Steam aren’t your friend, just play the game where it’s cheapest and move on.
No but many of us have had steam accounts for over a decade, never had any major issues with it, know it's got a robust refund policy for companies doing dodgy stuff and arguably more important it's got a multiplayer system that makes it easy to play with friends, we'd need to find those friends on other platforms (if they even have those platforms) if we wanted to play there. Bottom line is unless it's a single player game, it'll get bought on Steam so I can play with other people, who have most likely bought it on Steam (or a key elsewhere and then redeemed on Steam).
I've been using Steam since Half-Life, it works.