I completely understand the level of being pissed by the OP. _IF_ its really true, and I have a little bit of a hard time believing that. There's probably some fine print, and if he brought an electrone microscope, like every responsible shopper these days, he probably wouldnt have fallen for it.
What pisses _me_ off, personally, is the sheeple attitude when it comes to steam. It seems there is almost no grey area, people love it or hate it. And nobody seems to notice steam what it really is: intrusive annoying and insulting DRM with lots and lots of convenience.
Is it THAT hard to see both?
On the other hand... if steam really is THAT convenient... why wouldnt valve be so nice and untie all our games from steam. You know, give us the much promoted convenience without actually getting on our nerves with all the hoops we have to jump through.
For instance... What if I own a theoretical game, let's called it... Pocket Snooker. I really like Pocket Snooker, so I bought it on Steam, because it was so cheap. My friends and I, we enjoy playing Pocket Snooker together. A lot. But with patch 2.3 they really really nerfed ball slip. My friends and I totally prefer the sweaty ball feel of 2.2.
But we bought it on steam and so we're fucked, we cannot choose which version to play.
In all fairness, if enough people complain about this phenomenon, valve will probably do something about it (Probably)... but why? because they want to, like everybody else, shove their DRM down our throats.
At least they give us some whipped cream with a cherry on top to go along with all the forced deepthroating.