Game Stores View Valve's Steam as the Devil
Many of you like Steam, but the game shops do not.
You may love Steam and games publishers may love Steam, but games retailers are certainly having no love for the premier digital distribution channel for PC games.
According to MCV, certain game retailers in the UK are upset enough by Steam to threaten that they will not carry any product that carry any Steam integration. Retailers feel that Steam integration will just drive customers to the Steam service, thereby killing the retail model.
This is particularly important to retailers who have a digital channel of their own.
“If we have a digital service, then I don’t want to start selling a rival in-store,” said the digital boss at one of the biggest UK games retailers, according to MCV. “Publishers are creating a monster – we are telling suppliers to stop using Steam in their games.”
Of course, this plan to boycott any game with Steam could backfire, as gamers who want that game will be forced to skip the retailer entirely and go through Valve's service.
Do you think Steam has a frighteningly strong grip on the PC games market?

There will always be those I believe that actually like going into the store like myself and having the box art, game, and hopefully some other goodies as well.
Steam is great, but not everyone wants their games on the hard drive only.
If steam is down you can't log in which means you can't play. I they ban you for some reason then you can lo longer play the game you paid for. While steam has alot of games for sale, there are still alot you can't get there.
For my money i'll always go to a store to get my games.
I mean sure it's convenient having the game in a shop that you can buy and go install, but my internet's not the fastest when it comes to downloading my own purchases.
(Although i just upgraded my internet to Unlimited 24/7 adsl2+, so we'll see what's better.. when my service is activated)
What stores are YOU going to? I've been buying games at GS/EB for years and before that toy-r-us back in the day and I never seen any of what you talkin about even during holiday shopping.
And even if that was the case (which its not) i'd rather deal with all that than to have a game that I can't play cause the server is undergoing maintenance.
Other than that Steam is the way to go IMO. I also like things like Good Old Games, love that site to death.
The only reason Steam is doing so well and is as popular as they are is because they are doing almost every little thing right, tons of features, good interface, software just works, unbeatable deals.
If the have a "frighteningly strong grip on the PC games market", its because they worked hard to do so and deserve it 100%.
Long Live Steam.
All of my games in one place, *on any computer* and with all the sales they have it's much cheaper than retail stores!
plus games get automatically updated. Ive always hated having to manually install patches and shit for slightly older games that don't have auto-updaters.
Steam has basically dropped the number of games I download illegally via bittorrent by about 75% since I started using it regularly a few years ago.
Also I love toms hardware! I mean i get almost all my tech news from tom's!
however, pc gamer reported this story like 4 days ago!
http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/11/11/retailers-say-steam-is-killing-the-pc-market-threaten-steam-ban/
If steam is down (which pretty much never), you can still login to offline mode and play your games. Of course you can't do online multiplayer, but honestly Steam I think has been down 1 time in the four years I have been using it.
I think that if game stores can't adapt, in a few years once you can get everything off of steam/other online stores then they will be headed the way of Hollywood video.