Ignoring the DRM thing, Steam didn't really add a middleman. Instead, they replaced the old middleman. Microsoft used games to prop up their windows monopoly,

Ignoring the DRM thing, Steam didn't really add a middleman. Instead, they replaced the old middleman. Microsoft used games to prop up their windows monopoly, but provided a terrible user experience. Steam provides an excellent, OS-agnostic user experience. Instead of using it to prop up an unrelated monopoly, they take a cut of sales. It's not great (middlemen rarely are), but it is an improvement.