Nope. Its a steamworks game. Any game that is labeled such must be used through steam. I mean I suppose you'd still be a registered customer of Stardock, and you might be able to get them to give you a new steam key if they did something really messed up, but you'd still have to use steam. We really don't have much of a choice now but to trust the Valve fan boys and hope they won't abuse the ToS, at least until a true alternative finally comes out.

Well, it's extremely unlikely that anyone will ever encounter a legitimate reason to disagree with Valve's new ToS. 

I was just wondering how exactly SoaSE fell into the category of Steam games.

Nate and whoever else is a massive steam fanboi

My son had his steam account disabled because Steam ran his credit card through twice for the same purchase and the bank froze it.  Long fight between bank and steam for a year and son was unable to play anything on his account even in offline mod.  He was able to get all of his games back only by talking with a manager level person by creating a new account and then purchasing the game in question.

Yes, Steam eventually got everything sort out, but it took a year and son finally cussing out the rep he'd been deal with the whole time at which point a manager got involved and 2 days later was fixed.  Should not require Herculean efforts to resolve an issue.  Steam has a mixed reputation of being either really great or being complete crap; Steam's earned the mixed review . 

If you don't like his opinion, you don't have to post, but trolling him just shows you are a horse's ass and have the brain of a gnat.  Let Steam stand on it's own merits.

My biggest beef with steam is that you can't start in offline mode, you have to at least start with an internet connection...becomes a royal pain when you travel...

I really feel like I tried and it didn't work for me, but maybe I didn't actually set it to offline mode before shutting down...does it carry through multiple reboots?  So far I've had to keep my computer on in sleep mode to access stuff later on...

Your making an ass out of me and yourself for assssuming that I was trolling, I was not and I meant what I said and I still do.

O and I forgot to mention how steam is a godsend for non AAA developers and as for the other means of retail the sooner that EA and Activison along with all ilk of their type get ground into dust the better.

Heavily, for years.  Still do.  Beyond having to work slightly harder to locate the correct directory to place the files, I've never had a problem with it on Steam.  On games that have the Steam Workshop tied in, it's actually a lot easier than it used to be for casual mod-users.

As for the other two triggers you mentioned, I personally don't have much sympathy but to each their own.

It is unfortunate that if your internet connection dies unexpectedly (I've had mine die for up to a week) you cannot play any Steam games as it prompts to start in offline mode then says "Can not connect to the Steam network" and exits.  Steam sucks more than Impulse ever did (though post-Gamestop Impulse actually sucks more).