Odd. I have no issues with the client and it's miles better than any other client out there.

I wonder if it's going to become even more web based but it has also accomplished things like a sorta unified desktop/web/mobile experience and the steam deck. So there's that.

When I ran Windows 7, I was pretty fastidious about cpu consumption, and never observed Steam consuming more than 1-2 CPU percent on average assuming it was collapsed to the system tray and wasn't downloading game updates in the background.

I don't think there's any grand conspiracy like you make it out to be, perhaps you've had an outlier experience.

Wait, how do developers get squeezed? As a developer I need to know if I’m standing in quicksand.

Having access to so many gamers, at once, without me having to setup a storefront, and pci compliance, and credit card data, is actually good for me. If you live in part of the world where there isn’t a tax treaty with the United States, that’s not exactly Valves fault. Blame your government for the squeeze.

I disagree wholeheartedly here. The Steam client has its problems but it's not shit. I use Big Picture mode exclusively on my gaming PC that's hooked up to my TV and I never have problems with Steam unless some other garbage launcher (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft) crashes and doesn't return focus. That's it. Other than that, all my games stay updated, the client updates on restart, and I never have to mess with it. I'm not sure what more you can ask for.

It was shit for a very long time, but it's actually been improving, slowly but steadily, for years. It's honestly pretty good these days.