Well, I have over 300 games on Steam. And I've had plenty of problems with them -- but I've had them do some rather nice stuff too. I don't *hate* Steam.But I do hate the fact that it's usually the only viable option to purchase certain games for a reasonable price/be able to download at a reasonable speed.
I'd really welcome a DD service that could provide real competition for Steam. It may well get them to improve their act a little more. Such as stopping their stepped releases of games (which they themselves are applying and not the publishers -- and yes, I've checked that with publishers). Improving their patching for third part games such that we don't end up waiting over a year for a patch to fix a game again (once was enough, thank you). And improving the overall quality of their support staff.
Mind you, if I could find the games I'd want to buy locally and competitive prices, I'd far rather buy retail -- but that is simply not an option here.

Just wanted to toss in here that taking the chance and trying something out on the notion that people could be overexaggerating the flaws and downsides isn't always the best option, either. I have, quite often, errored on the side of caution because the few times I did go ahead and listen to the majority saying "it is awesome, try it" were either sadly mistaken as to what I consider "awesome" or else were playing/using a totally different game/service than I was.
Case in point: Halo. I'd grown weary of the hype as a non-xbox owner, but a buncha people I knew went on and on and on about the story, the depth, the gameplay and I broke down and got it for PC. I was very disappointed to say the least.
In regards to my own experiences with Steam... I've actually had little to no trouble at all with the service itself. However, I find that having to use it to play games is more of a disservice than anything else when it comes to single-player games like Portal and Half-Life. It would be much nicer if I only needed Steam for games that actively NEEDED to go online like Team Fortress or Modern Warfare 2. However, I play neither of those games and feel the presence of Steam being forced upon me is a very negative impact on how I view it.

Steam has "real competition." Unfortunately, said competition will not be able to challenge Steam without your support. Because Steam commands such an overwhelming market share of the DD business, competition will be insufficient if you continue to support Steam and poo-poo alternatives because they aren't quite up to Steam's standards yet.

I replied to your first message but my browser decided to hiccup and destroy the draft...
The gist is I respect your pov and your post showed you know pretty much what Steam is but is happy with it.
But I disagree with your comparison to GOG when the end experience is different. You might be licensing from GOG, but as long as you have just a computer and a compatible OS, you can keep and play the game forever. You can't say the same with Steam. D2D's system is also better in my opinion. If you installed a perfect OS, activated your games and then created a backup from that, you'd be able to play them forever (as long as you didn't alter your PC hardware). The Steam client's reliance on internet connection means that even with offline mode turned on, somewhere along the line that's not going to work and you're going to need to connect to Steam again to play your game.
If you're an informed Steam user, fair enough, but I think the majority aren't informed and I've seen plenty of uninformed questions on forums all over the place about Steam, and a negativity developing even from uninformed users.
Steam's been feted for half a decade and in that time people have used it without question and praised it to the sky. Also in that time, Steam hasn't taken the time to listen to consumers (e.g. surveys) and doesn't do anything to address pricing discrepancies. They've got draconian policies over pretty much everything, and their support is inconsistent. Their quality control is poor...sure, they're not a game's developer but they should at least ensure games be compatible with modern systems and that the latest patches have been incorporated - I've had games like Prey and Doom 3 not work on release.
I'm surprised you think all the bashing is unjustified.

Yeah.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18081787

Sadly, no they don't. The only big players on par with Steam are:
D2D -- Too many regional restrictions causes them to be useless to most who are not in the US, UK or Europe -- thus they can't provide adequate competition. D2D must work harder on opening their catalogue to all regions if they seriously want to contend with Steam
Impulse -- Suffer the same as D2D but this time are only truly viable for those in the US. They also have a shockingly small catalogue of games. Impulse must strive more to attract major publishers to join the service while also persuading them to sell worldwide (they also need to ease off the regional pricing, ie, $60 for Tropico 3 whereas all other services sell it for slightly under $40?)
GamersGate -- While they have a larger catalogue than Steam, their price gouging of Europe and (to a lesser extent) the UK as well as their woefully slow download speeds are causing them more harm than good. No one wants to download a 4 gig game at a speed of less than 25 kb/s. GamersGate MUST improve the quality of their download speeds in order to seriously contend with Steam.
GOG -- Well, sadly they're not competition to Steam. They're a niche store catering to only a specific type of games (old ones). They do everything else right though. Just imagine what a service like GOG could do if it provided new games without the regional pricing or restrictions (pipe dream I'm sure...).
So no, the problem isn't "our" support for the competition. It's their "support" for us that's the problem. It's nigh on impossible to support companies that won't sell to your region, provide very poor download speeds and so forth.

This is a typical regional price whine rant. Small players cannot dictate regional pricing terms with publishers. Steam may be able to do so, as the dominant player in digital distribution, but outlets such as GamersGate and Impulse cannot demand fair regional pricing from publishers. They can either sell the game under certain terms, or not sell said game at all.
Stardock (Impulse) is well aware of the regional pricing/availability issue, as stated in the Stardock 2009 Customer Report (http://www.stardock.com/press/Reports/Stardock2009.pdf):
"Challenge #1: Regional Pricing & Availability
* Different publishers will price their titles differently depending on the territory. This is because most major publishers are actually a series of companies. It’s not MegaGame Corp. It’s MegaGame Europe Corp. MegaGame North America Corp. MegaGame Asia Corp. As a result, separate agreements have to be made with each territory. Thus far, our competitors have a significant head-start in this area.
* In addition, Stardock’s position of “one world, one price” requirement has resulted in many titles only being available in North America. Customer feedback has made it clear that availability trumps consistency in pricing and as such this requirement has been phased out, but it will take some time to get worldwide distribution on many titles simply because of the time involved."
If you condemn Steam's competition due to smaller libraries and regional issues, yet bemoan Steam as insufficient, you must blame yourself. Consumers can increase a given distributor's clout through increased revenue, and only through these increased sales figures can this distributor pressure publishers into more reasonable pricing agreements.

It's not a rant. It's a cold hard fact of the business. If a business wants customers, it has to address what is considered as problem by the majority of its potential customers.
And I'm not even going to bother reading Impulse propaganda, thanks.
And your whole point about increasing clout through support is just plain bile. How the fuck do you expect someone to be able to support a company that won't sell to them? Seriously, think for a second would you.

But steam has never failed me.
Not since my dial up days atleast.

A respectful rebuttal, no doubt.
If you cannot buy from then, then the obvious conclusion would be to encourage others to do so. You are upset that you cannot purchase games from these retailers. While it is indeed unfortunate that you cannot do so, you do not contribute to a solution by tossing about emotional arguments and condemnations.

Why the fuck would I advise or encourage anyone to buy from a service that does not want me as a customer? Again, use your damn brain. That's what it's there for.
This is not an emotional response due to the situation but one due to your obvious lack of cognitive reasoning.
Ah right. Now I recall who you are. You're the resident Impulse "fanboy" who "regularly" talks with the CEO or whatever. Right, I'll now return to ignoring your support of a service that doesn't care one bit about international customers.

You certainly take a great deal of offense and throw around plenty of demeaning, subjective, and misleading accusations. Why should anyone listen to such irrational and anger-fueled arguments?

He makes one very good point. D2D and Impulse flip the finger to anyone outside the US and UK. That is not a good way to gain support. I use all the major DD services and there is nothing more frustrating than being told I can't buy a game because of my region. Impulse is the worst for this IMO because they send out e-mails telling me about their really good deals in EUROS! Then I go there and I am told I cant actually buy them.

I agree that there is work to be done with regional pricing and marketing. D2D is a bit more reclusive than Impulse (they have their Twitter feed, but I'm not aware of any other contact their non-support workers have with the gaming community), so I cannot speculate on their efforts to improve regional issues. I give Stardock the benefit of the doubt in their claims of future improvements because I have no reason not to do so.
Steam's competitors are small and less familiar to publishers. Things will improve as publishers become more open to digital distribution and the global gaming market. As Steam grows, it may strengthen its competitors by pressuring publishers to consider more carefully their presence outside of physical media.
To conclude that these companies could care less about foreign consumers is unreasonable. As businesses, they stand to profit with a larger audience. Why would they snub potential markets?

misleading accusations
There's nothing misleading about stating you won't be able to by a product because you don't live in America. There's nothing misleading about stating you'll be charged far more for a product just because of your geographical region and because you want to purchase from Impulse.
Tell me, if Impulse supposedly have 10% market share with D2D and GamersGate having significantly less, how come both D2D and GamersGate can sell Tropico 3 for $39.99 or less when Impulse apparently can only sell it for $60?
Are you really going to try and claim the publisher is forcing only ONE DD service to over charge non-US customers? Don't be so naive.