Nowadays, the only problems I have with Steam stem from my credit card's security mechanisms.
It's still a very valid complaint, and will forever be as long as you're tied to Steam's server being up and willing to give you the content you paid for. That may not always be the case, for example if financial embargos prevent Valve from actually providing the service in your country. It's more like you're paying Steam to use their service rather than actually buying the game. Right now people are not worried about Steam exit scamming and thanking us for all the fish, because it's a very solid service that has considerable resilience and just keeps getting better and better, and even managed to release the Steam Deck which seemed like an impossible dream some years ago. But there's a nonzero chance they can just ... close. Which was a very real possibility when they launched. Now, not so much.
People got comfortable, and that comfortability is great. Until it isn't, and then it's a travesty. Then it all repeats again and people never learn not to put all their eggs in one basket.
That's just the result of the flow of time. I remember a little over a decade ago when Blizzard was considered one of the best companies out there and that they always delivered quality titles. Stuff changes (and also, sometimes people can be very fickle).
Not that this isn't a valid concern, it certainly is, but I guess what we've learnt is that you don't need to be bound to Valve for games to be bound to a big corporation.
Look at Minecraft, which was never on Steam. You could've brought that a decade ago, and now you're told you need to bind yourself to Microsoft to continue playing it.
- "I need to download a lot of data, I want discs!"
- "I will be forever bound to Valve. What if they go out of business?"
I think the first point got kind of obsolete, because broadband is readily available compared to 20 years ago. And the latter also lost importance, I guess? At least I don't read that any longer.