Why doesn't this load?

So I bought this yesterday, and it doesn't work. I now have 20 minutes of Steam game time, which is all spend looking at the initial loading screen. I know this is a touchy subject, but I tried a pirated version as well and it just runs perfectly. Steam is messing up somewhere.

I think it's a real shame that an illegal version works, and the copy I actually bought of Steam doesn't.

Question: how do I fix this? I've redownloaded the game several times, no luck. Verify cache, defragmenting, same.

It seems that I have the same problem.
pc windows 7...