[patmcguire]

You've always been able to turn Clippy off.

You've always been able to go through twelve screens of settings and figure out which Facebook radio buttons are the "don't share everything" option.

You've always been able to opt out of spamming all your email contacts when you import from LinkedIn.

You've always been able to cancel your recurring subscriptions, you've just got to call our customer support number, no it absolutely cannot be done online.

Super obnoxious defaults are still super obnoxious if they can be changed. I've used Steam for a while, and don't mind the ads that much, but it would never would have occurred to me that I had the option to turn them off.

[Lockyy]

Have you considered that for a lot of people the ads aren't obnoxious because they actually help keep them up to date on new releases?

[arg01]

I too like the ads. But programs with "tip of the day"s in them have had this problem solved for a long time, just including a check box for never show me again. You could make the argument with some programs that it interferes with a minimalist design, but you'd have to admit this does not appear to be what steam is going for.