I have been an avid steam user for years, and as a PC gamer and enthusiast, this has been the One and only application that I have been 100% loyal to like all in… But they updated the terms of use and apparently now, stating that buying is not owning, you just have a license that can be revoked whenever the publisher decides to.
** Several things I have purchased on there have been taken away, and I am considering not using it at all anymore**. First and most egregious thing that has been taken away from me are DLC. I played Destiny 2 for a really long while and after purchasing several DLC, came back to the game to find that stuff that I had planned on finishing later was completely removed from the game but I wasn’t given a refund. I reached out to support and was told that they can totally do this. They can just steal from you, you buy something, they just take it away and remove it from the game entirely, and no refund. So live service on Steam is a hell no for me. There have been numerous other games though that have been taken away as well, one example being Total War battles colon kingdoms, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost recon phantoms.
Just makes me wonder, what’s the point of even using Steam anymore if they can just take whatever you purchase away from you and no refund at all? It’s basically theft. Like, imagine You purchase a PlayStation 5 game and they send the police into your home to retrieve it to make sure that you no longer have it anymore simply because they stop selling it. Absolutely insane how anyone can support this business model
I know enough people have already said it, but the whole “you’re licensing not buying” has been a thing for as long as I’ve used Steam.
The answer to your question though, for me anyhow, is convenience. It is very easy to buy games on Steam, there are frequently sales where you can get games for lower prices. It’s super easy to play your games with a friend using Steam’s in-game overlay, and it also gives a unified platform where you can show off achievements, clips from your gameplay, screenshots, share guides about games, browse forums about your games, etc.
On top of that, Steam has become a trusted name for many people, myself included. While they can take your games, legally speaking, they don’t- and they’re very often pro-consumer in a way that many other companies aren’t. (To address your Destiny example, Destiny is the one that decided to sunset half their fuckin’ games it was one of many reasons I stopped playing. Didn’t matter where you bought it from, you gotta connect to Destiny’s servers to play at the end of the day.)
On the contrary, they’ve done many things that are helpful to gamers- and yes they also help Valve/Steam, but comparing to others in their field, it’s worth noting imo. Steam pushed VR adoption ahead significantly with their Index headset. They’ve done phenomonal work in making gaming on Linux viable without extra work from game devs, which is especially great with how Windows keeps getting worse and worse. Up until recently, if you had a legal dispute with them, while it WAS subject to arbitrition, they would pay all legal costs, whether you win or lose. (that has since changed after a law firm took advantage of that to try to pin Valve with hundreds of individual claims in order to get a payout, but I digress).
I’ve got my issues with them- being a TF2 player, I’m still sore over their treatment of the TF2 bot crisis and their overall neglect for their older titles. They need to get their shit together for moderation purposes, the amount of bot accounts and scams are downright shameful, especially with how obvious it is once you know the patterns. But overall, when compared to their competitors such as Epic (for game distribution) or Ubisoft, Activision, etc (for game development), they’re one of the better companies imo.