With respect the analogy was poorly chosen. Guns kill people, get rid of guns and people will still kill people but less often. One problem sorted - next on the agenda; knife crime. But it stil does not equate to what Steam and pblishers have as a relationship.
Anyway, if publishers did not use Steam they'd use a more expensive distribution method and have to istall other types of copy protection instead of the proprietory Steam functions, incurring more costs and lessenig profits.
It has nowt to do with you, me, their morals, their original plans, your expectations because of their history; it is purely about maximising return for a product. Do it by online means and the margins become greater than other conventional means.
There are no obligations or considerations other than profit. If you believe otherwise you have not got the faintest idea what this business is about.
You are still stuck in this, why, how, how dare they, steam is bad, ea is bad, we've been abandoned bollocks, steam has bullied x publisher bullshit etc etc and all the other rumour control rubbish and speculation.
It's a new age of online distribution to increase income and you're sounding like old hippies bitching about how good it used to be. Move on, the world is moving ahead and you're treading water.

I agree that Valve/Steam is out there to make money first and foremost, with all other considerations very much secondary (including its customers).
However, although the world may be moving, surely we should try and move it in a beneficial way for the customer?
I also don't mind being called an old hippy (although I'm not old!).

See that's the thing though, these companies looking to increase income need to listen to their customers.
Stardock is coming across as trying to compromise with both sides by offering content without built-in DRM and lately by attempting to allow resale of digital downloads. They also don't require you to be online as you play your games. That last point is HUGE for people with bad connections or on the go. They likely built that feature list by being gamers themselves and by listening to what gamers didn't like about Steam.
Blizzard is offering (although they seem to be warning about a fee in their latest EULA) resale rights for digital purchases and others are likely to pay more attention to this as time goes by.
GoG.com is also filling the demand for DRM free titles. While their current selection isn't the latest titles on the shelf, we knew that when we came to this site.
My point that I'm trying to make (in a meandering sort of way) is that customer opinion counts and that people should realize that it really does matter what we decide. If we decide a company should fail, we have the ability to see that happen. The same goes for the ones we want to succeed. Vote with your wallet and let your opinion be heard.
As for me, I'll continue buying here and will watch Stardock/Impulse to see where they go. They've at least shown they're willing to listen.

Let me preface this post by saying that the following is not a position I personally hold, and as such I'll be limiting it to fairly general concepts and also not defending the position if anyone decides to take issue with it.
On the issue of unfair business practices, it naturally varies quite a bit from person to person on what is considered "unfair", but in a general sense it often comes down to the disparity in bargaining positions between large companies and individual consumers. As the companies have a strong bargaining position they can dictate terms more easily, especially in the monopoly situation that copyright creates (with respect to individual works). When people feel that a company is using its stronger position to do things like, say, gouge consumers or do an end-run around what have traditionally been consumer rights, then some might consider this to be unfair business practices.
With regards to anti-competitive practices, Aliasalpha already nailed this one in respect to the bundling of physical copies with Steam. Bundling of products and services has even been held by courts to be anti-competitive under certain conditions (for example, MS has been facing quite a bit of heat from the EU over the bundling of IE with Windows). Now, the linking of physical copies of games to Steam doesn't even come close to meeting any legal standard of anti-competitive practices, but some people might still consider this to meet their own standard for what is anti-competitive.
Again, I'd like to re-emphasize that these are not positions that I personally hold nor will I be posting anything in defense of them, so everyone should keep this in mind before posting any lengthy rebuttal. Unless you enjoy doing such, in which case carry on.

So it's unfair business practices depending on the side of the fence you sit on and it's anti-competetive.well..it would be if someone were to challenge it?
For God sake. You're making up your own headlines just so you have something to moan about!!
The unfair business practices - You're inferring that Steam is bullying or making it hard for smaller dev's to distribute?
You're filling you own head with contrived, unproven crap and guesswork. You're guessing that smaller developers cannot get what they want out of a deal with Valve? With no proof, nothing to go on, you guess that small scale dev's have nothing to bargain with when negotiating distributio by steam. That really is quite ridiculous.
Anti-competetive - You're saying that Steam might mean that physical copies of products might not be possible so may, although may not be anti-competetitive. This is your supposition. The dev's or distributors are approaching Steam themselves and asking them to make a contract to distribute. So there is no monopoly as they are chosing their own distribution method.
What's wrong with you? You're making up your own headlines here all of which is pure guesswork and believing in them then quoting as tentative facts! You should be ashamed of yourself.

Valve mos certainly offered them chance to release game worldwide including japan. Only sega is to be blamed for not agreeing to that.
I beg to differ. We have no firm proof whether they did or did not. But we do have proof that Valve has artifically restricted at least one title. We also have them consistently falsely advertising games as being available worldwide when they aren't.
In the case of the former, Valve did not release Saints Row 2 to certain areas when they should have, choosing instead to keep them restricted until the point where the developer had to keep reminding them that should be sold in said regions. Took Valve around 2 weeks to finally sort that one out.
The same thing happened with DOW2. It wasn't until the developers were made aware of the situation that the game finally saw release in a few regions.
As for the later point, just look at the release notes for Stormwise:
The next-gen RTS, Stormrise is now available on Steam for customers in North America and coming later this week to the rest of the world.
It's already been confirmed that it will not be released in either China, Japan, or South Korea. So, is that false advertising (yet again on Valve's part) or is this part of the world no longer a part of the world?
The simple point is, Valve are no where near as innocent as their faithful followers assume them to be.
I'm not even going to touch the Jack Thompson/GTA comparison as it's tenous and assanine at best.
With no proof, nothing to go on, you guess that small scale dev's have nothing to bargain with when negotiating distributio by steam.
It's no secret that valve does turn away indie developers without even trying to talk to them (such as Positech), or they just outright refuse others (Mode 7).
You can get more information via:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/determinance/index.html

Maybe their games just suck? I took a look at one or two of them from those devs on the petition and they were barely interesting.
BTW - I'm curious; why don't you use the quote function and instead just bold the copied text from other posts?

Just out of curiosity, who was your post directed towards? As I explicitly stated (twice) that I did not personally hold those positions I presented I assume it wasn't directed at me, and thus far no one in this thread has explicitly expressed those positions either. I could understand if you were just refuting the position as an enjoyable intellectual exercise, although your post seemed a bit too emotionally charged and accusatory for that.

heh bansama.
Please don't make stuff up.
Saints Row II suffered few problems which delayed the launch. You can blame valve for that but you cannot say the restricted the game on purpose.
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/56621
http://www.steamfriends.com/news/3745/update-saints-row-2-steam-edition-delayed-again
@your comment about DOW2. It seems that I am unable to find anything about delayed launch. the game did appear on schedule from what I know. Plz provide some info to what you are referring.
and i won't comment on stormrise. what false advertising has to do with regional restriction i don't know.
and yeah. Valve can refuse games to be published via steam. Same thing did gog.(there is a thread about it) what is your point? They have a right to do so.
I wonder: why are you so eager to blame steam, you don't listen to arguments, take things from out of context (saint's row argument) and you don't want to even acknowledge the possibility that sega can be blamed for it. You just blindly say that it is valve's fault.
My jack thompson comment was silly. but it describes you perfectly. Same line of reasoning.
Valve can be blamed for many things. Their fock up with dollar to euro price change, server crashes, slow connection speed, and yes probably false advertising.
But you cannot blame the for regional restriction and high prices. These two things are up to publisher to decide. It was stated by everyone millions of times by various parties.
Why you cannot understand that is just beyond me.

Maybe their games just suck?
And Iron Man, The Golden Compass, and Eternity's Child, don't?
Saints Row II suffered few problems which delayed the launch. You can blame valve for that but you cannot say the restricted the game on purpose.
Actually, yes I can due to personal correspondance with the developers. The game was supposed to be released on Janurary 30th in Japan according to the documentation they sent to Valve.
Contacting Valve support on this yeilded the "this game is not available in your region, region restrictions are specified by the publisher/dev., etc."
Volition had to get in touch with Valve and remind them that it was supposed to be released. You can find the public side of the discussion here: http://community.saintsrow.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=26838
It seems that I am unable to find anything about delayed launch.
You wouldn't now would you. Because as far as the publisher/dev was concerned the game was releasing on schedule. Valve however, chose not to abide by their schedule. The same thing happened with the European retail release of The Last Remnant. Valve didn't unlock authentication for that until a few days later.
And again, the majority of my contact with the devs/publishers was via email and I don't make it a habit to publish that online.
and i won't comment on stormrise. what false advertising has to do with regional restriction i don't know.
Not being smart or anything, but do you understand the meaning of "coming later this week to the rest of the world" obviously, if a game is restricted, it isn't coming to the rest of the world. It's only coming to some of the world. That's false advertising.
As for the pricing it has been stated by several developers that Valve set the pricing for their products. And as the entire thing is under NDA and determined on a case by case basis NO ONE except Valve actually knows the real score in regards to who is setting the pricing. (Although again, developers have confirmed that Valve arbritarily set the Euro pricing for their products). And if they did it for Euro pricing, what proof do we have that they haven't done it for dollar pricing per region? None.
BTW - I'm curious; why don't you use the quote function and instead just bold the copied text from other posts?
Because I hate the way quote functions ladder the replies and sometimes I just can't be bothered to edit out the previous quotes or cut the wall of text that results when I only want to respond to one small part of the post. Bolding it is far faster and wastes less screen space =) Its also easier to read than the smaller quoted text.

Also the quoting system on here tends to break easily.

That it does. Which is a bit of shame as at least it isn't as bad as VBulletin style of quoting.

@Saints row. hehe. Valve f***s up once again :) But it doesn't change the fact that they are not the people who are responsible whether the game is released in that country which makes 75% of world's weirdest shit.
It was publisher who decided that saints row will be available on steam in japan. and it was sega who decided that japan is a big NO for empire.
false advertising, server crashes, euro to usd converter, forgetting to activate the game.
that are all valid points against the steam bansama.
but it has nothing to do with what I try to say here.
You said that it is valve's fault that empire is not on steam (or other games). And that statement is simply wrong. and this is the only thing I am targeting. I am not defending steam and valve from accusations of false advertising, being forgetful, of fraging up activation etc.
I don't know whether I can be any clearer or what i have to do to make you understand that.

You're misinterpreting what I've said. I've not said it's Valve's fault that Empire isn't sold over Steam in Japan, but they are guilty of effectively providing a means to make it impossible to use an import copy of the game. That's not SEGA's doing. They didn't code the system. Valve did.
Now, the other point I makes is that Valve go around stating how such restrictions are wrong, yet even saying that to everyone they then go and create a system that is in direct opposition to their public stance. Again, they are certainly guilty of that.
How much clearer do you need it? Or do you think that SEGA and all other Steamworks using publishers dropped in on the Valve offices with gravity guns and warnings that they'd throw toilet seats at heads if such a system wasn't coded?
Either way, this is the last I'm saying on the matter as we're just going to keep dancing in circles now. We just need to agree that we are going to disagree in regards to this subject and let it lie.

Actually I've thought about this myself. This could work, but the game would have to be designed from the start to use a physical reference manual to play the game. Basically, all the in-game reference materials are stripped out of the game such as maps, tables, lists and enemy stats and such and placed in the manual. The game could be played without the manual, but it be near impossible to do anything without the insider info the manual provides. If the manual is big enough, it won't be worth the effort to scan every page, and players won't want the expense of printing it out either. However, if this caught on, games would be sold as a book with the DVD/CD in the back cover. It could work if disigned properly and used with the game genres where scanning through a book to help solve something would be fun.