You really haven't been paying attention. Back then, very few people honestly thought that civ5 would require steam to run. If you did, you would be told, "don't worry, there's no evidence that civ5 will require steam, so therefore it will not require steam". Then came the announcement that civ5 would require steam. I admit, I was among the people saying don't worry. But I learned my lesson then: even if there is no evidence for something, does not mean it won't happen. Now it's the exact same story all over again.
Paying attention to what? The fact that there were always 2 sides before the discussion came up regardless of whether Steam was going to be there or not? Or that the majority seems to be OK with Steam and that the minority is speaking out against it according to the statistically inaccurate polls due to polling bias? Anyways all that doesn't matter now.
What matters is that there are people against steam, and for steam. Just like there are people against DLC and for DLC. It's not the exact same story. It has the potential to be the exact same. If it were, it'd be like this: "Civ5 will offer DLC." End of story. Just like "Civ5 will require Steam." From those 4 words a huge nuclear explosion of posts will be born. But it wouldnt get any further than the discussion here we are having right now. Will DLC conflict with modding. We don't know yet. Will DLC cost money or not? We don't know yet. Sure we can assume DLC costs money because 80% of it out there does these days. Sure we can assume Civ5 has DLC because 40% games has it these days. but then again, these are not 100% guarantees.
@tom2050: Like many have pointed out, its all about the money. iPad is about the money. Its not about revolutionizing the computing industry no matter how many people say it to believe it. That new video card is all about the money. When everything entertainment is about money, we need to talk about the other things. Otherwise, like I've said before, this entire discussion is moot because it's been decided and we don't have that information so we cannot assume the details. Speculation generally leads down the worst possible scenario.