Valve has done some good things for the game industry: they encouraged modifications, and made some good games.
However, I feel as if the gaming community praises Valve too much.
- The gaming community praises Valve’s monopoly on game distribution services.
That’s about it though.
Valve has had every opportunity with their early monopoly on the online distribution of games to screw everyone over and they choose not to. That is why they get the praise they get.
Didn’t they though? I mean they act like a centralized middleman for many games, get to say what is acceptable or not, and to my knowledge don’t respect european regulations (about private copy and second-hand software licensing).
EDIT: We could also talk about digital handcuffs (DRM).
Steam itself doesn’t really have DRM, however they do allow other publishers to add DRM to their games on the Steam platform.