eireksten
Protective/Organized
Product-Key is fine.
DVD in drive is annoying, but not a real problem. I'll just get the no-DVD hack to play my purchased game without DVD.
On-line registration I prefer to do without since they generally want all sorts of marking info from you along the way.
Always-online is a deal breaker. I'm a single-player anyway.
And yes, I'd consider Steam as a part of DRM and nothing more. They may be unobtrusive, but they don't add anything to the game for me. I have no use for a Steam Account and the associated marketing trap.
You don't have to be always online with Steam. In fact, you can be offline all the time after registration if you want. Why do people keep hinting at that?
About Steam adding to your game. Assuming they didn't use Steamworks (or another similar service), they'd have to develop all these things themselves. Instead they now get to focus on other aspects of the game, like AI, code optimizations, graphics, balancing, and so on. If that's not added value to your game, I don't know what is.