This is the problem I have had with Velvet's arguments.
All he sees in this deal is that Steam gets hurt because it is too big.
The reasons it is big are not of any relevance to him, nor is the fact that Steam is actually beneficial to the industry as a whole.
Now does the fact that Steam is as big as they are mean they have some control of the PC gaming industry? Of course it does. But it's not control that was gathered through brute force or underhanded tactics. They simply offered a more desirable service. Something that their competitors have not been able to do. And its not that said competitors are being kept in the dark about what makes the Steam platform successful. They have every chance to offer a comparable or better service but they do not.
What EA is doing may well hurt Steam, but the hurt is not going to be to the advantage of PC gamers.
It seems though, that what StingingVelvet is really concerned about is hurting the DRM scheme that Steam represents. Because in his opinion it is sin to have his physical boxes tied to an online scheme. That's fine. But there are a bunch of people the world over(myself included) who cannot buy physical boxes because the price is ridiculous due to shipping and a lack of decent game stores in our locations. For us, online DD purchases are the only way to go.
Also for us, having more than one or two online components to run when we want to run our games is annoying as hell. So hurting Steam this way(through pulling products) and not through decent competition in DD services is a bad thing overall.
My personal concern is that I will be stuck having to deal with higher game prices for longer periods of time with no decent sales deals, because I can't just order from Amazon/Best Buy/Game Stop etc due to the cost of shipping boxes to Barbados.
DRM on the level of Steamworks is really a secondary concern for me right now...as it is for many other people. Steam is a DRM that I can live with. It's not perfect, but having Steam be forcefully hurt in the marketplace by something other than decent competition is bad all around.