DRM by itself offers no benefit and significant down sides to end users. It's a bitter pill to swallow on its own. Most game makers slap DRM on a game and call it a day, then wonder why users complain. Valve adds enough sugar to their DRM to make it woorthwhile overall. To offset the downsides of DRM you get the benefit of super easy digital distribution, "cloud" storage of game saves and settings, easy installation on multiple computers, etc.

Right, and even if the user does not play it the instant it gets decrypted, the user still benefits by having preloaded days in advance (especially with huge games > 10GB, i.e. BF3). So when the user finally finds time to play a preordered game, it's already sitting in the Steam library, ready to be played.

I think this is one of the things that good DRM can provide the end-user that has been largely ignored by everyone. I mostly blame the industry for ignoring the possibilities, but they're exciting. You could "loan" games to people without physical contact, you can securely transfer ownership of the digital item, you can play your games from anywhere, etc. There's a lot of potential in having strong digital copy protection that protects the rights of all parties.

I'm pretty sure Steam didn't do that; the developer and publisher are responsible for uploading the bundles to Valve for distribution.