Well, I had to spend extra money in order to be able to play a game I already purchased because of Steam.

Just to make it a little more clear, here is what happend, not from my standpoint.

FFXIV was released, Steam and elsewhere. You could sign up for your trial on Steam and purchase from Square-Enix if you wanted to. Everyone was happy, Steam made money, Square-Enix made money and consumers could get their product however they chose.

FFXIV released an expansion. Steam said, "Look, we know everyone is happy right now, but we want more money. You either need to make every person who signed up for a free trial or purchased the initial game through us buy the expansion from us or those players can not get the expansion at all. Let us make more money or piss off everyone who bought the game from us."

Weird - as far as I can recall, Steam never forced me to use my phone number, and it doesn't seem to be anywhere in my account info.

But I prefer it that way. I don't save my credit card info on Steam (and I only use a CC with a low limit anyway), so I have no real monetary risk. That said, if I get hacked, the hacker can change my info including my phone number, all my already-purchased Steam games are at risk, and I'd be at the mercy of Steam's customer service. But my non-Steam games would be safe.

People undervalue compartmentalization of risk these days... although to be fair, it took some knocks on the head for me to get it.

None of that is endemic to Steam. As I alluded to before, the game industry as a whole was already shifting to digital mode with automated update features and community support before Steam expanded beyond Valve games. As for indie devs, sure, it provides a pre-made publication mode, but indies always could and would (and do) find ways to publish anyway. The only real benefit of Steam is that it's an all-in-one package.

i always keep steam in 'offline' mode, in fact i think i still need to update it and install the last FO4 patch xD; everything's been stable so haven't bothered with it in a bit; i also use overlay for fps display while in offline mode

I never said it was endemic to Steam. It was evidence to counter the claim that Steam is "some parasitic middle man that offers nothing positive in return for their commission" which is patently false.

Steam is one of the best things to happen to PC gaming. People complain about everything.

Sure... so you have to have a Microsoft acct or Playstation acct... no difference at all.

Makes no sense to claim that Steam has any problems when it doesn't. It's no different than any other software client, including productivity software.

True. But it doesn't cost you anything to have a PS or MS account and you don't have to continue to pay over every little thing. That being said, Steam does have it's advantages.

Steam costs nothing.

Sure, it offers some convenience to consumers for free (as opposed to slightly less convenience for free), while weasling money out of developers any way they can. They are a retail operation after all, and they have to make money somehow. The difference between Steam and other retailers is that, by offering all those nifty yet trivial conveniences to consumers in one handy package, they've secured their position in the market to such a degree that if you don't play nice with Steam, your game's revenue will probably suffer.

This is the whole "natural monopoly" thing I mentioned before that I didn't really want to get into, but, here we are.

Again, I use Steam, I recognize its conveniences, and I'm really not concerned about the "back end" (that's between Steam and development houses, AFAIC). However, it's kind of odd to see people defending it to such a degree.

Closed for review