This doesn't affect my desire for Civ V in any way.  Of course I'll get it.  Who cares if you have to use steam?  That's like complaining that a game is only available on DVD and not 3.5" floppys.  This is a non-issue.  This is no different than having to use Impulse. 

You're getting sidetracked by DRM.  DRM and registering the game online isn't the issue with people against Steam in this thread.  While we all would like that not to be a requirement it is for most games even those from Stardock (if you want updates/patches).  I don't have a problem with having to do this.

The problem that I and most people have is this requirement to have Steam/Steamworks running all the time to play a *SINGLE PLAYER* game, even in "offline mode" it is still running.

Again, no problem with Steam needing to be running if you want to go online and get patches, play multiplayer or whatever.  The problem is it running in a primarily single player game.

And then there are mods.  There has been no confirmation weather mods will work outside the Steamworks system (in other words downloading them from Civ Fanatics or something).  If mods have to be approved by Steam that leads to whole other issues.  And what about 10 yrs from now?  Will Valve still have staff to approve mods?  The thing about Civ games is they are played forever.  Civ 3 still has an active mod community let alone Civ 4.  Heck, there are still people that play Civ 2 to this day.  So will Valve still be around 10 yrs from now to not only approve mods but to keep the game alive with Steamworks so heavily embedded in it?  This isn't your FPS game that gets tossed in the trash heap 6 months after it comes out.  Civ is *different*.

And another thing about mods, many people have several different patch versions of Civ installed to run various different mods, some of witch may not work with later patches.  No way you'll be able to run multiple versions of Civ 5 with Steam.  Just not possible.

And sure you can set Civ 5 to not auto update, but my understanding (and it could be wrong) if you go online with Steam for another reason, say to play another Steam game, it will detect there is an update to Civ 5 anyway and will force you to update it before you can play again.  There is back and forth on this one on other forums so maybe it's not an issue, maybe it's not. 

But it's certainly possible technically which is another reason why we don't want Steam required for a *SINGLE PLAYER* game.  Sure, if you want to play multiplayer it's good to have everyone on the same version.  Fantastic, no problem with that.  But again, for a single player game there is no need.

I could go on but why bother, those that are Steam lovers just can't see it from the other side.  Steam is great for many games, especially all these shooters.  But for a primarily *SINGLE PLAYER* game it's uneeded and frustrating. 

Yea ... I agree its FIRAXIS/2K that will be approving or dissapproving mods.

Also, if they have a strong modding community (after all this mess) it would be logical if they coordinate their patches/ patch schedule with the modding community somehow.

Making it easier?? (I don't code) for mods to upgrade to newer patches might be a fixation of Civ V if, again, they wish to make a steamworks game modifiable.

Because obviously we won't have the luxury of making 6 digital copies of Civ V, one being Vanilla and the other 5 having different code ... unless I am missing something.

 

I just want to chip in here and say I hate Steamworks simply because I thoroughly resent being forced to install a 3rd party program in order to play a game single player.

 

Its rediculous and stupid. And morally questionable as well.

 

I wont be buying Civ 5 either if this is the case.

 

Its a real shame.

 

Is Brad Wardell aka frogboy involved in Civ 5 like the OP said? If so, in what way? And is he going to ya know object to this?

 

So nothing in an official capacity then lol. Okay. Shame.

"Even Steam haters will agree that Steam is better than Ubisoft's DRM. But from a business standpoint, there's no reason not to support Ubisoft games. They're not an online distributor."

 

True about the Steam Hater's(=ME) saying that Steam is better than UBI's DRM. I won't buy UBI games from the Store/Impulse/Steam or anywhere else its sold because of their invasive DRM. It is also true that there is no reason for Impulse to not sell UBI game. But like I said, UBI is loosing TONSSSSS of money with this DRM thing they have, but what do you want to bet they say it was because of piracy in the end?

No. Steamworks/Steam isn't as bad as the Ubisoft scam... It's not going to boot you out of the game because your connection flickered. Saved games should still be local, and other things make the two pretty different.

I love the Civ series too, which is what makes this entire fiasco all the more bittersweet.  Then again, I've yet to see anything indepth with Civ V, and if they take Civ V the way that most companies are taking their games (i.e. make them as pathetically simple as humanly possible) then it's simply another series and developer who lost my buisness through bad design and business decisions.

You guys know that SD and all the other digital distributor can file an antitrust lawsuit against Valve for forcing customers to install Valve's DD software and no other ones.  I believe the last time a big giant company got its ass sue, it had to modify its business practice.  SOO why isn't Stardock and Gamersgate doing such a thing.  Look, Steam is not going to go away because of the lawsuit, but it will give consumers more choice for certain.

Technically speaking, there is no anti-competitive behaviour in play on Valve's behalf in the eyes of the law.  Impulse can sell games with Steamworks API/DRM and Stardock make a profit from this, however they simply opt not to due to the fact that it then installs Steam on a users computer when the user bought it via Impulse.  There are no laws governing this.  The fault for this decisions then falls to the Developers who opted to use this service, and thus the fault is not Valve's rather the Developers.
For anti-competitive laws to come into play, Valve must establish itself and it's services in such a way that competition is no longer practically achieveable or has clear intention of doing so.  Although it's behaviour is unethical, in that it's using popular games as a Trojan Horse for it's service and essentially cutting out it's competitors in doing so, it's monopoly only occurs due to the behavior of other services as they choose not to sell games with Steamworks.  Microsoft had similar practices in play to achieve a legal monopoly, then in order to assume 100% dominance of the market they began to operate in ways considered illegal.  Valve, founded by ex-Microsoft employees, would be more than capable of avoiding this problem.

Please do not equate design decisions with business decisions in the same sentence.  As a game designer myself I am highly offended by this.  

I've seen many awesome design documents destroyed by suits.  Designers don't make games now, suits do.  And suits make games for profit, not for fun.  The only good in-depth games coming out these days are when the designers and suits are the same people (Stardock and Paradox for examples).

I love the CIV series as well - and why I can live without CIV V.  I'll be playing CIV III and IV until hardware and software no longer runs them. Wish someone at the game studios would actually try to find out how many lost, real sales (not pirates who never would have bought it in the first place) are due to the hoops like Steam that many folks just don't want to jump through.

Love technology, but the implementation of it baffles me sometimes.