... It would seem that in every industrialized country in the world there are: a) Requirements that cars that use public roads and their drivers meet minimum safety requirements to use those public roads (headlights, taillights, safety belts, licensing etc.) and b) The expectation that the state/municipality will maintain those roads to some standard for safe operation (potholes, stop signs, lane markers, etc.)

The responsibility is shared. Not saying this analogy should necessarily extend to the steam/CDP issue...

Oh and Protoss OP. XDDDDDDD

I didn't read this whole thread to see if someone told this here, but usually, although steam says it's downloading a 9GB file, it doesn't mean it's downloading the whole file...

One good example is with game expansions... They require the base game to play. If you try to install only the expansion it will say the expansion download is, for example, 5 GB. But if you already have the base game installed, it will still say it needs the same 5 GB, but it won't download all of it... at one point it will complete the download at once.

At least this is what happens to me... If in your case it is really downloading the whole file again, it must be some problem...

But did you try waiting a little to see if the download completed? Or did you give up?

In the cases when it doesn't download the file, it usually validates it. One can see that by a download rate that is higher than the download rate available (like a few dozen or hundred MB per second).

Why would anyone buy it from steam, when they could buy it on GOG and get a few free games, plus a DRM free The Witcher 2?

Reasons could be:
1- Auto Patching
2- Cloud Saving
3- Achievements
4- Preferred Digital Distribution vendor
5- They had no interest in any of the free games
6- They don't consider Steam as really a DRM, ie Steam as a DRM is a non issue to them
7- They like to keep their games to as few Digital Distribution vendors as possible
8- They didn't know about GoG version

Yeah, it boggles the mind greatly. I got it from GoG, downloaded the files, copied the files to my 2nd partition and also to my portable harddisk, thinking about burning them to DVDs as well. I love how games are DRM-free.

I had a patch problems with Steam too. Empire Total War had a patch that made the text blurry for certain video cards which made the text unreadable. CA never fixed that problem. And Steam was set to auto-update of patches, so it's either play without patches at all or play with the blurriness. And mine was the CE of Empire Total War and it came with mandatory Steam, so essentially I wasted my CE box.
Sorry, but I always want full control over my games.

Should have read my post to understand why people would choose Steam, then it wouldn't boggle the mind. -.-

I read it, it still boggles the mind.

In what way?

As a whole, I'm pretty ok with Steam, what with the PC Gaming is doing well because of digital distribution namely Steam.
But on a personal level, I avoid Steam when possible unless for buying games I don't really care about, when they have great offers, also for those games that I really want but comes with mandatory Steam.

Guess the freedom to copy installer and game files anywhere I want is vastly more important than any factor you have mentioned. And that people not considering Steam as a DRM is what is mind boggling to me. And I have my fair share of problems with Steam as it is.

It is more of the fact that Steam as a DRM is a non issue. Basically people are not going to fear something that has no basis for it at all. In the past some Digital distribution companies went out of business, but ended up being bought out by other companies, Steam has bought some. When ever these companies have gone down, all their current customers got transferred to the new service with all their games. Steam has about 40% of all PC gaming sales (80% of all Digital Distribution sales), you really think they are going to screw themselves by screwing over their customers?

But like I said, a lot of people just don't have irrational fears about stuff that has never happened and more then likely will never happen until Oct 21, 2011 or Dec 21, 2012. Just like people go out into public with strangers, or go out driving with other people on the roads, or walk on side walk near roads, despite the fact that people have been killed while in the public, or driving on the road, or walking on the side walk and getting hit by a car.

They look at DRM the same way they look at everything else in life, is it possible? Sure, is it likely? No

Well for me, it's not about the fear of them screwing their customers. It's my preference I simply prefer the DRM-free version if given a choice. Something about copying game installers and files on portable harddisks and going virtually anywhere to play the game without connecting to the Internet is win-win for me. Also I'm a control freak, and like 100% control over the game, and patches.
That said, I'm still pretty ok with Steam, it's stuff like Onlive I absolutely cannot stand.

Yes: SOME. Many companies desappeared and I could still play their games. GOG do revive the games for others, it's drm free; not Steam.
When Steam will no longer be, I still would play all my games...