Also some guy got online banned in Dungeon Defenders because of cheating in the Offline Game which doesn't have an affect to the online gaming. Steam noticed the cheating and the poor guy can never play online again.
So what ? Steam has clear usage guidelines, it's not like they are hiding them or anything. If you don't like the Steam guidelines, don't use steam and keep buying physical games.
I see Steam as a compromise:
- ok, you mostly get DRM
- you can't cheat and you have to be online sometimes even if you want to play offline
But, at the same time:
- they support Linux all the way
- they sell games cheap, and have sales often
- installing games is straightforward
- you can install the games on several computers at home
- online gaming is free
- cloud saving is easy and painless
- they have a community hub for people who want to mod games and profit from it
So, it's still a pretty good deal. I can play games for very cheap, without having to worry about ordering them and installing them one by one from DVDs or something.
And, gaming was never about freedom. Even when you buy a physical game there's likely to be DRMs, or online registrations required to activate them. You never get the source code for most games. Most games can't be modded easily. I don't really get what people are complaining about regarding Steam. Plus, they only ban people who are repeated cheaters, usually bans are only temporary otherwise, from what I have heard.
You don't get 75 millions of users if your service is crap.