It is.

... what? Where?

The D2D version of Civ 5 most definitely has Steamworks. In fact if you buy from D2D, they give you a *steam* activiation code for it. You download it in Steam.

Okie,cool

I've been looking at the CivFanatics forums and they're all up in arms over the DRM, as they should be.  I hope enough consumers/potential buyers raise enough stink to get this crap off it.  I WILL NOT HAVE CIV V on my machine if it forces me to have STEAM.  Screw that, Screw them and Screw Steam.

Anyways, have a nice day before my blood pressure goes up anymore.

The main reason why this is evil is that this will show up as a sale of Civ V.  If you want to send the message that this kind of DRM is unacceptable to consumers, you're not going to do it by continuing to buy the products.

Check the game king arthur, it came with Steamworks but it's offered on impulse and D2D without it.  Same for other more recent game, cawnt remember the name right now.  I'll see if i can find it.

It was mentioned here in other thread that Valve doesnt get a % for a steamworks game sale if the game is purchased on brick and mortar stores. I dont know if that's the case, but if it is it's some kind of boycott to Valve's bottom line.  They get no money from it and they have to provide bandwidth for it.  SP games should not have this online Steam DRM.

Wait, what!?!  Which games?  When did this begin?  Link?

If this is true, I might get to play the latest installment of my most favored game of all time!  This is huge!!! 

You better not be f'ing with us  

If you are..... 

But wait... D2D doesn't have it's own steamworks alternative like Impulse does.  So how does that work?  And this doesn't change the persistent DRM checks.  Ahhh.... see how much I love Civ but dislike the steam arrangement.  I'm jumping at ANY hope that Civ5 might be offered in an alternative way. 

It's only been done for some games.  Found the game I mentioned. It's Puzzle Quest 2.  On Steam, it's Steamworks enabled. On D2D they have the same release, but with the SteamWorks component removed. As such, it doesnt have any online functions.  It is big, if more services like D2D do this for more games.

It doesn't matter where exactly the money goes - any sale of Civ V, in any venue, is a vote saying that this form of DRM is okay.

Steam doesn't care about the bandwidth for supporting this.  Bandwidth is cheap.  In exchange for this, they get a pile of new users, which looks good on the bottom line *and* they get to sell them DLC as well as other games.

While I don't have any idea what the financial terms looked like, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that Steam was paying to have Civ V as a Steam exclusive rather than vice versa.

That is what is called anti-competitiveness.  If that's the case, an anti-trust case could be made.

Bah!  So no go for Civ5.  A steam free version requires a change to the DRM method, patch distribution....

Only, on Impulse forums will you see a thread like this. I would have prefered a normal retail copy but whatever this game will blow Elemental out of the water. I'm sure that I'll get my moneys worth.

Valve's games rock and I keep Steam installed at all times anyways. Impulse isn't DRM? What D2D, gamersgate, and EADM don't have DRM? They all manage better sales than I've even seen from Impulse so it's a bit hard to blame Steam there. Gamersgate and D2D have better sales right now than Impulse or Steam.

 Might want to read the Impulse TOS, I don't see how it's any better than any other DD site out there.

The one time that I ask for a refund from Valve I got it, 100%. That didn't happen with Stardock (Impulse).

Valve offer Steamworks for free to developers - thats IMO enough motivation to use it - they dont need to pay anyone

btw.: wasnt Impulse Reactor supposed to already be released (maybe I overlooked it, but I didnt see any statement that would suggest it was already released)?

It is technically possible to rip out the Steamworks component, like in the cases of the games I mentioned.  Whether D2D will do it, who knows.