[illumanaughty]

Steam is a perfectly fine experience and captchas are the universal standard these days. They lost someone who's 'not really a game person' and wasn't willing to fill in a captcha for a free game, I don't think they're too worried about lost revenue. I highly doubt tracking down and downloading a legit version of the updated Half-Life from a torrent site is an easier option, but you do you.

[account42]

Steam is a ... somwehat tolerable experience. The client is extremely bloated for its primary function (installing and launching games) and this is only getting worse.

Steam is also dropping support for older operating systems - ones that you originally used to buy your games. That is also NOT perfectly fine.