Wow, all these people who say they love Steam could not have been around back in the WON days. Mods and gameplay was better, and way less crashes or issues.
Steam is simply a distribution network to make money, unlike the older ways of simply hosting games for fun gameplay.
It's a delivery mechanism yes, the point is to make money, but steam itself was in fact free, and I have been around since the WON days. I still prefer the way it is now.