The whole "well send you an activation code" thing always seemed like a scam to me.
The problem is, since you get the steam code for a reduced price, you are going to have to wait for the company you went through to negotiate with Steam and SI.
Company X tells Steam they will buy 5,000 activation codes at a 30% discount. They then sell to you at 25% discount, leaving them with 5% profit (not bad considering you have NO overhead). But as I said, they are probably still negotiating. Steam isn't exactly warm to the idea of taking a smaller profit on the basis that it will attract more players. Not much evidence says that you guys wouldn't have bought the game through steam if these discounts weren't available.