Stardock sold Impulse to Gamestop a while ago, and for good reason.

Regardless, Rebellion is using Steamworks for online features, so steam has to be running to launch it.

I don't have any regular or recurring issues with Steam... There was that downtime few days back, but that was like the first time in a year or so.

As for being intrusive... how? You can deactivate that pesky overlay and make Steam ignore chat messages (if you have set up a steam user profile and added friends) or notifications while you are ingame. In which case Steam isn't at all noticable while playing. (settings -> friends -> disable sign into friends and notifications; settings -> interface -> disable run on windows startup and notifications about new games and updates; settings -> ingame -> disable steam overlay; done)

Yes, it is still running in the background. It's Steams way of making sure you're not just distributing your steamfolder to all your friends so they can play you games. I'm actually glad they are making an attempt to keep my account safe.

I'm actually using many Steam features, having started online gaming with CS 1.6 before swapping to RTSs, so Im pretty used to steam and it's quirks. I actually appreciate the overlay with the in-built browser function, the ability to chat with my friends while ingame and the cloud support (I often share ingame-pics of sins beta with my friends while playing, that's kinda neat not having to get out of the game to post them up )... but that's a matter of preference I guees.

He is right - steam is a terrible program and it has caused me issues since half life 2 came out...

Running in the background is not a problem but if my internet is offline or i am somewhere where i don't have access to the internet steam wont start - if you click offline mode it does not work because you need to be online then switch to offline mode for it to work - in other words you need to know in advance when your not going to be connected to the internet which is ridiculous - i know i agrred the steam t&c so i cant really complain but if i buy a game i should be able to play it whenever i want. - When half life 2 came out i had to agree to steam t&c to play half life 2 and i had to update steam and agree again to play sins .

Steam is still causing me issues and has for years and its not to keep yours and mine account "safe" 

Is indeed as stated i hate steam. You know the way when a new version of sins beta comes out and your old save games get wiped ? well i unplug my laptop and let the battery drain so when i came home from work the battery was dead i had s save game of sins i wanted to finish so i puled the plug on my modem - plugged in my lapper and tried to load the game but it said steam had to be turned on so i clicked sign in in offline mode which steam could not do - so i pluged in the modem and then went to steam and clicke doffline mode but in the 2 seconds that the internet was connected tha auto update had started and my save game was gone all thanks to steam.

Hi mcintire - post not an attack on you i just had to post that up i cant see steam defended because  of all the grief i get from it and well don't you think online gaming is less fun on steam than it was pre cs 1.6? 

@ Mr Haze -  what was the good reason for the sale to gamestop and the good reason for sins moving to steam?

I am not sure what Haze is referring to specifically however I do know that Impulse was seriously hampering game developement. As for steam yes it has had its issues what service that services 23 million doesn't? It has improved greatly over the past few years and continues to do so.

....sorry for not replying earlier, didn't have much time & nerves for such extensive testing until these days.

I already did re-install Sins Rebellion, although didn't do it the "delete/rename ClientRegistry.blob" way (i.e. just did remove entire game via steam)

so I tried that, too - so far nothing helped.

...then I got out the real big hammer and uninstalled steam itself, (even including use of a registry cleaner up to the point that steam guard needed to re-authorize a "new" pc upon installation, just to be sure).

this finally solved that startup issue (after re-installing Sins, too).

kind-of re-inforces my opinion that this steam crap always causes issues needlessly (why has it to interfere with starting & running the game, where impulse was satisfied with just guarding installs & upgrades - way less chance to mess up that way!) -- seems that some auto-update broke the steam client around the same time that update 2 for Sins Rebellion went live, that's why I thought update 2 of Sins might be responsible 

issue closed, although still bearing a grudge...

It annoys me when people start hating on steam. I have used steam for about 3 years now and the only time I had problems with it is when I got crappy internet and I couldn't connect so that steam could verify any of my games and so could launch anything, even manually. 

Other then that its always been fine for me. Now when you get a problem if you actually google it or search it on the steam forums its all there. You can make steam so you don't even know its running. Its simply that people who have never used steam always blame steam for every issue that pops up. When most of the time, because they have never used a software like steam, their pc's haven't been made to use it, so you get firewalls and all sorts blocking it thinking its some foreign entity trying to download things, start things and access the internet.

For example, I just googled that error, and what came up? 9 DIFFERENT forums / game forums saying that they get this error. None of them are actually from the steam forums and they are all for different games.