Doesn't GFWL have it's own store?

You can thank those peeps that made the "No Steam = No buy" petition

That was in response to it having GFWL though, I'd certainly have preferred just Steam over just GFWL too. No one wanted both :p

Don't know about other regions, but the PC versions sold here (retail physical copies and Amazon digital copies) do not require Steam and it doesn't look like they can even be optionally added.

Every single digital distribution vendor selling the game has been provided with Steam keys (hence the requirement for the Steam client).
The retail version uses GFWL and GFWL only.

Amazon often has an Steam version and a non-Steam version. Might be worth looking into? They're usually 2 different store fronts.

I think it was awesome, because I could buy it on Amazon.com, due to this.

I just wish they would have taken Steamworks for their netcode.

Valve need to offer Japanese language developer support during JST office hours for that happen apparently. Until they do that, very few, if any, games developed in Japan will use Steamworks as anything other than an after thought.

I wonder why some devs still use that dead and useless platform called GFWL....

Guess what Batman: Arkham City has: Steam, GFWL AND Securom.

DRM for the whole family.

GTA IV trumps everything: Steam, GFWL, SecuROM and Rockstar Social Club.

"Let's see, what can we do to make the game experience better for our customers? I know, let's surround the game with layer upon layer of additional possible points of failure, and make them jump through so many hoops they'll be grateful just to have the game actually launch."

LIke others here my retail copy doesn't use Steam.

Judging from a great success GTA 4 on PC was, I'd say people don't give a slightest fuck about any amount of DRM thrown at them...

Nonsense. My superior retail copy of Arkham City has one DRM layer less (no Steam to speak of).