When I had a small scratch on Simcity 4 CD, which made it impossible for me to play the game i bought, i swore to myself never to buy any box copy of a video-game ever again.
Steam isn’t really that invasive as i thought. It works offline, it works on different PCs, it’s closed if I want it to be closed and most of all, it allows me to store videogames indeffinitely so that they’re never damaged, forgotten or stolen.
The only stupid bullshit is, that you aren’t able to resell the videogame, but that’s a small price to pay IMO.
Regarding the price on steam, you just missed huge deals. Even I got the game with a 25% discount, some got it even higher. You just have to wait for steam sales, before you buy something. Games outside steamsale on steam are very expensive and i don’t recommend buying on steam if you aren’t willing to wait for the steam sales.