Well, sometimes things on the internet are just taken the wrong way. It's the impersonal nature of it I suppose.

What the fuck are you going on about? The risk is all on the backers. They didn't even think of doing this until they saw a couple of other big, popular projects on Kickstarter. They asked for $400,000 and got +$1,800,000. How's that for "breathing room" and whatever they can do to make a buck? Their salaries are already paid and then some.

There are some games on Steam that you can do that with although I wouldn't call it many games. It's not advertised either because it's not a feature of Steam that they would want people to advertise so you would have to use trial and error to figure it out. Some people have shared their trial and error experience with others. But if you buy a game hoping that it will be able to run without Steam and then it doesn't run without it, you'd feel a bit silly, yes?

For Shadowrun Returns though, they have stated in their answers to questions that the Steam game will require Steam to be installed to run the game. They have stated that you will have to use offline mode with Steam still installed if you want to play offline.

See, I should have known better than to hit the reply button. I don't find your posts offensive. I find them swinging out of the gates, telling people "You're wrong!" while being full of disparaging remarks. It's not offensive to me, but some users could take it as disrespectful even if you might have good points. That's something I think a lot of people are fed up with, always being told they're wrong for a valid opinion that they have.

I was going to do something similar, but Timpuu beat me to it :) SURPRISE, PC gaming has been getting along just fine modding for over 20 years now without centralized servers. No one asked the developer to try to restrict modding so that they would be the one's in control of modding. This is actually a pet peeve of mine that I don't bring up very often but people complain about piracy and then praise PC gaming for it's openness because they can crack a game or mod it if they want to. How many of those people actually made mods or wrote their own cracks? .01%? It's the same thing as piracy. In fact, I find it offensive that HBS wants to make Steam a requirement to use community content so they can profit off of other people's work. Don't they plan on doing some "best of" community content releases for the tablet versions because they will not have an editor for them? YARRRR!!! I don't find it offensive that they would do that, but that they would restrict the game so that ONLY they can do that.

I've been expressing a different opinion without getting downrated and yelled at.

Replying with "SURPRISE" or "for fuck's sake" implies that the other party involved missed some very obvious fact and seems designed to make them look stupid. I would not really call it offensive, but it is definitely not polite and will only help to escalate any discussion instead of conveying your opinion.
I'm sure both "sides" were guilty of varying degrees of rudeness (didn't really follow the discussion). I just wanted to say that I find it very understandable that people get annoyed when they are responded to with phrases like this.

edit: ninja'd while replying to a post about a discussion I do not even really care about. In the words of KyeKatarn: I should have known better than to hit the reply button :D
Life is hard...

If you buy it on Steam, Batman: Arkham City has Steamworks and GFWL and Securom with limited activations (the belt and braces and superglue-pants-to-body DRM approach). So it's rare, but it has happened.

I asked for my pledge to be donated to the EFF and did receive confirmation of this a few hours back. I'd be interested to know how much/many refunds HBS had to make but don't see much chance of that info being made public.

The Shadowrun situation does seem unique on KS and if there is a lesson to be learned, it seems to be "avoid licensing anything from Microsoft". Which puts the kibosh on developing other FASA IP (BattleTech, Earthdawn, Renegade Legion, etc) more's the pity.
Gawd, talk about the Unholy Trinity of DRM-hood. *shakes head*

I'm not too sure what to get angrier about - the complete disregard for paying customers this shows, or the fawning sycophancy of the PC gaming press who praised that game to the skies without mentioning all the DRM on it. Glad I boycotted it.

Got my refund.

Picked up the preorder on Steam, here's to hoping it's a fun game :)

I did eventually get my refund, but it ended up taking quite a while.

I'd love to pick up a copy, but I'm not willing to do so until/unless it's available for new purchasers as DRM-free.

Good for you for sticking to your principles. I'm particularly disappointed that they backed out of selling the game DRM-free as I missed out on the kickstarter (but then given the recent revelations I probably would have asked for a refund too).

I think it's kind of funny that this post is number 666.

So what ended up happening?

It kinda looks ok
Glad i didnt back it. woulda asked for a refund LOL

It's good that they give refunds at least. Otherwise many backers would feel (even more) betrayed. If they think they need DRM, they definitely don't need my money.

The truth sets you free.

And being truthful with the backers from the beginning would of nipped this in the bud, instead when the backers on Kickstarter starting asking for DRM-free, they gave in and outright lied that backers would get a DRM-free version because they didn't want to disappoint in the middle of the KS campaign, even though they knew very well that Microsoft's company policy is copyright protection on EVERYTHING they license, including the Shadowrun IP. They managed to negotiate an exception, but without compatibility with future expansions/DLC.

Hopefully this means in the future Kickstarter backers will ask very pointed and specific questions about DRM before they give them any money.

Personally, I think this is a story that has ended as well as it could have done really. If you have no problems using a Steam-only version, fine. Enjoy it. But there was a sizable number of people who financed it under the understanding that it would be DRM-free, and Harebrained have done the right thing in offering refunds to those who backed under the understanding that it would be a DRM-free title.

While I find that Microsoft's behaviour in this matter is wholly unacceptable, and while HS should really have done their homework before promising something they couldn't deliver after receiving millions to fulfil this promise (nomen est omen - it really was a "harebrained scheme"), I find they've handled it well enough in the end.

That being said, their decision to portray the use of Steam as some kind of creative decision as opposed to doing it under legal duress is a little off-putting (I know they stated somewhere that they didn't have a choice, that the decision to use DRM was necessitated by the Shadowrun licence - Twitter, was it?)