Hmm... The founder badge doesn't show up in the OP... Will it show up in this reply?

Edit: Yes it will.

An issue for me with regards to Steam would be if the always-on requirement will be there. I do not have the good fortune of guaranteed internet coverage where I live so if I need to go online to play a single-player game it would be a major turn off for me. I have tried Steam's offline mode but after three days of being offline, Steam required me to go online again or else the game would not launch. I am totally fine with Stardock using Steam as a beta testing, game distribution and game update platform but the functionality of Steam should just stop there for me. Big plus if I don't even need to launch Steam upon clicking on GC3's executable.

Disclaimer: I am primarily a single-player skirmish/sandbox player. No multi-player functionality is not a major issue for me.

Thanks DivineWrath!

For probably 90% of users the workshop will be a good feature. It works fairly simply, you go to the Workshop page for your game. Then 'subscribe' to whatever mods you want to play. These are automatically updated as the author updates the mod on the Workshop. You might enable mods in different ways. Skyrim/Dungeons of Dreadmor, have launchers where you enable/disable mods, then go into the game. Civ5/PrisonArchitect have in-game mod/map management tools (but god the Civ5 one is really terrible from a UI perspective...). For users it's just, subscribe, enable mod, play. For 'most' people its a great central location to find mods and makes it easier to install them for users. Instead of say going through the forums, or even going to a 3rd party website to find, download, manually extract, install mods. I tried my hand at getting into Oblivion mods and lord almighty that was REALLY confusing as hell. I mean geezus, Doom had bsp files you just threw in and played. Oblivion mod installing felt like 95% black magic. Which 'game' was I playing? But I digress.

So how much you like the Steam Workshop depends on how 'far' you want to push it. Skyrim is probably the best place to look for the weaknesses, since people love pushing the Elder Scroll mods to insane places so the 'edge cases' seem to pop up there more than other games. Generally speaking though limitations are a bit on both sides of the equation. There's a file size limit to how big the workshop can be. Some games (DoD) distribut mods as zip files so this isn't as big an issue, while skyrim doesn't have such a compression function in their esp/esm file structure so many find the file size extremely limiting. You also can't install executables, so you have to instal SKSE manually if you want to use stuff like SkyUI.

The workshop is simply an 'auto update' for a bunch of files. That part works flawlessly. But the way the mods work has to be designed in such a way as to be entirely modular. Your mod can't generally be expected to overwrite existing game data, since that will get 'fixed' by Steam as a corrupt game file.

So how 'good' it'll be really depends on how modular the modding of GalCiv3 will be. If we assume that galciv3 will be highly xml driven, then there's a good possiblity that you can pretty much do whatever you want with the workshop. But ultimately it's not really knowable at this point what Galciv3 will or will not allow via mods since we don't have any SDK or such.

I want to point out too that how mod-able the game will be is determined by developer and not Steam. The Workshop's main function is just to centralize modding effort more than anything, but that doesn't mean it's strictly the only place mods for games on Steam are. Paradox games are hugely mod-able and all my copies are Steam copies.

Now-a-days the only trepidation I feel on the part of Steam is what will happen 20+ years in the future and how long games will be able to be played. Otherwise I'd much rather buy a game of Steam than go to the store, buy a physical copy, and deal with all the retail store's crap.

Having played hundreds of hours of Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion and modding the hell out of it, I can say that Steam does not get in the way of anything. In fact, I can safely say that Steam makes everything easier, since I can install the game anywhere.

Combine this with optional updating, offline mode not impacting game performance/availability, and everthing's peachy, much better than going to get a hardcopy.

Really, I wouldn't worry about Steam at all; Valve is a good corporation to rely on.

You can disable auto-update on Steam.

EDIT: Out BR'd lol

Again 'generally' this isn't a problem

But as I indicated, in Civ5 this was a GIGANTIC problem. Because they changed extremely core fundamental game concepts between patches. Specifically the happiness resource, which is extremely vital to the welfare of you empire, was at one point a 'global' thing. Where you did simple math of 'add up all your smiley faces' and 'subtract all the frowny faces' and that was you happiness. This meant that you mystically could keep a city in the remote outposts of you empire happy... by building a circus in your capital?? Regardless, at one point, they made happiness a  'per city' calculation. In that happiness could only be generated and unhappniness negated locally. When that patch came out, entire save games were rendered useless as you went from a well oiled war machine one turn, to -100 happiness and the entire empire in rebellion the next. That's a pretty big bummer if you're on turn 1500 of your Diety level, marathon run in Civ5. And I'm just talking about single player here, since I dont touch Civ5 multi at all (I'm not good enough to want to get curb stomped by someone online)

It's a fairly legit concern to a certain extent. Sometimes patches introduce bugs or features that maybe aren't 'optimal'. Or again maybe the mod you're using is totally broken in the new patch and then you can't play until it's updated.

I just presented a possible solution to those who might be concerned that not being able to control your game version, is something that is disconcerting about steam. And it is something that people bring up in terms of not liking Steam.

For me, Steam is an enhancement.  I like the in-game "Shift-Tab" overlay.  I like being able to chat with friends and get updates as they sign on and launch new games.  I like my friends to be able to see what I am playing.  I like how Steam makes it easy to invite friends to join into your game and vice-versa.

I like having all of time games in one convenient library.  I like being notified when new content is available for my game.  I like Steam sales.

I like Steam.  Everyone has different opinions and I respect that.  Personally, I don't understand the trepidation some have with Steam, but that's OK too. 

Isn't this a thread about GCIII concerns?  If not, the title needs editing.

Hey, if I make a thread called "I like balloons" but the thread was about turnips, I wouldn't be surprised if someone mentioned balloons.

I found my experience with Steam very disturbing. Not the code, or function, but the support. My first Steam game was Sid Meier's Civilization V. Steam provided a bare bones support about discussion about the game without any real support. They didn't monitor the forum, didn't provide any of the "try this first" pinned and locked threads for bug resolution, didn't split the discussion into sub boards that helped split out rants, multiplayer meeting boards, bug support, etc. Everything was mixed into one humongous chaotic mess.

Donald23, SamBC, and Ragan651 did what they could to help the user community but they didn't have moderator authority at first. The Steam -> Civ V forum now at least has pinned threads that provide the basic help tips due to their effort.

I just did a quick review of Steam's forums for GC1 and GC2. Again, no "try this first" pinned thread. No splitting out general discussion, help, etc., into separated (sub) forums.I didn't look for any of the other problems I saw on the Civ V forums, so excuse my skepticism, but I have doubts that Valve learned anything.

If we see the same attitude by Valve towards GC3, then I would have to say that Steam will be a big mistake. The only hope we have for this alliance between SD and Steam to work is if SD sits down with Valve and sets some support requirements for Valve to live up to.