To be honest, if the retail games had steamworks codes, I'd go grab them, but they don't. I'd rather get it digitally on Steam a few weeks late than grab it retail and have to deal with U-Fail.
So has it been confirmed that Far Cry 3 on Steam won't use Uplay? Because AFAIK, all Ubi games now use it, regardless of whether you have it on steam or not.