Which would make me understandably pissed off. Why would I continue being a loyal customer if I was being punished for it?
You wouldn't. As a poster stated above, p2p is cheaper because of bandwidth reasons. Instead of the company relying on a server with limited bandwidth, the burden is given to people cost free. All you'd have to do is pay for the key.
I like the p2p model. I live in a rural area, and my internet is quite whacky. For example, when I am downloading a game or update on steam, I cap out at 150kb/s. Slow, I know. When I download something from a p2p app and it's seeded well, I can pull over 200kb/s. I know it's not much, but it's way faster than downloading from a "legit" site.I've contacted the ISP and told them about the discrepancy, but they don't really care about us country folk...
Anyway, I think it makes sense. If you want a hard copy, you pay more. If you want a digital copy straight from a company provider like Impulse or Steam, you pay a little less, but you still pay for the game in addition to bandwidth costs, and p2p pays less, but may have to put up with low seed and upload speeds.