I hear you, and the privacy arguments are valid. Just to add, however:
>> installs are rapid and safe
> Just like normal computer programs then?
No, not really. Compared with piracy, their servers are generally much faster than torrenting (with the exception of insanely popular items on torrents). The installs are usually one-click affairs, not needing to click through 5 pages of "next", and telling it to not try to install on the tiny C:\ drive SSD which doesn't have enough space. Installed games are listed in one place, and tend to uninstall instantly, which is not the case with most normal installers. Their installer manager can also do verification of game file integrity, which is surprisingly often a solution to people's crash problems. In terms of safety, viruses are a non-issue, unlike torrented games.
I do get the privacy arguments, and tend to agree with those. A good alternative would be GoG, which has a decent catalog of games, and offers both offline, DRM-free installers (I believe this is still the case), or a Steam-style download manager for those that want the convenience. I'm unsure, but looking at the company behind it, I would argue they are "slightly less evil", and would probably make even their downloader more privacy-friendly.
But really, I think this is all really just a case of whether our needs match that of the average bloke on the street. On HN, we tend to be very privacy-conscious, but I think it's important that basically _nobody_ outside of this niche gives one thought to how Steam is invading their privacy, or how DRM might be bad, unless they have a direct bad experience (e.g. not being able to launch a game offline). It's like the whole NoJS argument for websites - 99.99% of the world doesn't care, and unless your target audience is extremely skewed in this direction, they will not care about it.
> their servers are generally much faster than torrenting
That seems unlikely, at least for "much" faster. I torrent movies occasionally and even fairly unpopular ones often max out my download speed. Unless you're downloading something obscure, bittorrent is really fast.
It's quite possible that our experiences differ. For me, Steam is the one that regularly maxes out my line (at around 300 mbits/sec), while with torrents, I normally get around 1/10th of that. It may well be my VPN provider, though it does seem to depend on popularity, choice of exit endpoint, etc.
Steam's CDN(Limelight) provides the fastest download speed in my experience (like 600Mbps, limited by my connection). Maybe very popular torrent is also faster but not to be guarantee to be.
>> installs are rapid and safe > Just like normal computer programs then?
No, not really. Compared with piracy, their servers are generally much faster than torrenting (with the exception of insanely popular items on torrents). The installs are usually one-click affairs, not needing to click through 5 pages of "next", and telling it to not try to install on the tiny C:\ drive SSD which doesn't have enough space. Installed games are listed in one place, and tend to uninstall instantly, which is not the case with most normal installers. Their installer manager can also do verification of game file integrity, which is surprisingly often a solution to people's crash problems. In terms of safety, viruses are a non-issue, unlike torrented games.
I do get the privacy arguments, and tend to agree with those. A good alternative would be GoG, which has a decent catalog of games, and offers both offline, DRM-free installers (I believe this is still the case), or a Steam-style download manager for those that want the convenience. I'm unsure, but looking at the company behind it, I would argue they are "slightly less evil", and would probably make even their downloader more privacy-friendly.
But really, I think this is all really just a case of whether our needs match that of the average bloke on the street. On HN, we tend to be very privacy-conscious, but I think it's important that basically _nobody_ outside of this niche gives one thought to how Steam is invading their privacy, or how DRM might be bad, unless they have a direct bad experience (e.g. not being able to launch a game offline). It's like the whole NoJS argument for websites - 99.99% of the world doesn't care, and unless your target audience is extremely skewed in this direction, they will not care about it.