They shut down?

LOLS....just read your title and I had to.

For me, I don't care one way or the other as I don't use Steam....and never will. However, IF they shut down, I wouldn't have to see the gaming community spiral towards 'steam only' games anymore.

Things like Civ V or Skyrim are real burners. They're single player games, yet require online connection to play. Pathetic. And you can't argue the 'offline mode' because you shouldn't need to go online to play offline.

Auto updating is another major problem with Steam. I don't auto update ANYTHING. I wait and see if the proposed update is better than the previous version. With steam, you have no choice and get screwed along with the rest.

Server time. Again, I'm playing a single player game and I can't because the online server is down???? That makes NO sense.

Malware. Yep, steam is full of intrusive software. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know the product. Anyone who defends it is profiting from it. I don't need or want that on my computer.

Ultimately, it comes down to choice. I won't use steam and that's my choice. Others will decide to use it....probably the majority. It's sad cause Steam sees this too and they abuse it. They know most people are too lazy to go out and purchase they're software. They expect the 'I want know' attitude and set it such that you sell your soul to do so.

They're next a-kin to EA. Collapsing all the small yet good game developers and putting out crap from then on. Sad.

I always loathed the delay for patches to go from developer -> retailer-> client. Seems like one of the good things about the digital platform is that patches - once released - should be fairly instant and the retailer should not be involved much at all.

Steam has usually been fairly good in this area - often it is only a few hours or a day. Games for Windows Live was horrible - could take weeks but they always gave deadlines at least. Apple also not good, from days to a week for a crappy app update to go through their process.

But here's the thing. Did Steam do some kind of quality check? What was it? What were their reasons for not publishing a patch? Because that's not going to redflag anything now. So while faster patches from developer->client sounds great, let's not ignore that we will be missing out on something as well. What that is, we don't really know. But I think in the end, the responsibility should be on the developer, not the retailer, to make sure patches are right.

Steam is arguably (and I'd say there's probably not even much of an argument) the single best thing to happen to PC gaming in the last decade.  Sure, it has flaws, but any number of games people rave about on this forum would not exist if not for Steam.  

How about this list:  Legend of Grimrock, Warlock: MOTA, probably Portal, and thereby Portal 2, and Endless Space.  All games that have generated a fair amount of discussion on this very board and every one most likely doesn't exist if the developers don't have Steam to count on for digital distribution. We'd see advanced tablet games, AAA PC games, and the very rare PC game that fell in between the two from a company able to withstand big financial risk like Stardock.  

Just yesterday I bought Legend of Grimrock and Warlock: MOTA on a whim off of Steam because they were onsale for something like $6 each.  That sale cost the game company nothing extra and earned them some small profit.  

In business it's called the long tail.  It's that part of the consumer base that wants things out of the mainstream, but generally goes unsatisfied because people that would like to create products out of the mainstream (because that is their passion) have no way to get those products to customers.  Steam gives developers the ability to access those markets easily and cheaply, making those niche products potentially profitable.  

Without the certainty of access to niche markets that Steam provides those products never exist.  In the age of consoles Steam, and its competitors, have saved the robust and varied nature of PC gaming.  It is certainly possible to not like Steam IN SPITE OF this fact.  But anyone trying to deny the good Steam has done is either not paying any attention or is talking out of their ass. 

Edit:  And just so I'm remotely on topic with the OP:  This change is largely irrelevant to me personally.  The auto-patching on steam has made it so that I haven't consciously updated a Steam game years.  If, under the new system, a bad patch slips through and breaks a game I want to play I'll just switch to one of the multiple $6 specials I've grabbed just because I thought I'd like to play them sometime (like Legend of Grimrock or Warlock: MOTA).  

As far as I understand it Steam is only checking to make sure that the patch won't break your installation.  A shitty patch that messes up the gameplay in some way would have made it through the old system too.  The percentage of installation cracking patches to valid patches will still probably remain ridiculously low so the chances of my game being busted are irrelevant.  

Nice catch.  Thanks.

If Steam offered an English class would you take it?