I agree it could be a lot worse, but, that's not going to change my mind about buying it. I understand you don't mind. I dunno. It's all somewhat arbitrary I guess.
Half my problem is the business side -- I know this only happens because Steam wants to cheat and grab as many customers as possible. It's not good for competition.

Well. the thing is that SecuROM only protected the launcher in Fallout3 so you could completely bypass it after the initial activation. GFWL wasn't necessary to play the game offline and the DLC could be bought without it or in the case of the GOTY edition it came with the disc. On the other hand, a game registered with Steam will remain being tied to that account forever and require Internet connection all the time unless you try to use their buggy offline mode.
If more games are released with Steamworks only then they will only be sold through Steam or retail because the competition will refuse to sell them. If there is no competition the buyer will suffer the consequences always.
Anyway, Steam won't stop me from playing the game but it will delay my purchase until the price tag reflects the value it subtracts from the game. A good price would be around $5, $10 tops.

You really think that PC gamers can be trusted without some form of DRM?

Way better than GFWL crap.

See: all recent EA games, Capcom games, Stardock games, The Witcher (1.5m copies sold with a disk check), etc. Piracy isn't much relevant to DRM. Pirates pirate anyway, and you get more honest people buying without DRM. Incentivizing honest people and pirates with free stuff works, and of course building proper PC versions. GOG/CD Projekt knows this. It's why you're here. :P

I said nothing about DRM in my original post. Steam is simply an example of a business model to which I am fundamentally opposed in principle.

Steam owns end of story.

Well it's bad news for all of us who don't use steam. I for one will never ever use steam store nor buy anything contaminated with steamworks. It's really shame steam user base has grown large enough to make it possible for devs/distributors to ignore the rest of the gaming community.

I'm half sure most of the reason for this is DRM...I wish they'd just come out and say it. Cause I totally understand it as an attractive form of DRM. I'd never use it in their position but I could understand it at least. Getting real sick of all the bullshit.

Yes, for the first time you are right or not? :P

I would love to see if all of this rings true when digital downloads are finally tracked as a part of total PC game sales. Then we could finally get a picture of the trend, and see if there really hasn't been any change since the onset of DRM, or if DRM has in fact improved the total sale numbers.
It's just my opinion, but I don't trust PC gamers to buy things honestly. No DRM is perfect, sure. But Steam's DRM is effective enough to deter a lot of the piracy, offers a very large platform of distribution for otherwise-unknown indie/small-market developers, and is only now considered "unforgiving" when the truly poor options have gone by the wayside (see EA).
The regional pricing and limiting on Steam is BS. That's a legitimate gripe. But I have no complaints about the DRM.

That's fair.

Now they do, sadly, but the manual(s) for Baldur's Gate series, as an example, was rather epic; a 2nd edition D&D game could just about be run from the info in the game boxes alone. I too like to have a physical manual though, even if it does suck. It gives me something to read while the game installs, and also something to reference, if required, without having to window out of the game.
As for the being another Steam based game... bleh. However, if this game is actually any good, it might actually force me to get a Steam account. By "good" i mean something better than a 6 on a scale where Fallout 3 is a "0" and Fallout 1/2 is a "10". Before anyone yells at me for bashing Fallout 3, this is a RELATIVE scale. I still think Fallout 3 was pretty good, however New Vegas would have to be closer to a Fallout 1/2 quality if they expect me to install Steam on my machine.

For the record, I'd be buying from GOG.com even if they had some online client I had to log into in order to prove that I paid for it.