Summary: the game was brilliant ("uniquely amazing") if you were really good at it but was essentially impossible to get into, and its economy was badly constructed.
Most Startups are at least trying to change the status quo.
Steam certainly challenged the status quo when it was released, and several times in its life.
Hell, who else is working on Linux gaming right now? They were relatively early on game streaming, VR. Steam Workshop? How cool is it that a large amount of one of their flagship games, Team Fortress 2, not only integrated a lot of third party content, but also paid creators back? How cool is it that many games like Counter Strike began as Half Life mods?
I don’t really use Steam much anymore, so it’s not that I’m personally attached much, but I will admit to being pretty impressed.
But that all aside... I mean they have a new Half Life game on the near term horizon (later this month apparently) and they have done a ton of work on VR and Linux support.