I installed the game normally. Everything looked ok, the game started and everything was fine. However, when I tried to start the game again from the "Start Menu-?....->Sins of a Solar Empire", it would bring up the launcher(?) screen, but the launched screen would only have buttons for "Install". There were no buttons to play the game.
The question about registration came when I tried to do it again. This time, after the game installed and ran for the first time, I choice to download the patch. This is where I entered in my relevant keys and such. The issue was that after I installed the patch, I still did not see the "Play" buttons when I ran the "Start Menu->Stardock Games->Sins of a Solar Empire".
Then I tried downloading Stardock itself and installed it. Using this software I was able to start the game normally.
So the $10,000 questions is how come the launcher did not change over the "play game" version and is stuck on the "intall" version?