Noooooo! *Goes to the corner and cries*

Good news! That means I have more money for other game(s)!*

Also, Civ Mod for EWoM in 3, 2, 1...

* trying to follow the advice of one of my ex-bosses about always trying to find the good side of e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

If that's not the perfect way to give the middle finger to a large part of the potential market, then I honestly have no idea what is. I'd have vastly preferred 2K utilizing GfWLive instead, even.

ITT: OH NOES SOMEBODY MADE A BUSINESS DEAL AND I DONT LIKE IT.  Time to cry myself to sleep again after throwing a fit.

I'm not crying, I'm just not buying.

Our rights are only as strong as our willingness to do it.  Besides, as people are saying above, we got EWOM.

My wondering is what Brad Wardell is going to do about it- this is  a slap in the face to Stardock (and Paradox)

ITT: OH NOES SOMEBODY MADE A BUYING DECISION AND I DONT LIKE IT.  Time to troll the forums again after throwing a fit.

Fixed.

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As for the news, I don't like pre-order bonus in general and I don't like steamworks. Oh well, looks like I've gotta stay an Elemental fanboy then.

I'm happy to say I have no idea what everyone in this thread's issue is.

This means Valve has kept anyone else from being able to sell this game, especially Stardock.  Anticompetitive behavior.

Wait what is the problem with this?

Steam has really good matchmaking servers, the auto-updating is nice and being able to download it to any computer is awesome. Steam has really good features for games, I know of a few awesome indie games that got a huge boost from the steam digital distribution. So what is really the problem here?

I believe that to say. "because a game is only being offered in one way or at one store I don't like it," is quite silly. Perhaps I am the only one who can remember a time when you had to buy all of your games from local stores. That's right, a time not too long ago people actually left their houses to buy games, and no, they did not have to fight off dinosaurs.

Yeah, well even if I wanted to buy it I still get dealt a shit sandwich.

AU players will be buying on Steam for the rock bottom price of USD80.  Collectors is USD90!

What a bloody joke!

Edit: Actually more!

Well, it just means that there is really a market for the Impulse reactor: developpers/publisher really need tools for multiplayer. And the current available option is only Steam.

The question is will you guys be given a chance to be competitive in the market?

You could get crushed by monopoly power- and you can't win a Sherman suit in the US these days.

Perhaps I am the only one who can remember a time when you had to buy all of your games from local stores.

You countered your own argument.  The key in the sentence is the 's' in stores.  You had a choice who to buy it from, and there was more of chance of seeing a sale or promo of some sort as the stores try to entice people to buy from them over their competition.  Steamworks eliminates all the competition on the digital download front.  This is not good for the consumer, and supporting Steamworks now will just raise game prices/decrease value in the future.  You know all those spiffy 'deals of the week' Steam has?  They only starting doing that because their competitors started making headway against them.  Regardless of what you think of Steam, Steam getting exclusive rights to sell a game digitally is not good for anyone but Valve.

Great laughs from the article: Steamworks' features included in all PC versions, such as auto-updating, Steam Achievements, downloadable content, ability to access from any computer*, multiplayer matchmatching and more.

The last I checked, most of that is a STANDARD FEATURE in any AAA title game.  And forcing me to download a patch isn't actually a good thing.  Anyone who bought Dragon Age on the PC can tell you that the 1.03 patch broke more things than it fixed.  Downloadable content used to be called expansion packs, and actually gave you more than an hour or two of extended gameplay.  I mean, holy shit, I gain the ability to buy an expansion pack because I'm using Steam?  What value!

Well clearly I won't be modding or getting Civ V now.