I had a long drawn out reply being typed out.. then I really started reading the rest of this thread and concluded one simple fact:

I don't give a flying fuck.

Well, I don't actually know what the costs are, and the people who do aren't talking (probably due to contracts), but it seems it's rather low for some developers or indies wouldn't be able to use it (EPIC, as an example, doesn't charge anything for their engine unless you ship over a certain number of units, 50,000 I think, so there's precedent for that kind of thing). Clearly the 30% cut off sales on their site is the lionshare of their income, though (you don't even have to know what Steamworks costs to see that it's orders of magnitude greater) so denying them said money off their storefront is bound to affect them.

Steamworks itself doesn't cost the developer using it a cent. There's even a rumor Steam might take a smaller percentage from the sales made on their own site on games that use Steamworks.

I see no reason to really doubt the part about having no costs so far. The benefits have outweighed the negatives to this point I imagine. Whether you buy at Steam or at another retailer (and thus Steam gets nothing), it is still growing Steam's userbase, making more people aware of the client or get them into using it, and once that has happened at least once, the chances of them making more purchases for Steam increases by a lot.

I do believe it can't stay a beneficial tactic if the majority of their games start becoming Steamworks though, since yes, for Steamworks games it makes more sense to buy them elsewhere, since the main reason people would bother buying them elsewhere is Price, so that's what other retailers lower to make sure they get sales on it.

As difficult of an answer as it may seem, I think this is the only reasonable way. We need to stay aware of DRM and try to make a difference when we CAN... but taking drastic yet futile measures is pointless. It may make us proud but as long as we accomplish nothing and merely torment and tantalize ourselves... our struggle is in vain and we only end up doing harm - to ourselves.

I'm MUCH more for positive action - buy the damn Bundles, support GOG even if it is the more expensive way to go. This way you get to enjoy the games and send SOME message out.

This is why I love GOG. The community continues discussing things intelligently even after the OP has proven themselves to lack any credibility and be an absolute muppet.

amok summed up my thoughts.
Yes I know what can happen with drm. I know that it's possible that I might try to access my steam downloads, and I'll find out that I can't. I've been hearing that for the nearly three years that I've joined steam, but so far it hasn't happened. Though there was one drm free site where that did happen, but I forgot the name of that site

Once again the choice it not really between playing games with DRM and not playing any games at all, even if you play DRM using games and don't mind them too much, heck even if you love Steam, it's not a reason to shrug of the issue completely and not try to make things at least slightly better.

Of course DRM and Steam won't probably disappear any time soon, you can't realistically expect to convince every publishers to stop using DRMs, but it doesn't mean there isn't a "middle option" like having them remove the DRM some months after release which would mean for Steam games having the client becoming optional.

Publishers would still have the piracy/second hand sales "protection" of DRMs, Steam lovers could still be able to use the client if they want to, and those who prefer DRM-free/client-free games would also have it one or two years after release.

The thing is that very often when publishers, or more generally right holders, don't care it doesn't mean they don't care "at all" it simply mean that they don't care "enough", it's a question of R.O.I., is it worth the effort.

But if suddenly the effort is much lower, that instead of just sending a take-down e-mail that may or may not be taken seriously you can much more easily close the whole site or at least make it unavailable to a sizable portion of Internet users, you can be sure that a lot more rights holders will start "caring" a lot more than they do know.

Also there is the second factor : fear.

Look what happened with MU take-down; it might not be the rights holders who do anything but the ISP/hosting providers themselves, for now they don't care because they are mostly "protected", but if that change they might be a lot more zealous than rights holders, they will not care that the cracks or adandonware games are 10-20 years old or that it's just mods or emulators, the only thing they will see is that it's possibly illegal stuff for which they could face legal charges and will delete it without any second thought.

The relative freedom we have for now on the internet exists mainly because of two things, safe harbor and net neutrality, remove both and it will crumble in no time. Without the first ISP/hosting/VPN providers (heck even probably TOR output nodes) will seriously start filtering everything they can and without the second, even if Freenet or other similar network are still available they might end up way too slow to be usable (not that they are really usable right now)

There's an easy way for Steam to coexist with people who hate it (like me).

Make its installation optional on PC games. If you don't want Steam installed or your game tied to their "service", you get a different form of DRM. I didn't really have a problem with the code wheels and journal lookups of yesteryear since they involved the player with a bit extra of the universe they were playing in, like the journal entries for the SSI gold box games. So long as that different DRM doesn't involve phoning home, online activation, account-based limitations, or always-on shenanigans, it would be acceptable.

Even SecuROM can be acceptable in some situations, like say Fallout 3. The DRM was tied to the launcher, not the game executable. If you didn't use the launcher, you never got SecuROM. They even told people that in the official forums, iirc.

(Apologies - I can't draw myself out of a paper bag, so shamelessly stolen from The Church of the Subgenius and changed)

I see the last stand against DRM actually going about like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0UzG-Gc7II

Sorry, the last 15 seconds or so are some douche that has nothing to do with the film (afaik).