The thing is, anyone who is virulenty against using Steam wouldn't even have to with this game. You could buy it on Steam, then download the Demo from Taleworlds themselves. Enter the serial number you get on Steam in to the demo you got from Taleworlds and you now have the full game.

Yeah I said that in my last post. Works fine for me so the serials are compatible, that way I could put it on my older PC without Steam clogging up that poor single core on top of the game.
Also about the last comment, Steam and Valve do that sort of thing much more often than any store I know of without regard of whether it's a common practice or not. They're just notorious for sales on dying products is all I meant. The Indie Pack comes to mind, games like Eets and whatnot that are not really fun and no one would buy without a super-sale.

From a business standpoint it makes perfect sense. Your game premieres at a decent price and those who were waiting for it and really wanted to play it, buiy it, Then your game gets a little old and you make a discount so those who wanted to play it but thought the price was too steep, buy it. Then when the sales of the game start to get too low, you really slash the price down so the piople who didn't intend to buy the game in the first place, find the offer so tempting that they end up buying it. Download stores don't have to deal with packaging or anything like that, so it's really a win any way you see it.

Good thing I got it for 5 bucks on D2D. =)
Yeah, and it is a fun game when modded. =)

Um, never mentioned evil in any sense just noted that Steam is notorious for sales of dead or dying games. You see these sales often, rarely there is a sale on a good game. Maybe how I worded things made others get these assumptions?
I like Steam enough, only thing I hate about it is it hogs system resources in background but that's only an issue on my old PC now.

The use of notorious implies fame or recognition for foul or illicit actions.

I would consider predatory business practices somewhat foul.