The game plays great, fantastic I would say. I don't know what you are talking about.
I had max details at 1920x1200 without any major problem. I finally decided to reduce to 1680x1050 and turn off Ambient occlusion because it was causing a small problem while driving, but the game is as fluid as any other game I have played recently.
It's planets better than SR2.
As for GamersGate patches, they are a bit slow in delivering specific patches IF hey are needed. As others said they use normal patches, don't require special ones. Also, for the remote chance there is a need for a patch, an email to them will solve your problem. Their support is a bit slow these days, but they are excellent.

I hope you haven't just now discovered how bad Steam support is. While I have never had to contact them, I have read plenty of hate about support over at the Steam forums. While, I know you usually only see complaints on forums, 3 - 5 business days to receive an answer to a problem is really bad. I've never dealt with a company (b&m/mail order/web) that was so slow in responding.

Yeah well the good news is, I haven't preordered yet. In fact I rarely preorder until the last few hours these days because stunts like this are pulled. But yes, I would rather have this game on Steam due to ease of downloading, patching and backing up (the only things that Steam usually gets right).
Oh no. I've known them to be crap since the very first time I needed to contact them.
Highlights: 6 months of ignoring a ticket I submitted dealing with a broken game and a request for a refund (never got the refund, but the game eventually got fixed a year later) -- also got a free working version of the game directly from the publisher when I approached them about the same issue.
Sending them a list of compromised accounts (and their passwords) which I found on a website set up for phishing -- All I got was a "What to do if your account is hijacked" cut and paste response, clearly showing the person answering the ticket couldn't read.
This incident, which is so mind numbling stupid that I made the topic here. Those are my top three, but I have many more. Only once out of a good 30+ interractions with Valve employees have I ever had an experience which shows them not to be less intelligent than brain dead monkeys.
I forever hope for a far better DD service to spring up which does everything Steam does right, but with so much more better, so I can finally use them instead. GOG are great, but the wait for games is far too long (several years until they fit the "old" part >_<)
I would love a version of GOG that concentrated on new games =/

Everyone would, but the problem is that DRM has very little correlation with Steam or any other online distributor, and everything to do with the publishers...

To be honest, I don't care about the DRM. I already have many games installed which use DRM (and have not had any problems), all I hope for is a site that can persuade publishers to wise up, and offer their games worldwide at the same bloody time for the same bloody price.
Yeah, it's a pipe dream.

Try to get a friend on every major region to gift you games, It helps although it's still not really fair or hassle free. I hear you though, games should be available everywhere, to this day I still don't understand why a publisher would want to NOT make money on a specific country..
As for DRM, I actually do care more about it then regional pricing, while paying a couple of bucks more for games (VAT) is a one time annoyance, and after all, it's just money, DRM makes my gaming experience a nightmare.
I've restrain myself from buying bioshock on D2D because it comes with SecuROM. The one time I installed the demo I had to spend nearly 30 minutes deactivating background software and services to get the game to run. And after uninstalling the demo it still hang around to prevent me from running those applications.
What software I run on my system is my business and I will not tolerate anyone trying to stop me doing so.

They already lost me with the pulled patch / support for Saints Row 2 on PC. Bashing Steam for whatever reason (and I'm sure there's enough around) is one thing, but in favor of Volition? Not going to happen here.

@bansama
Have you tried on Impulse?

It's available in Custom Regions. Japan, apparently, is not custom enough. It's restricted =(

Gifting?

No idea. But the current price tag makes it a little too pricey to attempt for my liking.

I finally gave in and bought Red Faction Guerrilla over GamersGate. Luckily, I had "reserved" a preorder from them a while ago just in case, so even though I bought it yesterday, I still got RF1 and 2 as well. RF1 has proved to be a lot of fun so far, as has RFG (after a 20 hour download +_+).
GamersGate really need to look into a better infrastructure for delivering large files. Still, beats Steam and their insistance that THQ has set the release date to the end of November, despite all other sources, including THQ websites, stating to the contrary.
I also used the trick mentioned by someone else on this forum, and kept the unencrypted setup files. So now I have them pretty much DRM free too (except RFG which still needs GFWL).

Sorry i didnt read all the thread (its late!) but are you complaining about the release date of a game and saying that it is now a lost purchase.
Are you joking me? Please, if you REALLY cant wait however long just torrent it. If you have allready payed for it there shouldent/isnt any moral issues.
Again, sorry if i missed something in my quick glance at everything..

Dude, I am not going to STEAL (ie, PIRATE) a game even if I've paid for it. Theft is still theft. So please, don't even suggest that again. But if you had read the thread, you'd notice that yes, it's a lost purchase for Steam.
But GamersGate ultimately got my money and I got the game on the correct release date.
Sorry if I sound rude, but piracy pisses me right off. And I never condone it.