I completely agree with you. 21 years ago when it was released it was simply “yet another competitor” to the sort of overlay systems that gamespy and the like were trying to implement. You installed it because Half-Life 2 (and the litany of mods that became empires into themselves) required it, but it took years for it to develop in a direction that pointed to where we are now.

The first time I did a rebuild and now no longer needed the installation media for games, or the license keys in the manual/game jacket, and I was fully sold.

I don’t fully grasp the hatred, because almost every aspect of it is a vast improvement over what existed 20 years ago. But fortunately there are alternatives.