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Years ago, when Steam first came out, I -hated- it. PCs were slower and it hogged resources. I thought it was annoying just to have to create an account to play counter-strike. I had problems with it back then, just to get it to run. It wasn't very stable, and on a shitty internet connection, I felt it just wasn't worth it.
Now though, it has so many positives that I have a hard time finding any negative in it. It's fast. Product downloads are BLAZING fast. Was averaging 1.4mb/s on the GTA collection yesterday, which is every bit of my connection and then some. Didn't even slow down the other things I was doing.
One thing we haven't even touched back on is the fact that it is a platform similar to Xbox Live and PSN. The friends list is wonderful, as is the steam interface when I'm in games. A quick shift+tab, and my friends list and messages are brought up. I can join people through it easily and quickly.
In the world of PC gaming, coordinating with friends to play games has always been a nightmare, IMO. With AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.. there are too many ways to communicate which not everyone is uniformly using. When one friend uses AIM, another MSN, another Skype.. it's so easy to just check Steam and see "Oh these 3 people are online.. lets see if they want to play X game". Within minutes, you're in a game playing with them.
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