I can personally vouch for a great deal of consternation among players of Valve's games at the time of Steam's launch and I have the IRC logs to prove it!

I was also personally resistant to the new thing and to this day have "only" a five digit Steam ID rather than maybe a four or even three digit one.. Haha!

Since then I can say that PC gamers have only benefited greatly from Valve's benevolent dictatorship compared to the alternatives.