rjbuffchix: I'm not trying to sound harsh/personal but it seems to me the larger share of the blame goes to the consumers who supported it and let it get to that point...
LiquidOxygen80: I'm not even saying I disagree, the only distinction I'd make is that publishers and dev teams also allowed Steam to be/monopolize/proliferate to the point to where it is now. Steam had the market to themselves long enough to make this happen without an actual alternative, aside from standalone installers, and then in a lot of cases, even physical copies started to demand some form of Steam functionality. So, I'd say equal blame goes to both the market and the people in charge of it.
Very fair points! Certainly I decry Scheme itself and all the publishers who allowed it to be what it became, though I imagine many would have just made their own proprietary clients...some even did just that, years later. In other words, I think the blow to consumers wasn't specifically Scheme itself, but the widespread acceptance of online DRM as a default. I think gaming media/journalists/coverage is also very much to blame for the DRM shroud over gaming, and needs to be a piece of our pie chart.
