Dude, it's their right to sell the game wherever they want. Steam does have certain restrictions on games being sold there and if EA want to work outside of that who are you or anyone else to tell them no?
We're not talking about their legal rights here and you know that, stop being disingenuous. The scenario you presented wasn't comparable and my example illustrated why they are different. If I really need to explain basic economic principles and why this is an anti-consumer move then I will(in fact I did so already below) but let's save another wasted page of space because we're both well aware that you know better.
And Valve deciding what they sell is fine too of course. The core problem is so many people acting like Steam is the only place to buy games, effectively making Valve's standards extremely important to PC gaming as a whole. THAT is why I want them to be less powerful.
You keep presenting this as factual based on forum conjecture but I don't see any evidence to support that conclusion. In fact Steam has many competitors, what it lacks is competitors which match its feature set. I have no doubt that if Xfire had a serious efort at a store component that it would be a serious Steam competitor for example, it replicates most of the core features of Steam.
Put differently, let's assume even despite the lack of evidence that you're right and the majority of PC gamers will only buy things on Steam. Do they only buy things on Steam because....its Steam? No. They buy things on Steam for specific reasons that differ person to person. To generalize a bit though, they buy things on Steam because it matches their desired feature set and price standards. If something else had better community features or standard community features but better prices then it would compete with Steam. The only product even coming close to this was Impulse which was still quite pitiful in execution when compared directly.
All of which ties into my earlier point that Steam is waiting to be kicked in the nuts. It is vulnerable, its offerings in terms of features are solid but unremarkable and Steam's development isn't so fast that it can assuredly keep pace with a competitor. The trouble is that companies do dumb stuff like this which fucks with consumer choice and probably won't accomplish their goals anyway. EA of all companies has no excuse, they have the resources to make or buy an actual steam competitor. EA is a huge company and they do have very talented people, I think they could do awesome things for the PC industry but they continually take the short view and the quick buck approach.