I'd bet a sizable portion of steam numbers aren't purchases either. AMD was running the promo such that anyone buying AMD hardware from like July onwards got a free copy.
My argument is that it was inevitable at the time, and everyone saw it coming. It was going to happen regardless of whether Valve created steam or not.
You literally state this:
Turns out it DID make everything a nightmarish hellscape of big brother-esque remote digital rights control where you never own anything you buy. Those 20 year old veterans ruined it all.
I don't think any of that is true. You can avoid most of the shitty DRM today and the big brother-esque remote DRM. People who adopted it then, didn't usher this in.
Everyone saw the current landscape coming, and there was no way around it if we wanted online distribution. I hate DRM as much as the next guy, and love my physical collection, but it wasn't Valve and Steam that ushered in this BS. You can avoid steam, and a large amount of DRM if you genuinely care about. There was pushback years later and even Apple allowed you to DRM-less options.
After years of MPAA and RIAA BS piracy claims from cd & dvd ripping and declining physical sales, every company and their mom was looking into DRM to allay the fears of copyright holders and enable digital distribution. It was going to happen regardless of Steam. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Philips, etc were all launching the same shit. Apple launched the iTunes store months before with complete DRM and people ate that up. Companies new years before people would adopt it if the benefits of digital distribution outweighed the inconvenience, and they were right.
Shit like Denuvo was going to happen regardless, as despite the push back on some of the invasive DRM, some companies remain unconvinced. They do it even on top of Steam.
From a hardware perspective, that's been true since just after the 1983 crash, when it was sold to Jack Tramiel's company -- even before the Lynx and Jaguar. The software side was split into Atari games which has an even longer history of being passed around.
Absolutely, but you still have to learn that and it's still work. Early on I had no idea how many credits "a lot". Their defense/damage system is arguably unnecessarily complex in a way that adds to this. Do I need more corrosion protection, radiation, airborne, or thermal? Does it even matter?
Even with some of the advances, it still like an artificial problem that doesn't actually make the game any better. It doesn't really add any difficulty or challenge, and it's certainly not "fun". There's still a lot of streamlining they could do.
Absolutely, but video game designers actually amplify the issue by making so much useless shit able to be picked up and adding so many mechanics into a game, where as TTRPGs are often more focused. Starfield (or any bethesda game really) has hundreds of useless items that people can sell, random loot drops, and resources for multiple forms of crafting. It's a fantasy future where we could just let folks "teleport" to a private satellite storage facility or something similar to a bag of holding. Instead we just make gamers focus on inventory management which I doubt anyone finds "fun".
I think there's a delicate balance and I don't think we've hit it. I would love to see some data about how much time people spend doing inventory maintenance in the course of common RPGs. It's one of those modern things like making expansive worlds without fast travel that just feels unnecessary.