Precisely because they had such a successful product. Initially that product wasn't Steam, but Half-Life 2. Once other studious picked up on it as a distributio

Precisely because they had such a successful product. Initially that product wasn't Steam, but Half-Life 2. Once other studious picked up on it as a distribution model (because who doesn't want to take advantage of the entire HL2 install-base to market their game?), they were golden. Also, despite its lack of overall polish, occasional crashiness, and the inconsistent and slow UI, for the most part Steam works exactly as advertised. It lets me install my games anywhere as many times as I like for free, I can play them offline if they're single player, and online I get a lovely Xbox-Live style server browser and social management right in the client. The worst I can say about it is that I'd be a little happier with it if it were more polished, and I'd kill a man for a Mac port (including, obviously, the games I care about).