I think it is worth pointing out that it is not exactly equivalent, in the sense that if you pay Steam via a payment channel (for simplicity, a one-directional payment channel, so they don't need to lock up any cryptocurrency themselves), they don't need to settle on-chain, but if they don't do so they cannot use the "money" the received from you to pay someone else (eg their lawyer).

In the very long term, if we get to a point where most people's and organization's income is roughly equal to their expenditure, then this won't be a problem, but until then there is still pressure to settle on-chain because of this.