This argument is tired. First of all, you are exactly trying to justify the act. You started right off by justifying it by the fact that you had limited income.
Second, whether the free sampling leads to future purchases or not is not relevant. It's not up to you whether that free sample should be offered. It's up to the developer/publisher. It's up to them to do the CBA and determine which makes more financial sense.
Finally, Castles was a great game. I played the crap out of it back in the day. I'm not positive, but it's very likely I didn't pay for my copy. Back then, I worked with a guy who used to give me a lot of his game disks and manuals to copy. Back in the day it was very easy and cheap to photocopy manuals when you worked in an office.
That's right, I used to steal games all the time. I don't try to justify it, it was wrong then, and it's wrong now.
I recently purchased Castles1/2 from GOG, but haven't played them much yet. I'm actually playing Lords of the Realm 2 these days ...
So you try to make people feel guilty for doing something in their childhoods that you did well into your adult years? And not even due to monetary contraints but sheer practicality? Sounds like some pretty hypocritical logic to me. Like one of those 40 year old addicts that finds religion and now tries to force it upon everyone they know. Those with a guilty conscience make for great fanatics.
Internet problems aside, there are much more reasons to not want Steam, I personally despise having that damn program on all day, it's a drain on your PC (albeit a minor one), clutters up the taskbar and I really like closing off a game and not having to see a commercial for a game I already knew about or have zero interest in.
Maybe I just have personal issues with commercials, I'm the sort of person who either zaps away or mutes the TV whenever commercials start, but if you buy yourself a new car I imagine people would be pretty godamn pissed if whenever they want to get out of the car a Coca Cola commercial would start playing, locking your doors until you press a certain button.
Paradox Interactive, a studio that cares an awful lot about their fans opinion, considering they released an expansion purely based on a forum poll, had a poll on their forums before Crusader Kings 2 was released whether or not they should have DRM on their new game, and this is a poll for paying customers only, although they might always have had minimal DRM, voting in these polls requires a simple but fairly foolproof unique game id verification system.
The overwhelming majority of paying customers did not want any DRM, having also pirated games in less affluent times, I will even go as far as to say DRM impedes paying customers more then pirates, forcing all kinds of extra verification actions which are often times removed for pirates, not to mention Ubisofts whole Stardock scandal that actually did PHYSICAL HARM to certain PC's, pirates and paying customers alike.
At the end of the day Paradox decided not to implement any real DRM, and CK2 became their most succesful game, releasing on both physical copies as well as Steam (a game that was actually meant as a sort of test for their new engine), draw whatever conclusion out of that that you want, but I think it basically proves that adding DRM does not actually increase sales.
Also, taking caution from the mod warning, let me make clear that this is by no means a endorsement of piracy, just an attack on the draconian methods companies try to use to fight it that hurt their paying customers more then their real enemies.
Please feel free to comment and vote on the Pirate Issue over in "Ideas and Suggestions!" 
