I can still remember the amount of hatred and criticism Valve got when Steam launched with a Half Life as well. Thousands of people were extremely unhappy about being forced onto it!
I was one of them! because at that time no one did it, they were the ones who started the rot of forcing (at that time very poor) software on our machine. Given a choice i would much rather steam, uplay and all of them be optional, and i just open it up to buy and download and then use an organiser of my choosing (and not open anything up apart from the game when i play it.
Sadly that time is long since passed....... but to somehow decree that valve should be the arbiter of the PC games space and only they should force their client on people and no one else should seems illogical to me esp when valve charge a lot of money for the service.
in a way if people want their stance to have merit the statement should be...... its not for sale on GOG or DRM free so i am not buying IF that is someones stance then i fully respect it. I feel like you are shouting at the tide to stop coming in whilst knee deep it water, but i would give kudos for it
(however eventually you may get bored of playing witcher 3, hell blade, small indie titles and 15 year old games)
The "value" steam offers devs is even less now. at least 5 years ago if you had a title on steam you had some decent coverage for free advertising. with so much utter utter junk on their now however the odd little jewel of a title gets completely swamped and lost.
edit I just had an idea, and i think it is great even if i say so myself..... how about if developers put their games on all store fronts (that would allow them) for exactly the same base price BUT added the store fee on top.
so, if people really want Game X, they can pay £20 for it direct from the devs store front, or they can pay £20 +30% from steam. IF consumers really want to buy on steam let them pay the valve tax. This would then put massive pressure on valve to cut their own rates.
Something tells me they would not allow this however