[DanBC]

A better analogy:

Band wants to release music. Have a sucessful kickstarter and release an exciting first album to backers. Everyone is excited.

Band then signs to a label that won't let people listen to the music without signing in to a social network first, and who will post "Joe Bloggs likes Band!" on your wall, and who only let you listen to the music in their app.

[rubinelli]

The funny thing is, every major game company does exactly that. Want to play this offline, single-player game? Well, let's first create an account in our service, so we can enhance our experience! Wow, you collected your first item! Here's an achievement that will show up on all of your friends' feeds, along with how long you've been playing. Surely you want to announce to the world you spent your last twenty hours playing Lawnmower Simulator 2014? Hey, how about we add a button to your controller to make it even easier to share videos with all our friends?