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.
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.