Hate. Hate. Hate, a thousand times hate.
This is my first Steam experience -- I actually bought the disk IN STORE because I wanted to avoid Steam due to horror stories from the Paradox boards (I also play a lot of EU, HOI, etc) but didn't read the box carefully enough.
I've bought through multiple digital distribution channels before - I've got games through Impulse, through the old Stardock precursor to Impulse, through Direct2Drive, through Gamers Gate, and elsewhere. I've had the occasional gripe, but overall -- I prefer digital distribution. Makes PC moves easier, no worries about damaged/lost disks, etc.
Steam's problem is that it's obnoxious -
It reminds me of BJ Novak in one of the early season Office storylines -- meet SteamInfinity! You're buying games, you're talking about the election, all in our virtual paper stor...errr game store!
Guess what - I don't WANT that - and Steam makes it incredibly difficult not have their "community" shoved down your throat.
First and foremost - there's the constant need to be online.... Yes, yes "Play in offline mode!" -- but you have to be ONLINE TO GO OFFLINE!
I'm sure in the college world, which seems to be what Steam caters to, to the exception of all others - I'm sure it's wonderful having an army of network admins ensuring your T3 connection in your dormroom is always up and running. In the real world, though, ISP problems are not uncommon.
I've got a line problem that requires a service call -- noise issues causing dropped packets -- and my ISP can't schedule me till next week. I spent - no joke - 90 minutes last night after work just trying to boot up Civ5. First Steam tells me the network is unavailable -- helpfully pointing me to a website that I can't #$@#!@ get to. Then, it keeps telling me Civ5 is unavailable - with only a "Try again" or "Cancel" option. Finally - after an hour and half of trying every launch mechanism under the sun - I'm able to get a brief connection and launch in offline mode.
That's nothing short of ridiculous. I spent $100 on the disk -- it's sitting in the damn DVD drive, I've dutifully (and painfully) registered it via Steam -- and I should have to suffer through their crap? Nonsense.
...and that's before you even get into the auto-updates (I'm sure that will be great for mods) and the fact that Steam cries worse than any other digital distributor when you try to alter game files.
Civilization is fundamentally a solo play game - and Steam simply is an awful channel for a game that just wants to be left alone.
I've bought the last 5 iterations of OOTP via digital distribution (Vitech, Digital River, and the old Front Office system) -- never had anything close to the frustration I've had with Steam in just a week of using it. They drop a digital license, there's an in-game activation - and I never need to deal with them again... Oh - except when purchasing a new PC - and moving the license was a piece of cake. Old PC died - e-mailed support, they responded with a license release in 5 minutes, and I was up and running on the new PC in another 2 minutes.
I bought EU2, EU3, EU3-NAP, EU3-IN, and EU3-HTTH through Gamers Gate -- it's a beautiful thing. Again, drop a license, then they never bother me again.
I bought HOI2-ARM, as well as HOI3 and HOI3-SF through Direct2Drive (and note - ARM was an expansion to the original that I bought on CD). Yet again, no problems whatsoever.
I bought GalCiv2 and all the expansions through Impulse - a wonderful experience... They even allow auto-rollbacks to previous iterations directly in the interface.
I have no doubt the Gabe Newell fanbois will come out of the woodwork telling me how I'm just whining... whatever. Go play Halo.
Add up all of the digital distribution purchases I've had in the last 5 years -- and I had more anger and frustration in a single week of using Steam than all the rest combined.
Great satire. 
