Another annoyance with Steam - as you point out, wraith - and most other digital distribution platforms: They sell new titles at publisher's RRP. As a matter of fact, on average, digital distribution is turning out more expensive for new books, music or games (and, at first glance, movies if you buy them but I havent really looked). Somehow competition is not happening.
Part of that might be because some game publishers don't want Steam directly competing with the retail channels.
Since Steam handles the activation anyway, it's not really a big revenue loss for them. And it protects places like Amazon and BestBuy, who might otherwise refuse to carry the titles if Steam could regularly undercut them.
The last thing I also think any of the game publishers want is to get locked into one electronic distribution channel. Because once that happens, the distributor can dictate terms to the publishers. You've already seen that happen with music sales through Apple and book sales through Amazon.
So by requiring somebody like Steam to sell at MSRP, it avoids direct competition with the retailers. And by keeping the retailers in the loop, it keeps Steam from getting too powerful.
It's the corporate version of 'win-win' strategy:
Everybody in the food chain wins -
with the possible exception of the
victim end-customer.
But when it comes to DRM, the customer wasn't really a part of any consideration anyway, so no blame!
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