I'm fine with it as long as it brings the simplicity of modern consoles to PC as an OPTION and not something forced upon us. As we all know options mean more money required for development and testing when it's far simpler to not offer a option and force one method. This can be seen by operating systems slowly going to the "app" environment and locking down their software.
I find the concept of steam "allowing" offline play as repugnant. The capability of offline should be there by default if it's an offline game. A couple of weeks ago a steam dev stated that offline not working in steam was a bug that was eventually fixed a couple of months ago (and steam has been around how long?) but it's sill ridiculous that you have to be online to force steam to be offline and Valve allowing 3rd party DRM into the games on Steam shows that either Valve doesn't give a shit or they have very little clout with the publishers.
Forced updates are also a PITA. There's no reason that we shouldn't be able to more easily control the update process or to revert back to previous versions. The standard excuse is "blah blah multiplayer blah". It's very easy to implement a version check so I don't see how that would be an issue.
I'm also wondering about customer support. It's well known that Valve have no customer support. How is this going to work with these new consoles? Will these PC gamers that don't want a PC for games be fine with troubleshooting their steam box by themselves or searching the internets for a fix for their issue? Will they be willing to put up with the more frequent bugs they will inevitably have on the steam box as opposed to a console?
Gifting and workshops mean nothing to me (along with almost all steam features) since those are proprietary steam features. I've been able to gift anything I want for as long as I've wanted and I've been able to mod games and download mods since I started using the PC. Now does steam provide a easy method of doing so for PC and console users? Yes. Do I want the PC to require Steam to perform those functions or to monopolize the market so that they are not viable elsewhere? Hell no and screw steam if that's what happens.
My biggest fear is that most users are lazy and only care about their own happiness and always think in the short term so eventually the freedom the average user could have with their PC will slowly degrade until those who do care are just a niche of a niche of a niche.
Admittedly this is all conjecture but it's what I've seen slowly happening to the PC market over the years and sadly the average user doesn't give a crap. They just want stuff to magically work and that's no bad thing but there need to be options if we are using a PC.
