A suggestion to everyone: Dont worry , be happy.
This wednesday Steam will launch whether you like it or not. And you wont know whether you like it or not until that has happened. My guess is that steam will have both ups and downs, but it will have a lot more ups than the current HL version.
To all ASE fans like myself, ASE will work with games running on steam. I'm almost sure about it.(I think it was Gabe Newell(valve) that said something like "we look at 3rd party server browsers as mods, we support mods.)
BicycleRepairMan