This coming from someone that has never had it installed on his PC, uses second-hand information, and hasn't followed the updates.
My knowledge of Steam is primarily from first-hand use although I certainly am aware of others' problems with it. As for updates, the fundamental problems and shortcomings of Steam have never been fixed. Any updates have only addressed minor interface and presentation bugs. Steam's bloated size, mandatory use, and its unreliability, inflexibility, and restrictiveness which prevent users from playing their games how and right when they want have never been fixed. Valve could fix those problems, but it won't because it doesn't trust its customers and wants to control when and whether its customers can play the games for which they paid.
Steam has given me a problem, once, when my internet was down and it wouldn't go into offline mode.
Well you have been fortunate then. However, just because your Dell laptop battery didn't explode doesn't mean that others' won't or haven't. Steam is fundamentally flawed because of how Valve has implemented it, and if it weren't, you wouldn't have had even that one problem that prevented you from playing the games for which you paid.
This comment was edited on Aug 27, 03:49.