"You don't need to make it sound like a sob-story, as if Valve are being hard hard done by. Every developer who wants their game on a store shelf has to work by those conditions."
Thats the point, its a sob-story for every developer, Valve included, so they decided to take initiative and create a program that allows them to sell directly, smart move if you ask me, and its good for the customers too, dont see how anyone could fault them for this.
"If they wanted to avoid the costs of putting Half-Life 2 on the shelves, they could have simply sold direct to the online customer (only), the same way self-publishing indie developers have been doing it for years."
Its not about avoiding the costs, they must put their product on the shelves, its much to popular to distribute it online only, it just wouldnt work, and we would see 1000times the anti-steam shit going around the net, people would protest Valve to sell it in stores, and it would destroy them if they didnt.
Its about trying to corner that decent chunk of the market thats willing to purchase online, and they dont mind not having a box or manual (you can make a backup CD though). They know they have a very large percentage of fans who would be willing to choose this option, and at the same time they can bypass their publisher overhead costs, its a win-win situation.