Puzzle Quest 2
You get only the key which must be registered on Steam. And you can't download it from D2D, you must use Steam to download.

Yeah, I've seen some D2D sites do it before. Mostly they don't, because if the title requires a different third party they don't want to sell it at all.

They ended their SteamWorks boycott a while ago. Probably because they decide it was better to throw their moral convictions to the wind in the face of making money (with the risk of losing their customers to their biggest competitor).

Amazon sells Civilization 5 or Empire Total War both of which require Steamworks in a box, but actually the only valuable thing they sell is the Steam key, the disc is just to put in the shelf or to bypass initial downloads.
Its common and the only way to sell games that are integrated in Steams gaming plattform Steamworks (not the shop itself) outside of the Steam shop.
I guess its okay for D2D to do this since it increases price competition a little bit. However only, if the publisher doesn't set the price for all shops (in Europe vertical price bindings are actually not allowed).
Indeed it works: Puzzle Quest 2 is 0.3% cheaper on D2D. :lol: :)

This is really not surprising. I'm just waiting for the day that we start seeing this in retail stores: pick up a game in a box at the store, take it home and open it, all it has is a manual and a card with a Steam key on it. You may laugh, but it is really only a matter of time before we see things like this happening. Some major retailers already do it with music and movies, games can't be too far behind.

Seriously - what ARE you waiting for ? Just pick any Steam-based game from a retail store. The disc is just a worthless bonus.
I don't think he means that he'd like it to happen soon, but rather that he believes that games will appear in retail without discs sooner or later.
I for one, am not looking forward to that, though I agree with you that it's almost true of titles using Steamworks in the retail version.

You missed the Red Orchestra and Killing Floor deals on D2D.

Exactly. Sure, they already have a Steam key included with a disk, but I am saying we are eventually going to stop seeing the disk included and they will just sell us the Steam key... in a box.
Personally, I don't really care either way, I haven't actually bought a physical copy of a game in years. I haven't really counted, but I'm pretty sure that I now "own" more digital copies of games than physical copies.

If you think about it - it's not really a big difference, is it ? Even with a disk you still have to install Steam, its updates and the updates for the game itself.
This reminds me of one of my lecturers, who after an entire semester of talking about books suggested that with all the internets going on, we might soon have library books delivered to our doorsteps, like pizza. I didn't have the heart to tell him what the future, more likely, holds ;).

Yep. It's going to be an intresting experiment, and to see if all these fears that "selling Steamworks games sends your customers to Steam" is bullshit like I suspect it is. Ca';t fault them for not making it obvious, either.

you mean like this?

But then Amazon never boycotted Steamworks titles, nor is in direct competition with Steam.

Like I pointed out when D2D was selling MW2, they obviously love the smell of rolling around naked in $20 bills.

I was just about to say, the first place we'll likely see this is with casual games, but I didn't expect it was already happening. Have you seen those any place other than online?