A number of features? Are these features for the 25 people that play multi-player? Sins has primarily always been a single player game with a pile doing private LAN games. What of these 'features' are for these people?

Edit: Misunderstood your reply Semaz, my bad. After re-reading this your comment looks more like a joke than an insult, so I will interpret it as such. My sincere apologies for the earlier rage reply!

Fallen Enchantress is sold via Steam but there is no "Steam Version". It's the same version you get anywhere, which is why it isn't dependent upon Steam.

Rebellion, on the other hand, uses the Steamworks library to provide various pieces of functionality.

interesting question 2 devs tried to answer.

and another

They would make great politicians 

Achievements, Steam Cloud, and inviting people off your Steam friends list?

Yeah, those are all really vital features for enhanced enjoyment of Rebellion.

It's practical, cheap and good for sales for game companies. Yeah we consumers knows that. That doesn't stop many consumers from disliking steam. Therefore the question "Is there a non steam version?" will continue being asked by consumers every time a none Valve game go on steam.

Obviously I'm one of those that dislike steam. I tolerate it but if there's a non steam version I chose that.

Oh and the only really good reason for consumers to have to use steam I have ever heard is that the games tend to be cheaper. Notice "really good" and "tend". Most other positive things with it is either not very important, small or is diminished  by the steam client itself.

Moving to Steam was one of the best things that ever happened for this game.  Did I mention that online player counts peaked over 1000 at a single point in time after the recent $14 Steam sale?

Selling the game over Steam without the draconian DRM and TOS would have accomplished the same thing.

DOH!

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

6. USER GENERATED INFORMATION

"User Generated Information" means any information made available to other users through your use of multi-user features of Steam or to Valve or its affiliates through your use of the Software or otherwise. User Generated Information may include, but is not limited to, chat, forum posts, screen names, game selections, player performances, usage data, suggestions about Valve products or services, and error notifications. Subject to the Valve privacy policy referenced in Section 1 above, as applicable, and except as otherwise specifically addressed in any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use, you expressly grant Valve and its affiliates the non-exclusive, irrevocable right to use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the User Generated Information and derivative works thereof in any form, anywhere, with or without attribution to you, and without any notice or compensation to you of any kind. For any content for which you take advantage of cloud storage provided by Valve, you grant us a license to store such information for you, and you represent and warrant to us that you have sufficient rights in such content to grant us this license. You acknowledge and agree that we may place limits on the amount of storage you may use.

C. NO GUARANTEES.

NEITHER VALVE NOR ITS AFFILIATES GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S) OR ANY INFORMATION AVAILABLE IN CONNECTION THEREWITH.

C. Termination by Valve.

Valve may cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time. In the event that your Account or a particular Subscription is terminated or cancelled by Valve for a violation of this Agreement or 
improper (<-- WTF is that    ) or illegal activity, no refund, including of any Subscription fees, will be granted.

Nobody has anything against them offering it on Steam.

What rightfully pisses people is that you are forced to use Steam.

At which point all he states here and more comes into play.

Better than Steam lovers who poison the entire market with such a fundamentally wrong concept. 

Or would you go to a car dealer and give him 10000 € for the permission to drive one of his cars? A permission he can revoke at ANY time without fear of any disadvantages for him? No, of course not. You may do that for 100 €... or even less.

For 10000 € you expect to own the car and to do with it whatever you please whenever you please. Of course you have to abide to the common sense and to the law, but thats about it.

Or to go back to games sold the classic way or at least games without steam or something similar.

I am a reasonable being. I do fully understand that the developer dont wants me to burn copies and give them to my friends for free or to upload it to the internet alltogether. That is a very reasonable wish and so I feel the need to honor it.

But as a developer, please do understand as well, that I have the same reasonable wish to own a copy. One that does work, long after Steam or Stardock (which I really hope I will never see of course!)  has gone bankrupt.

Right now my only gurantee to play Sins Rebellion as long as I wish is

a. The way of illegal download

b. Stardocks continued existence... which is not guranteed to be eternal. (Again, I really like Stardock (after all I tolerated Steam just for you) and I really dont wish them anything harmful. But contrary to all our wishes they may go out of business one day. Imagine a car that stops working the moment the factory who is building it goes bankrupt. Sounds like a bad idea, huh? Especially if said car cost the same as a competitors car that has no such problems.

Let me get this very straight. I love Sins. I love Rebellion. But the rights I have on this game via Steam, are basically nonexistant.

For such little value, I am not ready to pay more than 2 Dollars for a new game - On release day.

I have no ill feelings against Valve, but I really wish that they go bankrupt one day. Because only then all those foolish Steam lovers would realize they did nothing more than rent the games they so silly refer to be bought on Steam.

And dont come me with "There will be a Non Steam patch" shit. For current games. yes, but for anything older than 1 year i would have very little hope. Ohh, but you could buy the successor - for just 60 €. Want the old game too... ohh just 120 €.

So for now... I can tolerate Steam.... but it leaves a bad feeling and I would congratulate Stardock on offering their game on Steam in the future... as it indeed brought a lot of sales and new people in. But please dont force it upon people who dislike it. You are considerable testing their patience..... not a wise thing to do to any customer.  

I went to the Steam forum about a thread on their TOS, it was deleted along with all the others, merged into a single thread. The moderators stated this will be the only place you will be allowed to comment on the TOS, then CLOSED THE THREAD.

Its not that I love Steam ARES, its just that it isn't as evil as some people here seem to think it is. Its just a freaking company like any other for Chrissake.