CaptainGyro: Thank you MrBuzzkill. what are you serving for dinner tomorrow? A lecture about the cruelties performed on Chritsmas turkeys ?
Okay, okay, so it was a bit heavy-handed.
Listen, Steam has a lot of great features, but for those of us who are wary of DRM, Steam's model isn't good for the future of gaming. We need to either pressure Valve to change that model, or cultivate a viable competitor.
xabbott: A lot of people don't seem to get that some of us actually like the community aspects of Steam. I want to run the Steam client.
For me, it isn't using it, but being forced to use it. It is useful, but the lock in strategy (gamer buys lots of titles during Steam sale -> gamer eventually has a massive collection on Steam -> gamer doesn't want to use other services because he has too much invested in Steam and because Steam has to be running all the time, there is little incentive to run another client, if even just to download games) sucks.
Anyway, at places like GoG, where people are generally anti-DRM, Steam receives criticism. However, the PC gaming community at large offers nothing but praise for Valve and Steam. Look through the archives over at Kotaku or Rock Paper Shotgun.