Quote Originally Posted by m3eansean View Post
The short answer is no, they can't. In order to get the privilege to sell the game on the Steam platform, they (SE) have to abide by Valve's licensing rules. Steam is considered it's own platform on the PC and is the primary reason this is done is sales. Valve knows how many thousands and thousands of players use their product daily and sold the idea to SE for a cut off the top (how it always works). SE is just as bound as we the players are due to contract licensing, almost without a doubt. All Steam games are this way. Most users are unaware, since they bury in the bottom of their end-user license agreement. But technically, every Steam user, accepted and acknowledged this restriction upon setting up their Steam account.
It still stands though that you should be able to link a standard PC license as a separate platform just like you can with the Sony consoles. Sony has some very screwy licensing going on there as well--and yet you can link your character data (which is technically SE's property and not yours or Valve's) to those other platforms. There should be a remedy for this scenario as well. Your Steam license would still be viable. Just like with the consoles, the standard Windows license would be in parallel and actually installed in a separate directory, using it's standalone launcher to update, and all that other good stuff. It simply should be licensed just like the other platforms.