lloyd, with respect, I think you're missing the point.
Steam, as in the program itself, is proprietary, and I doubt will ever be liberated.
Steam also comes with DRM, called steamworks. The unfortunate thing with Steam is that they've managed to normalize DRM to the point where people don't even question it, because it "just werks". While Steam's DRM is much better "managed" than say, Origins DRM, it's still DRM.
The scary thing about all this is that in some respect, the consoles, especially the PS4, are looking ethically superior than steam. Most importantly, with PS4 games, for instance, you actually own a physical copy of the game that doesn't require always online connectivity. But with steam, you need a connection, and you still need steam to even play. If you want to play a game, but don't want to install steam, well, that's too bad, Valve wants control over your gaming library.
And I think this is such a shame, because I used to play countless hours of TF2 and counter-strike, and Half-Life 2 is still one of my favorite games.
So what's more ethical: say, the PS4, in which you actually own a physical copy of the game, and doesn't require an internet connection, or steam, with its prevalent DRM, always-online requirement, but on the other hand is able to run on a GNU/Linux system?
I really don't know
