Massive credit needs to be given to Gabe Newell for steering PC gaming in the right direction. His forward thinking and opinions may not be shared with his peers, but kudos for being an actual active part of the PC gaming community and creating a hugely popular gaming platform, Steam.
A gamer on ih8evilstuff.LiveJournal emailed Gabe in regards to EA and its use of broken DRM methods. EA's involvement with with the retail version of L4D was also mentioned.
An excerpt of Gabe Newell's response:
As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I'll be able to play my game and maybe I won't).