I was going to like your post, as I'm fine with having a debate on the stuff til this part. Most of my list was things people complained about, some of which I didn't partake in or care about, but plenty of people here would argue so threw them in. It wasn't saying the sky was falling, it was spurred by Bruticus' post and some replies (and caffeine) on the shovelware issue. All of it is things people have mentioned or complained about. Besides, not like anything else was going on, so why not debate?
With Greenlight, the system it's self is transparent (sort of), I'll agree to that. Also agree that Valve may have been over-zealous in policing their store in the past. One of the things I quite liked about Steam though, was they tended to avoid allowing dreck to pollute the storefront. Greenlight should have been a way to allow some of the lesser known, non-terrible, games to find their way onto the store (benefiting both consumer, Valve, and the publisher/developer). As it is, it's mostly a joke, a small percentage of games getting threw seem to be not awful. I understand the lack of staff, but I'd want to see Valve's financials to know if that's due to a lack of available funds or a lack of giving a crap. I feel it's a lack of giving a crap, but being a private company it's near impossible to know.
Early Access: Actually this is another reason the post came to be, from my realizing how little I pay attention to early access games anymore (similar to how I used to look at Greenlight at least (sometimes voting), now can't find any reason to). As you pointed out, on paper it makes sense as way to get in on the Kickstarter craze. In practice, it has just littered the store with more poor quality and further diluted it. Some games have come out that have been good, and guess the arguments come down to how much the negatives are worth the positives. Personally, I just find it hard to want to buy a game in EA anymore, due to how many have failed to live up to the promises or been abandoned.
Basically it was probably the most personal of the list, because I feel the lack of moderation has hurt Early Access (and I'll admit solutions to prevent abuse for it, are one of the hardest and may not even be possible without killing the project entirely).
I don't feel the refunds have helped in the regard to EA personally, but imagine that will come down to I believe/you believe circle going nowhere.
Market Restrictions: Not my favorite thing, a couple years ago I actually would be pretty pissed about this (as I was using item flipping to get a few extra bucks now and then). Since the changes with the buying and selling went into effect, going more stock market like, it made that bit more tricky but was also a massive improvement in the system, and I stopped caring mostly due to being more tricky.
ANYWAYS, to get back on topic, it was one that was added more due to other comments then my own beliefs, never did key trades or anything. I get that trading market items for games (etc.) wasn't the intent of the market, it is a bit odd to restrict free market innovation while promoting market policing in other places (Granted, likely due to restrictions don't require them to hire staff/spend money). Could also argue the protections only decreased their gains from a practice people would do anyways, but I'm not well versed in that world to know what is/can be used as currency beyond Steam items (which only learned about from here) and real currency. Cards are still valuable, though feel the goal of increasing the prices on them (by reducing automated trade) has only managed to reduce value of cards, but a lot of perception bias in that (so it's possible the value is the same as before).
Sales: I wasn't thinking about it in terms of deals as much, I agree that there are still good deals (it's just often for things people, including myself, here already own). To me it was more the meta-games and "limited time," stuff/effects. They have meta-games recently, I actually forgot about them in making my first post ><. Most have focused on the market lately which I'm not sure is a better source of profits then the old achievement based ones, though those are easily to manipulate (though if it's mostly for just a badge, not that big of a deal).
Adding sale cards has been a great idea, that I will give them. Tying it into purchases and badge crafting is also a great idea, again credit for that.
With poor memory, I did mix up the changes in the last sale, moving voting to once a day was okay (I was thinking they changed the timers on what used to be 8hr deals, but now I can't recall so thinking I mixed it with the voting change). Assuming I'm right in my mix up/bad memory, I have less to complain about sales other then a preference thing, I also think makes better business sense but meh.
The only other issue I see is in having some sales repeat multiple times, it kills the marketing benefit of an 8 hour limited time sale. I know that was mostly based on complaints, and hell I do find it nice when I miss something, but if I look at it from a more business sense, it doesn't encourage impulse buying if you know/think it might show up again. Basically I feel repeats are hurting from a business standpoint rather then me not liking them (I don't, except for games I want to pick up, thus bias if I went that route anyways).
Workshop/Paid Mods: This is the other, more others saying it then my own feelings, I don't think paid mods would actually ruin the workshop (some do). The implementation with Skyrim was awful idea with huge can of worms issues. On a new game some of those are fixed.
There are still issues with paid mods anyways, also I felt that Valve's cut was pretty unfair to the mod maker, and if I recall they were supposedly policing the use of donation pages (again could be wrong, going off memory which can mean shitty sources get stuck in there). Still think a pay what you want model is best way to handle paid mods, and setting up a service for doing that would have been a better way to go, with smaller cuts of the revenue from the sale.
Lot more issues with paid mods could get into as well, but already spent like an hour typing this O_O. Think policing is needed to prevent some abuses though (legitimate ones to, while greenlight/EA is at times abusing, those can at least be argued to usually (not always but most of the time) legal though terrible moves.), which I can't see Valve willing to invest in, just guessing based on track record.
k
ing boring) what will be the next thing Valve ruins on Steam with their policies. 
im getting tired of the FPS infection
