Mass Effect 3

Requires Origin? That's unfortunate. Admittedly, I haven't had any personal experience with EA's new-ish game marketplace/platform -- because of all the people I know who have dealt with it, none of them have had anything nice, or even tolerable to say about it. Battlefield 3's PC version UI is a well-documented clusterfuck. And Star Wars: The Old Republic, apparently, requires registration and authentication on Origin even though the game itself has no presence on or functional link with it.

It sounds trite to say that Steam availability is a deal-maker or -breaker; they have their own DRM, and Gunpei knows that the Steam client software isn't perfect (take its download manager -- please!). But if I'm paying anything close to full-price for a PC game, I want to know that the DRM won't infect the rest of my system, and that I can re-download said game, as I please, in effective perpituity. Valve is a stable entity, and has earned my trust: I have no reason not to believe that they will allow me to continue playing Steam-purchased software, even if Steam ceases to exist. EA, on the other hand, has never faltered at an opportunity to screw its customers, and so I have little confidence in the return on any money I might give to their download service.

Which is a really roundabout way of saying, if it isn't on Steam, I'll probably just wait for it to be a $5 download from Amazon.