Just look at the EA forums, especially Command & Conquer 4. They're about as far as way as customer friendly as possible, but they did make some changes to their games, like changing the Avatar and Engineer model in Command & Conquer 4.
What is the use of Steam? It's needlessy complicating things. Piracy gets around it everytime. Just like it gets around other protection. It's all useless. So why bother with it? Yeah, Steam connects you to social networks! Great, I really need that, don't I? If I did, I would've downloaded something. Seeing as I want to play a game, I don't need Steam.