Steam has mostly had a positive affect on PC gaming and digital distribution in general is far better than physical.
Steam has some great benefits. Linking to Friends, game library, etc are all great. I am a huge fan. But you give away a lot of rights for these benefits. And that is the future. People giving up rights to get the shiny new thing.
See South Park The Entity episode for reference.
The major problems of digital distribution vs CD/DVD:
- You need internet to play/install. Sometimes that is a problem.
- Steam could close its servers any minute. Goodbye to your $1000's of games. Microsoft has already done this with music, so COH3 on MS store is a big risk. Xbox has made this much more stable of a platform.
- Being forced to update games just to play them. Maybe a new patch breaks everything. Maybe you dont have access to inet to download 57 GB of garbage every week like new dance moves or pink boots.
- You have to have some sketchy client running on your PC doing who knows what all day long. PCs are tools. They can be used to do a lot things. Between Win10 auto update, client apps doing shit, etc YOU are no longer in control of YOUR PC (that YOU paid for). How about if your car just auto updates itself into oblivion while your out on the road?
Back in the day I would order a new PC for work and as soon as it came in drop Quake onto it to run Timedemos and get FPS numbers. Cant do that with Steam using works inet. My boss who was near retirement would go "How did it do? That good huh? Order another one."