Sure enough, Far Cry 2 is already available in Europe on Steam, and Fallout 3 will be unlocked on the 31st.

However, both are much more expensive (about 35-40%) than if you buy them from Amazon or any other online shop, and you have to wait for this huge download which makes the delay about the same especially when the servers are on their knees (if they are online at all).

I'd gladly download games, music and software I buy instead of ordering the real product to be shipped, until they build more recyclable cases and so on, but the price has to be competitive. Here it's just plain abuse! Is that justified?

Besides, I like the paper manual - even if they get thinner and thinner, thanks to people who really can't concentrate on more than a couple page's reading

So thank you very much Steam but no, I'll wait until tomorrow and receive my copy of Far Cry 2 in the mailbox, I'll enjoy the fresh smell of plastic and drying ink, reading the fat manual (is there any? ), while saving money. It will give just enough time and bandwidth to download the nVidia driver updates...