Steam might be annoying but PC gaming was MUCH worse before steam came along.

I cant imagine zoomers having the patience to type out the shitty 32 character cd key on the box every time you install a game. Waiting an hour or two for it to install from disks. You only know about game updates when suddenly you or one of your friends cant connect anymore and you have to manually go find and install the patch.

Other early DRM was much much worse than steam. We got the lesser evil.