Devs Respond to Steam Exploitation Claim
Is Valve's Steam really a big meanie?
As a PC gamer, it's hard to find problems with Steam. While it is a propriety distribution system, it's one that works and has provided good service to both developers and end-users.
Old time PC games industry veteran Randy Pitchford said in an interview with Maximum PC that Valve's online games delivery service isn't all sunshine and rainbows are some may believe.
"There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid. It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win. I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer," said Pitchford. "Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine."
While the argument exists that Valve makes it own games that may compete with the products that it can sell on Steam, many small developers were given exposure larger than they could ever manage on their own thanks to the service. President of Tripwire Interactive John Gibson responded in an opinion piece regarding all the nice things that Steam has done for him and his company.
"Ask the Tripwire Interactive employees if they feel exploited, as they move into their new offices paid for by the money the company has made on Steam," Gibson wrote. "Or me, as I drive away from the company that was built from the royalties we made on Steam, in my sports car paid for by the royalties we make on Steam, to the home that I pay for with the royalties we make on Steam."
"If that's exploitation, I'll take a little more," Gibson added.
Find out what other small PC developers are saying about this at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

No one is forcing game producers to use Steam, and as John Gibson explained in his comments, not everyone thinks Steam is bad for producers. I know I've bought plenty of games on Steam's weekend deals that I had never even heard of before. Any sale has to be better than no sale, right?
The fact that I can play the game on any piece of hardware, anywhere, is kind of a joke considering how large they are and the time it takes to download them. And, since the size of games are only going to get increasingly larger as content balloons with larger cut scenes and higher resolution maps, soon this won't even be a viable option at all.
I have been using Steam since 2004 and have never had any major issues besides a few minor ones with CoD4.
The line "In over a year I have had only one instance of being able to connect and that was thru another connection not my home" goes to show it is probably a problem on your end. Make sure all the correct ports are open on your router and make sure your software firewall, if any, is not blocking the Steam connection.
I like to have my boxed product and a disk on my shelf.
Steam is not a bad experience though and is the best of it's kind. I did experience MS and their copycat of Steam called Games for Windows Live (GFWL), talk about a piece of shit. Never again will I use that service and I uninstalled GFWL off my machine as soon as I used up my points on Fallout 3 expansions.
Additionally Steam's often slow response to changing prices and the market leave games people would otherwise purchase at uncompetitive prices which is sad. It does take some system resources but on a multicore machine that is likely not a real issue today.
I don't like DRM, I don't like online activation and I don't like propreitary software that is often little more then bloatware. But if I have to suffer those evils, Steam makes it as easy of process as possible, plus it doesn't impose ridiculous download expirations of software I paid for like EA Link and others.
I will say that IGN direct2drive gets more of my money via direct downloads however, better deals...
In order from most evil to least evil... Satan, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve, Mother Teresa. Are we REALLY that worried about Valve?