to play or have additional DRM, but individual games might, but it has nothing to do with steam, it has to do with that company.  

Well there.

I fit in the pattern of most everyone else:  I dislike the DRM / online aspects of STEAM, but have been pleasantly surprised by how useful the "never lose my disks" feature is (especially because they have a habit of disappearing when my wife "cleans"...)

Brad, your initial post moved me from STEAM is a 3 on a scale to 10 (a foisted, necessary evil sometimes to get a game, but at least the distro works) to about a 6  on a scale of 10 (hey! This is a better way to pay the people making the games who are otherwise serially ripped off and so will go out of business!).

So thanks...

Wrong you had to activate the game with the game codes when you first installed it.

You can still play LoTRO without Steam, I launched it last night to check. Unless it has changed in the past few hours that is.

I like Steam, but I had a rough patch with it when I was trying to play Civ V and game files or cache or something got corrupted and wouldn't restore.  I ended up having to re-install both, and I lost my XCOM: TftD saves in the process (gee, thanks Steam).

Despite that bitter feud, I've come to appreciate the utility of having a platform to go buy games when I feel the urge, rather than checking Play.com or (shudder) looking on the shelves at ASDA or GAME.  There's so much bias at retail that's it's ceased to be a useful outlet.

Am I the only one that thinks that a lot of these complaints about steam are either completely incorrect, have nothing to do with steam itself or are just about the way the industry is moving?  I am continually amazed by people's ability to argue without the ability to reason or use logic, or obtain and use information about their argument.  

EDIT:I want to say I posted this before I saw Jeje's arguments, which I think are fair and well thought.

Well now, this is quite the gem. I know that reason often falls upon deaf ears, I tell myself that everytime I see a post in a forum about something that is just boardering on troll-level content. You see, you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. If you try, you're the asshole suddenly. So yeah, I know it is more or less pointless to try and argue any points here, but I'll go ahead and give out my opinion on some of these posts. The TLDR; My point exactly.

So your computer is malfunctioning, and.. That's somehow Steam's fault that you can't load it due to said malfunction? My face hurts. The palm that just struck it was done so with outragous force.

Forced patches.. That is a false statement. You can toggle that on/off. However, I have mine on auto patching for all of my games, and.. Yeah, in the last 7 or 8 years now, I've never had Steam patch a game and break it in some way that wasn't the DIRECT FAULT OF THE DEVELOPER. Steam does what it is told to do. And who tells it what to do? You.

Blizzard's DRM is very bad yes. Preventing people from playing a games singleplayer aspects while in a singleplayer setting (offline). It is a bummer, but their suits whisper in their ears of the dreaded pirates taking food off of the plates of their children. So the knee-jerk reaction is to put in stupid policies in place that do not hinder in -anyway- pirates, but instead punish those that have done no wrong (paying customers). Pirates do not care about your DRM, they'll crack it. And play the game without the hassle that those of us who pay for our games have to go through.

Now the "DRM" that Steam has.. Is hardly DRM! It isn't there to police your computer or take your candy and eat it in front of you cackling grimly while you sit there awe-struck in horror as the boogeyman is from taking something precious from you! Some of the scaremongering that I have seen on this forum and others about Steam's "DRM" -lol- is a logical fail of such degree that I lack the ability to adequately articulate my thoughts.

So.. You think Steam will be there on Monday, but come Tuesday.. (MK)Whoopsie! It's gone? Like.. No warning? Hm. Now I know it is a possibility, but then again so is going to sleep in your bed here on Earth and suddenly waking up on Mars. Then exploding. Yeah, it can happen! Will it? Sure! Not in the lifetime of this universe, but cross those fingers, might happen in the next one! Yeah.. If Steam was a sinking ship, I'm quite certain they'd give everyone time to make sure they retain access to their assests. This just sounds like scaremongering to me.

Another dose of scaremongering. Steam isn't herding people anywhere. At least no more than anything else is. I'm more concerned with the Sun herding the Earth into its belly. It's just letting us fatten up for the big gulp ya know! It's comin! In a few Billion years anyway. Billion.. Biilllion. I wish I could say that with even one tenth the majesty of Carl Sagan. Billion. It's a fun word to say. It's a damn themepark when he says it. But I digress.. Often. So let me point out the highlighted section there. Right there. Yeah, see it? Yep. That right there. It's wrong. Now moving on.

Well, heres what I'd suggest.. Go in offline mode when you know you are going to be going somewhere without internet connection. Steam is a service, that service requires you the customer to have access to the internet for it to provide said service. So if you go to an area without access.. How is this Steam's fault? Also, once you go into offline mode, you do not have to log back in to go into offline mode once you exit the program. So turn it off, and booyah! It stays off in your area-of-no-internetness. I've played games before on steam without internet access. In fact, when you go to switch to offline mode, it tells you in a little information box that is the express purpose of the switch, and I qoute "Offline Mode is used when you're about to unplug your laptop, or are otherwise expecting to not be connected to the Internet.". There ya go, problem solved.

Okay.. I'm seeing a pattern here. So you're issue with going into offline mode is that.. Well, your internet is sporadic? How is this Steam's fault? It seems like a case of wanting cake / eating it too. Steam is a service, requires internet. What you're saying is kinda like hating soup because you have a spoon that occasionally pulls a Matrix on your ass. Damn you soup! Stay in the spoon!

Alright, well I'll go ahead and be the bearer of bad news here.. You do not own the games you buy. You are in fact (generally).. leasing them with a (generally) one-time payment. You see, you can't do just whatever you want with it. That EULA that pretty much all games now days require you to sign, yeeeahh.. It tells you that in there, somewhere, that you don't really own it. At least, not in the truest sense of the word. I know, total downer. And moving on.

I apologize if this seems.. Rude, but your vision is short-sighted. Internet access worldwide is becoming more and more affordable to people. Every day it gets better. And if someone is so poor as to not be able to afford internet service, I doubt video games are the thing they're most concerned with. Or even partially. Gaming is a form of entertainment. Not everyone can or will have access to that particular form of entertainment. However, that isn't the fault of the industry, the root cause is something else entirely that isn't the place for this forum. Steam isn't an irresponsible choice for the future of gaming. Steam isn't the villain here. And again, refer to the highlighted section; Steam isn't the one that requires you to always have internet access. You're blame is in the wrong place entirely.

And no, I'm not saying that poor kids do not want to play video games, I'm sure they do. I did. But that was the early 90s, and the internet didn't matter that much. But anyway, what you said about stores eventually no longer carrying games and leaving out a section of gamers and such.. That makes no sense. You're taking into account only one factor of a changing world and ignoring the rest of the change that comes with it, and supplementing it with the current state of things, as if that is the way it will always be.

And I saw somewhere in one of the posts about EA buying out Steam. That was a good one. Though, EA couldn't afford steam. You guys realize how much Steam is actually worth? You'd need Microsoft money to even consider it. Also I doubt Gabe would ever let his baby go, and if something did happen to him, well, then it wouldn't matter anyway. Gabe is the only one keeping Steam from turning into Skynet and all our base are belong to it.

I used to worry about that too before Steam got super popular. But now you see all the other big publishers like EA rushing to get their own digital distribution platforms out to crush Steam and I know they would only be doing if it was the future of distribution. You can be damn sure they first tried to bully or coerce Valve into selling the rights to them, you may notice a lot of EA games are no longer available on Steam. A good case in point is Gamestop buying up Impulse, corporations want successful digital distribution platforms and if they can't buy them they will make their own and compete. If for some reason Valve goes under in the future there will be someone to pick up the pieces and support your Steam purchases as it pretty much guarantees future profit off you. I'm no prophet though so I can't say if the quality of support will be better or worse lol

Reason to go with Steam..is the option to play offline DRM is not going to help anything its nice to find out there is a update log in d/l and play a game that you paid for.. Also to those who use pirates as the reason for DRM give it up! DRM does not stop this. Good games that people want to BUY as we are all able to play this Beta means we paid for Elemental. I will always pay for my games but consider this if you bought the first Elemental and found out what we all found out would you not be a bit ticked if Stardock did not do the right thing?

 Most of the garbage pushed out isn't worth the broadband to download (ubisoft) cough.... Stardock Make this game able to be played without a connection to the web unless we want to play Multiplayer, but as we know that is not going to be part of release then you have the option to DRM the crap out of it so peeps can play together if they want. I am tired of this multiplayer crap some of us, not all of us enjoy the single player abilty and it apears your devs have spent a many hour to give us a good single player adventure. Please do not act like the others, you have done so well not to so far...NO DRM! With all the love and well wishes to the mighty Stardock! Peace.... Oh yea got off subject a bit Steam is a good system unless you forget your password and user name... (lost Civ 5 because of this reason lol not a big loss) +1 for Steam

Will cut this short just had my first real game others where more of a get my butt kicked by everything but this last game brought back grand memorys of what made me love these types of games. Stardock as I said in other post I love you and will marry you and yes due to your non payment issues I will sighn a prenup. Will always smile when I purchase your products because I know your not like the others ...

Political issues, privacy concerns and all trends aside --  Ultimately, I've always looked at Steam as little more than an obstacle; a useless hurdle I have no interest in, and something I'd rather just not have to navagate around to get to where I want to be.  I have a feeling most agree with that assessment, including those who "got used to it", and even those who grew to enjoy and praise Steam.  If you still had the option to not jump through any extra hurdles in order to just play your game, not to suffer though additional loading screens, be bombarded with advertisements, additional updates, clicking and sorting through various jargon you want nothing to do with etc etc etc, surely most would do so.

But more recently, my view on the matter has changed.  Mainly due to the 'play offine' feature becoming perfectly useless; thanks to recent Steam "upgrades" it no longer works for me.  This is a problem.  Many on other forums, as well as some I've talked to personally (intelligent, perfectly competent people) have the very same problem; it's difficult to not doubt those claiming this function actually works for them.  My internet connection is iffy at times (living in the middle of nowhere), so there is no reason to play a single player game online (this entire concept in itself was always hilariously ironic to me).  But regardless, I can't do it anyway.  Whether I'm currently online or not, I get an annoying error message whenever I try to use this option, telling me offline "isn't available".  Like I said, I've been all over the place searching for solutions to get Steam to function correctly to no avail (and even though I've virtually given up on Steam all together), I'll gladly hear out anyone here who thinks they know how to get around the error message.  So now I've purchased Skyrim, a $60 game that I can't play, and for no good reason.

The most hilariously ironic part of all this?  I've discovered the ONLY way I'm able to play the game is to download a "cracked" executable for the game to run it.  So in other words, I have to violate the EULA and run a pirated, illegal file in order to play a game I legally purchased and flawlessly installed onto my high-spec PC that I otherwise never have any problems with.  It does not get more hilariously ironic than that, folks.  One of the reasons Steam exists is to keep people from pirating.  Now thanks to Steam, I have no choice but to do exactly that.  So yes, I'm not exactly a fan.  But at least this way, I can play Skyrim without having to run Steam whatsoever (and as an added bonus, I now can get from my desktop with one double-click to the in-game title menu INSTANTLY (no loading of any kind), and the framerate is noticably smoother without Steam!).  Perhaps this whole experience was all for the best... haha.

And just to reiterate, this specific problem (surely among others) is solely a problem with Steam, not the game itself, or the user.  To say otherwise is ignorant fanboyism.  In my case this is explicitly proven as Skyrim is literally unplayable with Steam, and plays like a gem without it.  While I'm clearly against Steam, I'm also well aware its positives, namely its promotion of indy games.  But whether you love it or hate it; whether or not it works well for you personally, one cannot deny Steam has some serious problems.  Aside from using it to install Skyrim's updates, freeing Skyrim of Steam's tight grasp has been a liberating, beautiful expereince.

Wonderful points comparing Impulse.  For all sorts of reasons, I'd take the Impulse module over Steam in a heartbeat.

I don't want any unnecessary middlemen between me and my applications. Steam as a download client, sure, whatever, Mozilla also works pretty well. Steam as a form of DRM is unnecessary and unwanted.

I've read the previous 5 pages. It's amusing that many of the ProSteam advocates become outraged that people don't want to use Steam "properly". I don't want Steam. I don't need Steam. I barely tolerate Steam. Why should I spend any time dealing with it at all? I've got enough problems working with the applications and compatibility issues without unnecessary changes. Steam does change files. These changes are not necessary because the applications can run without Steam. I don't want any of those Steam "extra features". Keep them. Please! I'll suffer by myself with the original application files.

Case in point, Steam just released Dungeon Siege 1 & 2. However, Steam/GPG "fixed" the "broken" multiplay versions of DS 1 & 2 by removing them. Gee... Thanks guys... Why do I need Steam again? The unique experience?

Here's an amusing analogy, Steam is middleman software. Another type of middleman software is unique hardware companies versions of programs and operating systems (e.g., Dell/Lenovo/HP/Whatever Flavor of Windows and all of the "bonus" software they install on new computers). Are you going to try to convince me that I should be grateful and thankful for these unique versions of Windows? Or how about how one should be happy with the default installation of a Company specific OS on your phone. Jailbreaking phones is unnecessary and evil right?

Steam doesn't give me a choice. It doesn't give me useful functionality. I'm okay with checking for new patches by myself. I'll somehow manage to spend that extra 5 minutes loading a browser and checking a website.

For those that think Steam's online policy is okay. How about we make it even better: Introducing Steam vT1. To use it you have to have a persistent T1 connection to Steam Servers. We use that bandwidth to take real time video footage of you while you are using Steam. If we detect an unauthorized person near your computer while you are playing, we will automatically save your life by disabling all of your Steam Software. Steam vT1 is not available to individuals without persistent T1 connections. This is a horrible exaggeration, but I know my stance. I don't want to have any required connections. However, where do proponents of requiring online connections stand? Is it okay if your computer takes pictures of you and sends it to Valve? How about if it is just every 15 minutes? Can we log all of your internet connections and send that to make sure you aren't hacking? You are okay with paying for this too right?

I sympathize with StarDock and not getting paid for their work. I try to send funds directly to publishers when possible. More DRM isn't the answer to getting paid for your work.