Back in my more involved gaming days, Steam was a catastrophe for PC gaming. Other than picking up a game at a good price and automatically getting game patches from Steam, there was really nothing great about it. They had virtually no support. Your best bet was the forums. Throttled downloads were really fun too. Especially when you download a 5-gig game pack and have to sit there and resume your download every 5 minutes. Constant startup issues. I was patiently waiting for Battlefield 3 and was delighted to find out that EA decided to ditch Steam for this release, however their own Origin platform wasn't much better. Honestly, If i had to pick between slightly higher prices at the stores and Steam - i'd pick the stores. With app stores rolling in all over different platforms i'm afraid to say there is going to be very little room for Steam and this is probably a good thing. I'd rather see a good remake of Counter Strike and Half Life from Valve, than a new gaming platform.