maybe the real problem here is people being conned into thinking they have to use the bloated vaporware that is steam. false advertising, and a broke ass rating system where games only elevate in rating because they're listed first, or get trolled to death in the woefully un moderated forums because of 1 trolling joke developers can suffer and die. it's no wonder the useless steam top 10 list is always full of crap first person shooters and random BS games no one would otherwise ever play (and don't get me wrong I do appreciate indie dev, which can survive w/o steam). here's an idea, if you don't like steam, don't use it. just google stuff on amazon to find what you like, buy the actual physical media which you can appreciate or resell instead of feeling like you're forced to install this utterly useless piece of crap software like a herd of cows following each other off a cliff. I have even googled 'what is the point of steam?' and have yet to find a valid answer. all I find are articles on steam causing the death of the PC gaming market and people desperately looking for solutions to yet another useless layer of software screwing things up and complaining about their complete lack of customer service because valve has a 'f off and do w/e you want just play all day' policy where their useless employees find new ways to bloat the UI and add features that nobody asked for instead of much needed customer service on basic features which no one wants to do or delegating the tiny fraction of people's hard earned money hiring people to do it... I never have, and I never will use steam. it has always reeked of scam and bloatware to me and everything my bf complains about and I have read on forums affirms this suspicion. steam reminds of those severely irritating pop ups you run into on dark corners of the internet that forcefully shove an ad in your face, beeping and screaming at you that you need to just click once and run a scan for viruses you don't have. they were probably forced to ask this of devs after being flooded with complaints and hopefully lawsuits for making a fortune on false advertising. yep. sure was a lawsuit. "Some screens shown on No Man’s Sky’s Steam page contained features players have yet to encounter in the game. In September, angered consumers successfully lobbied the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority to investigate Hello Games on grounds of false advertising." -from a polygon article the 6th comment in this very thread was complaining about this title lol. but yea Steam's all "let's deceive people into thinking that was a design decision. they'll eat that crap. they eat anything." like a typical greedy useless corporation exploiting other people's hard work and money and hiding/excusing their criminal offenses as if it's some bright idea of their own ...so dumb.

You do realize Steam is for the most part hosting games for download. They do not create the ads or the art the game publishers use on the service. I don't get what your complaint is. Like you said, 'if you don't like it don't use it'. Digital distribution is the future whether you like it or not. More and more people are dispensing with optical drives and the market for people buying physical media is declining. And that wall of text...sheesh.