After all these years I saw when Raze was enraged,fantastic,I have no idea how poor Raze can find patience while chatting with such trolls\idiots....
Steam has advantages too.
1)You can momentally update your game(if there are updates of course)Can you gain so quick update in retail version?I don`t think so,unless game has own autopatcher but it quite rare thing and you must connect with Internet.
2)You can momentally change language, of course you should download laguage pack,but you can.
3)Steam has no so bad base knowledge about games with walkthrough,all kind of tweaks instruction etс..,and you can quickly overview opinions about the game...