It is a tough situation for conscientious consumers in the game industry lately.  Quite a few newer titles are getting away from the "consumer ownership" style, traditional purchase model, and going toward the "consumer license" marketing scheme (scam). No longer to you pay money and purchase a box of software for your own use, as you see fit.  Now you "license" the use of game software for use only in specific fashions laid out in the EULA (and on the box) and have limited technical rights to your purchase.

Added to that, companies throw in online DRM to use games even in single player mode ... which, if you dig through your EULA, there will be a clause about your "purchase" discussing what happens if the servers go down (temporarily or permanently - Hint: You are screwed out of your "purchase") which does nothing to stop actual gaming Pirate groups.  All these DRM measures do is make more hurdles and hoops for paying customers to go through, some of which people can (and do) easily argue, take away your previously accepted rights as a game consumer.

Trouble is, most people dismiss arguments against DRM as either "well you are a pirate then"; or "well you are paranoid."

Personally, I'm just pretty hard-line on people removing rights from me, to do what I feel I want to, with something I just purchased.  I haven't had to call and "check in" since I lived at home with my parents ... why should I have to "check in" with a game company to be allowed the privilege of playing a game that I just gave them money for?  Would you be ok having to connect to the internet and verify your purchase every time you want to watch a movie you just bought on BluRay?  What if you want to put a few DVDs in your laptop case when you go on vacation, to watch on the beach somewhere one night ... should you have to ask permission to watch each DVD before you go somewhere that might not have WiFi access?

I hate any DRM that forces me to do, well, anything beyond registering my product to get updates (and I'm not too much of a fan of that, simply because hiccups can happen and things can suddenly stop working correctly - as seen with the issue of fan-made Elemental bugfix patches causing the game to stop working and give the spinny frowny face), or for older games that stop getting constant support.  I usually find most up-to-date patches on sites other than the game company's site, either because they went out of business or no longer devote space on their website to ancient games I just felt like dragging off my shelf.

"Well I keep steam up 24/7, so I don't know why you complain" arguments? Well, I have Steam too ... got in a few months ago and purchased a couple games through it.  Know how often I have Steam up?  Only to play those games, then I shut it right back off.  I don't want anything running on my PC unless I give it permission, I'm OCD like that.

I'm the person that downloads no-CD cracks for the games I purchase, just so I can load them on a laptop and not have to drag around 20 CDs in case I want to play any of the games I own, or if I want to put them in a box in the closet and not have to wade in there every time I boot up an old game that I forgot had CD requirements.

I'm looking forward to Civ V ... I'll probably get it off the shelf when I buy it (especially since there is usually no discount for D2D-style purchases compared to B&M shelf purchases - so I might as well get something physical for my money), and I'll probably break it so it doesn't require a check-in to play single-player (which of course is against the EULA, but I'm evil I guess).

Starcraft II has the same-style DRM as Civ V seems to ... you have to "check in" once in a while to verify your account to play single player.  Know how many days it took the pirates to release a working copy that subverts that mechanism? -1   ... negative one days ... there were working copies of the single player game the day before release.  Paying customers have to deal with stupid hoops, yet the people stealing the game not only get it for free, but they don't have to be annoyed by stupid restrictions like we do.  The industry has lost its mind.

Edit:  Oh, and for the sake of full disclosure ... I am paranoid.  I don't even post using the same account, or even email address, that I make my game purchases through.  A long while back I made some criticism posts in a beta forum for a game I was helping test, and they revoked/banned me from playing further.  So ... paranoid. ... but that still doesn't make my comments any less true

Btw the demo is tomorrow right ?

Since Impulse and D2D are starting to sell Steamworks games with the Steamwork component removed, this could be the best way to get Civ V. 

... 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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)?

I don't see why they would. Steamworks itself is the sales pitch. Firaxis/2k get features like friends lists, achievements, the Steam Cloud save game feature (which is really cool), MP lobbies, and the necessary infrastructure to support it all for $0. You're seeing so many Steamworks games this year because that is a really good deal. Steam also acts as DRM but doesn't carry the same baggage that solutions like SecuROM or Ubisoft do (while some people dislike it, Steam has broad market acceptance).

Valve gets more users on Steam, which they're quite open and upfront about being a motivator.

It's entirely possible that 2k got a better sales deal then normal to be listed on Steam given how high profile Civ 5 is, but the idea that Valve is paying them to carry it is pretty out there. There's nothing nefarious going on here; Steamworks is simply the best solution on the market for what it does.

Why would they do this?  Simple.  They are going to sell less copies of Civ V with Steam than if they offered both Steam and non-Steam versions.  How many less, no one knows, but it's non-zero.

Why would any company decide to limit their sales if they're not getting something in return?  This isn't nefarious, it's just business.  Now it's possible that they think the hit will be so small that it's not worth the time and testing to implement a different form of DRM.  That's the case for a lot of Indie titles.  But I don't think that's true in this case.  Civ V is an ultra high profile title that will sell a huge number of copies.  A 1-2% loss of sales could be millions of dollars.

Go back and read what I actually said. I never said that Steam isn't a digital distribution service. I said I was talking about the use of steam as a copyright method for games. This is a completely seperate issue.