Sensible publishers don't see piracy as the huge problem others have made it out to be. More often than not, piracy is just the scapegoat for low sales on a shittily optimized game and/or console port and/or shitty game. It's a problem, just not something worth running to Steam for (in my opinion). This is why Ubisoft for example has gone insane while Stardock, BioWare, Blizzard, DICE, etc. are being reasonable and doing just fine (great, even).

If I couldn't be bothered for a free copy of Portal, then I can't be bothered for this, either.
It's a shame that there are people, including on this board, who will rake me without hesitation for my decision not to purchase games from Steam. I'm entirely within my rights to choose with whom I do business.

It's a legitimate argument and a perfectly reasonable point of view. But until the digital sales are included with overall software sales when they are posted, it's hard to make the argument of how much impact that piracy has actually had, and whether or not DRM has made a difference. I choose to believe that DRM makes a significant difference, but I'll just have to wait for when digital sales are tracked equally to see if the numbers support that.

Yeah. Well, I'm basing each of those examples on decisions, interviews, comments and results from employees at those companies. Stardock is always happy with its PC sales, encourages the modding community, builds PC exclusives, etc. BioWare has said Dragon Age "makes a very good case for the single player PC RPG which seem to have waned in recent years" (and both that and Mass Effect series are great and optimized on PC), Blizzard needs no explanation, and DICE has always had great sucess with Battlefield on PC. Bad Company 2 in my opinion is a great PC version and last I checked outsold console versions (versus either platform, not combined).
Unfortunately I don't think we'll be seeing digital figures for a long time.

So... more of the same then, game play wise. No huge surprise there. It does look like they may have made the run and gun style a feasible alternative to VATS, which might be good. However, I am more interested in the story; that is what will determine if I think the game is any good. Fallout 3 had a pretty weak story, imho, but at least it was fun to explore the capital wasteland and do interesting (or at least quirky) side quests.
Thanks for the link. :)

The only thing steam is effective at as far as preventing so called "Piracy" is preventing leaks and when the game is first release for a couple of days and only if the steam client hasn't been updated along with the game and only if the game doesn't use 3rd party DRM along with the game. If not then any steam emulator will run the games just fine.
A steam emulator or standalone steam games are just a google away. Your grandma could do so if she wished.
I'll be buying this game if it's any good but I'll be making damn sure I can install it and play it offline any time I want without having to rely on steam which always disappoints in this area.

But when we're talking about DRM, none of those games that have sold well were DRM-free by any stretch of the means, and they are also all available via Steam as well.
If you're against Steam because of the sales model (particularly the regional treatment) then I have no argument with you there. I'm just not sure I follow when it comes to their approach to DRM...

From the way a lot of people talk, I guess I'm just one of those lucky people who has never had a problem that was the fault of Steam. And I can't recall any issues that they've ever had that weren't quickly rectified.
Regardless, a lot of people have had issues, so they can't be blamed for being put off by Steam. I just think it gets a bad rap, and I really feel like it has helped grow the PC gaming community as a whole. Us die hards have always been there and always will be. A lot of people are only catching on to PC gaming because of services like Steam.

Exactly. Receiving digital versions of special edition content is usually a bit of a sucky joke. At the very least it should be priced a lot cheaper.

Even when we got the USD prices here, they were usually a lot higher than retail (and by that I mean retail copies sold online).

You don't have to deal with DRM if you get it on Xbox or PS. You guys need to relax.

Weren't there big problems with the PS3 version, or am I thinking of Oblivion? I seem to recall something about expansions not being compatible with that console, or something. I would be fine with buying it for my PS3, but I don't want to be screwed out of content options because of it.
EDIT:
I was working under old news, apparently. Here is some less old (but still stale) news that answers my question:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6209926.html

I don't see how they aren't DRM free...?
Everything is on Steam. That's not relevant.
I'm "against" Steam because of its business practices. There's lots of things I like about it too -- just for me the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. I don't really know or care about regional restrictions -- I will probably never understand the logic so I leave it be.

Everyone loves Steam til they're screwed by it.
Promoting PC gaming is one of the big reasons I like it. I just think they can do better. To be fair, they have improved Steamworks. But this bundling crap has to stop.

Honestly, I am not surprised.
FNV is one of the most awaited games this year, so the developers really get paranoid avout if it gets heavily pirated.
Unless you convince them with the GoG-formular they will still DRM.
Besides, it's Berthesa. Fuck them.

Fallout: NV is going to live or die depending on how true this claim is:
"For those concerned, this will have no affect on mod development whatsoever. Modders will still be able to create and distribute their plugins the same way they have in the past."

Agreed. But Valve games have tons of mods. So does Fallout 3. So I'm not seeing any cause for concern on that count. The main concern for me is if the base game is going to be stable and complete enough for mods to really have enough to work with.

It works for Morrowind, Oblivion (they even took the extra mile to support OBSE), Fallout 3... I don't see why is shouldn't.
And as much as one may dislike Steam - it's a giant leap forward from GfWL.
Uhmm... World of Goo, developed by a indie company with 2 guys, no DRM, gotten praises everywhere, has been pirated to hell and back. As much as I hate DRM, I don't see piracy anywhere near being misused as a scapegoat.
Reasonable Developers? Yeah....
BioWare where the DRM has been put on the DLCs. Won't count how many times I ran into problems because of that, not even to mention that on- and offline savegames are different. Reasonable? I haven't had as much problems with ALL my Steam games, as with DA:O alone....
Blizzard I'd say remains to be seen. It's not that they've put out a lot of games after WoW, who has it's own DRM. We shall see where they'll heading with the "new" Battle.net.... a bit too early to sing those praises....