Actually I still dislike Steam and avoid that too. Generally I will buy a non-steam version of a game if it is available.
I don't want my computer to take longer to boot up or to run slower in case I want to play a game so I don't have Steam set to start automatically.
This means that if I want to play a Steam game (I have a couple like Portal) I must first wait for Steam to open up, get internet, log in (oh so slowly) and finally it will think about opening my game. However undoubtedly there's been an update and so steam will decide to install this first. All in all I'm bored by the time the Valve logo pops up and the actual game can start loading. Or you know, I could just pirate the game and it would open straight away without the need for Steam.
So in short, Steam is also horrible and forced. But at least they make better games and have something like customer support.
This means that if I want to play a Steam game (I have a couple like Portal) I must first wait for Steam to open up, get internet, log in (oh so slowly) and finally it will think about opening my game. However undoubtedly there's been an update and so steam will decide to install this first. All in all I'm bored by the time the Valve logo pops up and the actual game can start loading. Or you know, I could just pirate the game and it would open straight away without the need for Steam.
So in short, Steam is also horrible and forced. But at least they make better games and have something like customer support.