PC games were always weird with physical media though, shareware and piracy were prevalent since the 80s. And the physical games were even worse than digital in some regards, with Starforce and Securom rootkit-like drm that crashes modern PCs or Games for Windows Live locking save files (and not even cloud saves, normal local save files) behind online service that is now dead. I resisted making a steam account for as long as I could, but today no one even owns a disc drive, steam just won on convenience

I agree with a lot of this except for destroying physical media. Even consoles went digital, music and movies are digital, I don’t think steam is responsible here