I've only ever played the game offline, and I love it that way.

No, it just got spread all over gaming threads

It essentially boils down to blaming Impulse for actually being on the ball and dealing with problems and praising Steam for barely having a clue what goes on with its accounts.
Now, while I can see advantages in using comparatively lax services, I don't pretend it's some benevolent quality of theirs.

No, I'm dissing Stardock because they're punishing me for doing nothing wrong, whereas Valve is willing to eat the cost of a mistake.
Did Valve take back the 13 cent copies of that one mini-golf game that they sold? No. Impulse has screwed me over more than Steam has.
Edit: It's akin to getting something in a store for a mispriced item. It's their fault for marking it incorrectly, I shouldn't be punished for something they (or their associates) have done.

How are they being unfair? you shouldn't have gotten the game, but you got it anyway, so they disabled the key. You're lucky they didn't disable the .exe and leave you with gigabytes of hard drive space unusable. You can still play the game offline.
If you want to be upset with anyone, but upset with that shady website that gave you the key for not fulfilling their promise.
EDIT:
it's not akin to buying a mispriced item, because a mispriced item is an actual thing, while this is digital distribution.
You can't steal the game, you just make a copy of it.

Whether or not you think it was fair that they took it away from me, I was merely pointing out in the original post that it was the only difference in service I have had between Impulse and Steam, and that regardless of it, I will still buy at the cheaper DD site.
Anyways, your "actual thing" argument makes no sense, as it would be MORE logical to be able to take back an actual item than a digital copy, as having another copy out in the wild doesn't cost them anything.

No, it isn't the same. If something's advertised for a certain price, e.g. the game for 13 cents, or EA's recent checkout error that allowed 3 games to be sold for £0, then you can justify it. But do you live in Poland? Did you buy the magazine? Did Impulse come out and say hey world, if you go to this other site you can get our game for free?
Also, Stardock are the sole publishers of Sins so getting it in that way affected them directly - in terms of profit and bandwidth. It's their figurehead game, and I'm sure if something similar with Left 4 Dead 2 occurred, Steam would be deactivating people's game like a shot.

Did Stardock enter in a contract in which they allowed the Polish magazine to give out CD keys? Yes. Did the Polish site say that you had to be Polish or a subscriber to the magazine to get a CD key? No. It just said that you needed to log in. I did nothing wrong, nor did anyone else who got a CD key. If people from outside Poland getting CD keys was a big deal for them, they would have done something about it before the THIRD time that it had happened.
It's easier when you have a game that you own completely being given away - you can eat the losses yourself, you don't have to pay back a third party for the losses incurred. If CS:S was being given away in a magazine with Valve's consent, I can honestly say that I don't think Valve would remove it from people's accounts.
Edit: I also find the fact that you're okay with the gaming of EA's online store to be fine, but not what you consider the gaming of Impulse to be fine to be more than a bit hypocritical.

I know it makes no sense, I did that intentionally.

Ah, sorry, my bad.

Should DRM discussion be part of a thread about a game...yes, A PART. The problem is that too often, people want to discuss a game and are completely drowned out by BLAH BLAH BLAH about whatever form of DRM it's using. If people could be bothered not to arrogantly dominate a game discussion with the same comments they may as well have copy/pasted from 7 other threads about DRM, a thread like this wouldn't need to be here.

Ummm... Which idea do you think came up first:
"We'll make old games easily accessible again" or "We'll make a distribution platform without DRM" ? Also, precisely as Crassmaster said: Discussion about game is a discussion about game. Yes, people CAN talk about DRM of said game there, but they should limit themselves to saying "I won't be buying/playing it because of copy protection scheme" - talking about copy protection ITSELF is completely off-topic. And - newsflash - these forums are pretty much moderated by community, and I think most of long-time forum users are irritated by this behaviour (or have already left forums because of it)

I was hoping to avoid commenting in this nice big batch of whining (since I actually agree that some of the anti-Steam sentimentality is a bit out of hand), but I do need to comment here, since this is a topic that I generally find to be hilarious:
What is off topic? According to comments like that, anything which isn't in the topic title itself. Because that is essentially what you are saying. We are only ALLOWED to use a generic stock response?
Let's use an example: I am discussing the latest issue of X-Factor with a few friends. We start off by squealing like little girls because Layla is still alive. Next thing you know, we are discussing the X-Books in general. Then, somebody mentions Deadpool, because he (thinks he) is a mutant, thus making his title an X-Book. Then we get into a discussion about Canadian superheroes, and we almost always end up laughing at how US Agent led Omega Flight (Canada's super-team).
The conversation perfectly flows between those (happens quite often, even with large groups of people). Maybe the next time we talk, we might shift to the lack of Noir comics, talk about Marvel Noir (or DC's John Constantine) and start commenting on something else.
But, that is "off topic", according to you.
But I digress.
In short, I always felt that discussion forums and message boards were about discussing things, not following a strict set of rules about what we can and cannot say. If that is the point, why have a general discussion board at all? Hell, why have any boards. Why not just have a bunch of strict topics set up so that nobody can communicate at all? If you want to talk about how CoD4 handled melee versus how CoD1 handled multiplayer, you need to go find the appropriate topic.
Seriously, I understand that you are annoyed. But whining like this doesn't solve anything.
You know the best way to not deal with posts about Steam/Impulse/DRM/whatever? DOn't respond to them. If you don't like a bit of conversation, don't respond to it. Don't do garbage like "Oh my god, don't talk about that. That is bad". Just don't respond. If enough people feel the same way as you, the branch of conversation will die. THAT is community moderation. You telling people what they can and cannot say is NOT community moderation.

Don't you go putting words in my mouth!