A digital marketplace for games existing is indeed in no way a bad thing.
Neither is Steam, per se. I use it myself happily and valve has done a lot of good for gamers, even more so as someone gaming on Linux.

However: That doesn‘t make it better that they’re still at least partially responsible for online drm (although ea, ubisoft and microsoft aren’t exactly innocent either).

Platforms like gog, which sells games without drm, get way more goodwill from me though.

Also, I find it a bit naïve to think that steam singlehandedly made PC gaming popular. There were a lot of AAA games, even well into the 2010s, that used either disc based drm, no drm or – starting around 2010 – other, non steam online drm.
I didn‘t have the need for a steam account with more than goat simulator until like 2016 or 17 and I did play a lot of games.

What I do give steam credit for is making indie games popular. Prior, those just weren’t really a big thing. Thanks to steam, you didn’t need a big publisher.

Also: I do have gripes with the gaming community hating drm and other game launchers (and especially here on Lemmy being anti capitalist and anti billionaire) but then pulling out the pitchforks of anyone points out that Valve maybe isn’t perfect either…