Steam has some great benefits. Linking to Friends, game library, etc are all great. I am a huge fan. But you give away a lot of rights for these benefits. And that is the future. People giving up rights to get the shiny new thing. See South Park The Entity episode for reference.
The major problems of digital distribution vs CD/DVD:
- You need internet to play/install. Sometimes that is a problem.
- Steam could close its servers any minute. Goodbye to your $1000's of games. Microsoft has already done this with music, so COH3 on MS store is a big risk. Xbox has made this much more stable of a platform.
- Being forced to update games just to play them. Maybe a new patch breaks everything. Maybe you dont have access to inet to download 57 GB of garbage every week like new dance moves or pink boots.
- You have to have some sketchy client running on your PC doing who knows what all day long. PCs are tools. They can be used to do a lot things. Between Win10 auto update, client apps doing shit, etc YOU are no longer in control of YOUR PC (that YOU paid for). How about if your car just auto updates itself into oblivion while your out on the road?
Back in the day I would order a new PC for work and as soon as it came in drop Quake onto it to run Timedemos and get FPS numbers. Cant do that with Steam using works inet. My boss who was near retirement would go "How did it do? That good huh? Order another one."
Not having cd/dvd's is great for the environment.
Steam has allowed so many indie dev's to get their product to a massive audience they could never do before.
Being able to patch and update games is great for developers and gamers, especially for MP. Not sure you're forced to update, thing you can play it offline.
Comparing a game client to a car is weird and doesn't make any sense.
Having all our content online regardless of what it is, is always a risk, tho only tiny.
Digital distribution has its issues but overall it has been a massive positive.