Costco charges an annual membership to shop there. Walmart doesn’t. Both market offering low prices. Costco focuses on good customer support for their customers and good warranty policies and treats their employees better. And prices are cheap with them focusing on bulk and rotating out items that don’t sell well to maintain that. And with inflation Costco has become more popular to try to save money on goods since they sell stuff like food too. Unlike Costco, Walmart has a reputation of entering into new territories cutting prices, putting local stores out of business due to inability to compete with their prices, then raise prices once they’ve secured their territory. They are however both stores selling stuff at the end.

Anyways, some don’t care, and a product is a product so membership to them is seen as bloat the way you see the Steam launcher. So it all depends on perceived value. I understand your disdain for steam if you find no value in it, but for me playnite doesn’t meet my needs. Nor have I had issues with Steam being resource heavy. Its just not a thing that bothers me, but I do understand your point of view and that perceived value on your end won’t change just as mine won’t change. We are different customers with the only similarity of intersection being interest in games, but expectations on features being very different.