In this article the co-founder of Valve addresses other developers in regards to Valve’s success as a company.  In the article he talks about the advantage of using Steam vs retailers, piracy not being the problem with the PC industry, and how DRM is not the answer to the PC industry.  Steam has had a consistent year to year growth of 100% in terms of users, so I think when they, talk other developers should be listening (I’m talking to you Epic and EA).  If you read the article, it seems like Valve’s overall plan is just to be extremely user friendly, which appears to be working.  I’m a huge supporter of Valve and will continue to be unless they pull a Epic on me.