I think I can counterpoint better.

See when MS tells Vista Ultimate owners "Gee sorry about that Ultimate Extras thing but hey you can buy Windows 7!" it's evil MS trying to screw people. But when Valve says "We're making your game obsolete by releasing its expansion pack as a sequel but we'll make dubious promises to keep releasing stuff for the first one." that's just fine and anyone who says otherwise is a whiny loser with an entitlement complex. Right?

Let's try the numbered points.

1. No developer has embraced the mod community? Didn't iD release source code or did I imagine that? What about Stardock and their encouragement of mods? What about Battlefield, what about Unreal, what about... you know what, nevermind, I don't have time to counter the Valve-blinds of all the CS kiddies and HL worshipers on this one.

2. Yes the Steam "community" is free. So is a freaking website! We should be grateful Valve offers a free "community" aka "easy way to constantly spam you to buy our DRM infested games"? Wow gee thanks for that, you are truly the champions of gamers! Now can I play a game without ever needing a net connection, or do I need to go to Xbox for that?

3. Umm I'll deny that a retread BSP and static radiosity engine with some functive physics bolt-ons is "among the greatest games ever made" if you like. Wow, "free deathmatch"! You mean a feature everyone had been expecting from games for years and getting for free with most FPS demos? Wow how generous. Maybe it was released separate because HL1's DM had such crappy net code it got the game slammed in reviews and Valve was still feeling the hurt? And episodic games were supposed to come out for cheap and often, HL2's expansions were neither.

4. Ah yes The Orange Box. AKA "Crap our 'episodic' expansion took way too long to come out and now people are mad so let's throw in this student project and that mod we've been sitting on for 10 years because we realized we should buy CounterStrike instead and then killed it so as not to compete with ourselves!" Crap why do people rave about the out of the box indy game and the sequel to one of the most popular mods of all time and ignore our vastly more expensive to develop expansion pack for our aging flagship game?

5. Portal and TF2 were "only $19.99" if you had HL2. Well gee CounterStrike and TFC were "free" if you had HL1 ten years ago. This is an improvement? No, this is Steam ramming piecemeal sale of game features down our throat with DRM.

6. Yes let's talk about TF2! I love TF2. It's probably my favorite game since TF1, which I played for hours a day and even helped run a clan for. TF1 was the original quake mod, predating even Threewave CTF, and when Valve saw its success they thought they could buy it. So they did, ported it to the heathen TFC on HL with its crappy net code, and started work on TF2. Which was supposed to have this "amazing new engine" that I believe Intel used an alpha of to showcase the value of SSE (by doing tesselation or something). TF2 was going to be this ultra-realistic team based shooter... and then CounterStrike took off and Valve snapped that up. But oops, now they HAVE an ultra-realistic team based shooter! So they don't want to compete with themselves, an sit on TF2 FOR TEN FREAKING YEARS! Eventually it only sees the light of day by piggybacking on the R&D budget for new animation improvements in the engine, and even then only gets released as a "please take this offering and don't be mad at us for our failure at 'episodic content'" offering and is immediately seen as being worth far more than the episode it came with. And the people behind TF and TF2 have fought hard to continually update the game with new maps (taken from the best user-made ones that appear on servers just like TF did) and new weapons (much like how the original TF userbase would mod the mods), and somehow convince Valve NOT to sell them with micropayments or bundle them into a "sequel" or "update pack" that would kill the game.

7. Yes weekly price specials. Someone has re-discovered the basics of economics and that more people will buy an intangible non-need product if it's priced lower than if it's priced higher. Way to go. Now if only they could start showing that draconian DRM like forced online activation only hurts legitimate customers like Stardock has been saying for years and even EA seems to be realizing.