Installed my first game in 87 on an 8088, I am trying to remember the first game I bought and installed that basically forced me to install Steam, I don’t remember the game but I do remember thinking “Why the hell do I have to install this crap I just want to play the game”. I never really got into steam, I would buy physical media I lived and worked in remote places so internet was garbage at best. So yeah my earliest steam memories are me buying discs, to have them install/update steam, to download huge (at the time) installs on garbage internet that took days. Crisis, Total War Shogun, a few others come to mind. But yeah so I suppose I have always just seen it as a means to and end one that I didn’t always want.
Thats odd, I never played those exact games, but one of the things I liked about early Steam was the ability to install games with the CD/DVD, and only have to download the updates. I lived in a very rural town in the middle of nowhere, so bandwidth was scarce. I can see how that would be annoying if you only played single player games where updates aren't always necessary, or didn't have a group of friends that you play with regularly. For multiplayer games, where updates were required prior to play, the auto updates were much preferred to manually downloading zip files from the publisher, and installing them in sequential order. And the Steam community helped all my friends get into the same games, without having to send server names/IP Addresses via AIM/MSN or one of the early game friend list services that only some people were on.
To put this another way, to all the people saying this is good for competition, would you be OK with a brick and mortar store, like Best Buy, having an exclusive over some new game?
Sorry, if you want the new hotness, you have to drive to a Best Buy to get it, you know, to benefit the market and all.