[venomsnake]

This argument often appears. The simple answer is that Valve can get away with due to the immense goodwill they have gathered (also steam has the benefit of being the first online service)

Valve is a small company (compared to the publishers/sony/MS) that has track record of amazing games and a company that groks gaming and gamers. While Steam is indeed some form of weak DRM the value the platform adds is substantial. Steam workshop and other mod tools are important.

Also while you are on a PC you control what steam can do and not the other way around.

MS lack good will with PC gamers (the communities overlap). They deliberately stagnate the platform, GFWL was terrible ...

[jiggy2011]

There's also the price aspect. Unless you are impatient for a particular game you can build up a massive library of games on Steam very cheaply by taking advantage of the sales which are often 50% off or even 75% off.

Even pre-owned/discounted console games cost substantially more than this unless the game is very old or unpopular.