I am lazy, and as such can't be bothered to read through two pages of text, so allow me to simply offer up these two, hopefully relavent-to-what's-going-on points:
1) Steam does, in a way [http://store.steampowered.com/stats/], track your internet useage. However, this is very much 'in a way'. What they do is when you play some Valve games (you can see which ones on the page I linked to), they monitor some information. Usually this is stuff like where people die, what weapons kill them, etc.
They then use this information to help make the next patch. For example, if people keep rage-quitting at a certain point in Half-Life 2, maybe the patch'll make it slightly easier there or whatever.
2) I was a little nervous when I first installed Steam, but it has never ever failed to live up to my expectations. Occasionally it's a bit slow on start-up, but the rest more than makes up for it. I know it's just one person's experiance, but it's been an overwhelmingly positive one.
1) Steam does, in a way [http://store.steampowered.com/stats/], track your internet useage. However, this is very much 'in a way'. What they do is when you play some Valve games (you can see which ones on the page I linked to), they monitor some information. Usually this is stuff like where people die, what weapons kill them, etc.
They then use this information to help make the next patch. For example, if people keep rage-quitting at a certain point in Half-Life 2, maybe the patch'll make it slightly easier there or whatever.
2) I was a little nervous when I first installed Steam, but it has never ever failed to live up to my expectations. Occasionally it's a bit slow on start-up, but the rest more than makes up for it. I know it's just one person's experiance, but it's been an overwhelmingly positive one.