Alright, everywhere I look for information on the products in the Elder Scrolls series, naming the last 3 games (including Skyrim), I see the butt-ugly Games for Windows Live sticker slapped on the top of every PC game case like it is somehow superior to the title it has bound in a sack.

Steam, is somewhat like too-long-of-a-name-to-take-seriously, in that both provide anti-cheating measures and anti-piracy restraints. Surely Games for Winblows Dies wouldn't run in the background with Steam being the service that provided it to it's consumer, right?

Is Windows Live present in Fallout 3 on Steam? On the retail version of Fallout 3 (and I use F3 in this example because I have no other game to verify the integrity of my argument), Fallout 3 has "Live" in the main menu structure of the game. You can click on Live, and it opens some janky ass interface for the Microsoft service.

Is this interface and that service present in the Steam version?

Also, because there are so many fantastic mods for Bethseda's games such as Morrowind and Oblivion, with the addition of F3 and FNV, how is the mod support compared to the retail? With my retail copy of Fallout 3, I just drag and drop the new files, and then launch the game with FOSE. However, noting the thread in the Oblivion board on Steam, http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=900993, the issue had to be taken care of by a Valve employee themself to get OBSE working on the Steam version of Oblivion.

Is it worth purchasing Bethseda's games through Steam over Games for Windows Live, or the other way around?