Valve In Control Of Shutoff? Developers Burned By STEAM?

Zeiram Wing writes: Waking one morning ready to enjoy a freshly purchased game via STEAM, the client notified me of an update. Reading while it downloaded, the release notes stated yet another fix for the recently released Left 4 Dead 2.

Let me clarify before continuing. This was a STEAM CLIENT update just for Left 4 Dead 2, not a game patch.

Now, there’s been talk of this recently, geared more towards the developer side of things, but the recent string of Valve-game-only client updates have me pondering another side of the question:

Is STEAM "unfair"?