Most people seem fine with that, and Steam totally killed the physical games segment. There's GOG if you want a copy without DRM, but they're tiny and the prices are often worse than Steam or a Steam reseller.

Besides, if the game rental model is bad, Stadia does it even worse than Steam: tiny library, horrible pricing, incompatible multiplayer, proprietary ports on a different update schedule, exclusivity deals, all from a company with a proven history of abandoning their customers.

Steam on the other hand is run by one of the oldest, most respected PC gaming companies in the history of the hobby, owned and run by a bunch of gamers (not advertising execs), who singlehandedly transformed the way people buy and get games, and worked tremendously hard to make the service better abs better every year in the service of players. They've earned our loyalty.

And furthermore, Nvidia is the provider of GeForce Now, not Steam directly. Their model is just way better, running off existing Steam and Epic games that don't require a new port or for customers to repurchase or lose their save games. Nvidia is also a gaming company. Not exactly as beloved as Valve is, but at least they're a long term player in the field.

Google just never really got it, at all. They arrogantly assumed they could just make a mediocre copycat and people would flock to it. Oh well.