Hehe, well, it's true that I don't live and breath video games - because, well, I *work* 10 to 12 hours a day out in the real world to make a living and take care of family and my business. If that's living under a rock, then, yes, I'm guilty as charged.

(But, in fact, I'm actually pretty knowledgeable about the word around me.)

;-)

Steam is not evil (they are just a game vendor) and I've been PC gaming for over twenty five years, thank you very much. You didn't do your due diligence in reading and comprehending what I wrote. I have no issue with Steam. The issue is that I DO read everything very carefully (I'm quite literate) before making any purchase, but the relevant information (namely that the game is not even *stored* on the disc that I purchased) was not provided in any form of print, fine or otherwise. Here is the page that I purchased it from: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CI784K6/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If you can find the fine print that I missed, then I'll happily stand corrected.

"MOST" is the operative word here, the one time I ended up with a game that had a Steam requirement (Front mission Evolved) had NO mention of that requirement until after I had the game case in hand. & in nearly illegibly small print on the back.

Steam may be the "best damn rental service in the world" but in my experience renting truly sucks.

Dear lord, there's not even an online activation requirement written anywhere! And the DVD thing is just misleading - see, what they usually do in this case is to not include a disc at all, they just give you a key to unlock the product on Steam. Usually, when there is a disc, it contains - at the very least - Steam installer and some game files so you don't have to download the whole damn thing.

hmm.... that store page needs serious updating. The minimum they could have is a picture of the back with the small print. How does Amazon work? Is it the seller or Amazon (if they are not the same....)?

So you bought an imported game from a page with literally no info about the requirements and that is doing your due diligence?
On the UK page there are multiple people mentioning how it uses Steam (and is a terrible game). The US download version clearly states the DRM is Steam.
The version also requires Steam. The [url=http://support.bandainamcogames.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/383/0/star-trek-the-video-game---instruction-manual-pc]manual on Namco's site also mentions Steam, it is also a crappy manual.
Apparently in the US it's only available in digital form, that should also have been a clue.
You took a risk by buying a game without doing research and it didn't work out, that's just how it works with PCs these days. Certain games don't work with certain video cards, certain games can only be activated twice, certain games need you to be online all the time, and so on and so on.

OT and not to kick a man when he's down, but I technically work 24 hours a day in the real world, I do live and breath video games, and I definitely live under a rock. :D

DRM and all the copy protections are not made for the benefit of customers, they are developed and implemented for the retailers.

I just bought the Star Wars Box-Set and it has a BD+ encryption to prevent easy playback on a computer or copying of the data. They even warned on Amazon, you might need to upgrade the firmware on players to decrypt the movie.

You pay for the development of these punishments with every bought copy of games/movies or the players which have the keys for decryption.

So you play PC games for over 25 years, but you never heard of Steam before?
Hard to believe, actually.

But, apart from that:

One question - since you play PC games for so long and you -obviously- prefer disc-versions AND you know how and where to find the necessary -fine printed- info on the boxes (aka: the BACKSIDE of said boxes), ...then why did you purchase a boxed game from a store, where neither the store's page, nor the product's picture gave you ANY readable information (necessary PC specs, DRM used)?

I mean, there is no info at all regarding anything about that game on that storepage.
How could you be sure, the game will run on your machine?

As someone who "reads everything BEFORE making ANY purchase", I'd say you had very little to read here, to base your buying decision on.

Don't you think so?

One other question: what kind of games did you play in the last 25 years? No recent (meaning published within the last decade) titles, I guess?

Because, if you had played some modern games - you inevitably would have stumbled over a few games, which have a little sentence on the back of their boxes: "Internet Connection & Steam account required to activate."

Now, if I was you (allegedly unaware of Steam - in 2014!, yeah.) and I would read a sentence like that on a box of a game...I would inform myself, what "this Steam-thing" is, before I'd buy anything connected to it.

Aaand - after that, I would presume, that more games might be connected with it.

Just to make that clear: I'm not talking about your Star Trek game, here - but you sure stood in some brick and mortar shop, holding some gameboxes in your hands, in the last 10 years, didn't you?

And in case you do all your shopping online - this really can't be the first game with Steam requirement!

Honestly - I'm not sure, if you're serious or trolling.

Totally willing to believe that Steam will wave its magic wand and make every game publisher and developer in the business roll over whenever they want. Totally. Honest.
The companies won't tell the fans to go fuck themselves for being dumb enough to buy rentals at purchase price, and Valve will totally step up and not whip out a mountain of legal bullshit as a way to shut down people screaming when their libraries get wiped out. Granted, people might get some of their things back by way of a PR move "Why yes, we truly are a company that cares about its customers. Just look at our generosity as we ALLOW you to play the games you thought you had purchased from us.", but I kinda doubt that anyone would get back everything if Steam goes down. If anything, I imagine the reverse would be true - Steam being dead, the rental arrangement being over, so bye-bye games. With so many companies that are so full of money grubbing assholes that don't even pretend to give a damn about the people keeping them in business? They would happily take people's games away, then tell them to rebuy on whatever new Origin/Uplay-type piece of shit each company manages to come up with.
The whole system-wide Steam unlock is a very bad fantasy.

Just... No. It doesn't matter, the Amazon page is seriously misleading and if gaming market wants to keep some customer trust, it needs proper, transparent information on display, especially from big retailers like Amazon. It's not hscott2hughes's fault that the store page is rubbish.

Also on the technical level. There most probably isn't any single kill-switch which Valve just has to flip in order to make thousands of Steam games Steam-free on a short notice. No, it would most probably mean each and every Steam game would have to be modified individually. And it would probably have to be the developer of each game who'd have to do that, not Valve. Good luck trying to do that also for all those old games which are discontinued on Steam (ie. not sold anymore, but people who bought them earlier still have them in their Steam library).

If only people used some common sense, they'd understand the myth about "Valve promised to unlock all Steam games in case the Steam servers ever go down" doesn't make any sense at all, at any level.

Although there's no proof that the statement is a true one, why do people always seem to think every game needs to get changed for what they said to work? Couldn't they just change the client to not require callbacks to Valve servers anymore? If they made that statement I'm pretty sure they're thinking along those lines, rather than changing all the games.

I'm a gamer. I love gaming. I use GOG and Steam and I buy/rent 95.5% of my games from them. The majority of my games are thru GOG. I buy or rent my games when they are on sale due to budget issues. I figure that I'll enjoy my games as long as my OS accepts them...and then I'll probably have to buy a new desktop or laptop which I did since my old one died a torturous slow death from the Blue Screen Syndrome . With technology constantly advancing, my games will be playable or not and by then, there will be new games to enjoy which will have better graphics, gameplay, etc. I seldom re-play a game. I have some on disc and I enjoyed them, but will not re-play them, so they sit on a shelf.

I'm really not concerned whether I own or am renting my game. If a company goes out of business (such as Steam), they will do what is in their best interests. I don't fool myself into believing that I am a priority. So I'll be moving on to new games. I do feel badly that OP got a bad deal on his disc from Amazon as it was very unlikely he could read any teeny tiny print on it over the internet. Now I'll be cautious re Amazon discs.

That's an aspect I hadn't even considered, but you're absolutely right. For a comparison, the whole Games for Windows Live thing comes to mind. Steam is still selling games that are linked to a DRM setup that's going offline in a couple months, and the companies involved haven't even gotten their games updated. And that's just a few dozen games, let alone thousands.
If Steam goes down, it'll be an absolute clusterfuck of pissed off customers and companies that aren't about to call it a day and let all those items just go out into the ether. The industry's a bit mistrustful that way. And since we're all the enemy? (even when paying them?) There's no way on this earth that they will take the time to alter all the games to work without Steam. Alternate options - stripping them of DRM (undoubtedly time and money consuming, and remember, we're all thieving scum to them so they can't trust us), or building new DRM to shove into the games (also time/money consuming and unlikely since they want to keep the money people have spent, not burn it on revamping old projects).
The scenario I see is a whole lot of people's accounts getting very empty, very fast. From there, it'd be a year or two (at least) of people impotently raging over the setup they agreed to.