Steam, what the heck are you doing?

Steam - an online application which hosts game downloads legally through producers recently got into a big dispute with EA games
Info here
It seems as though that Steam [the company Valve] wants a total monopoly of games that they distribute online. What this means is that no other websites should allow the games that the customers bought to be downloaded from there(The customers have to purchase the game through steam) . Since EA's latest game Dragon Age 2's newest Downloadable content can be purchased within the game [not through steam], Valve completely removed Dragon Age 2 from it's applications and anything else related to it.

This is an issue. Other online distributing vendors such as GameStop, Amazon, and Direct2Drive have not adopted to Valve's practice and I hope that they won't either. Having such a strict set of rules makes it so customers can only purchase from one vendor and download from one vendor. This is convenient in a sense that Steam will be the one stop for all games but at the same time it forces the game developing companies to funnel their games through steam and rely on it to distribute to all the customers digitally. If steam goes down then the other option of acquiring that game is by going to the local game store and purchasing it offline.