I mean, what do they lose? They can still chat with the PC client, post on the forum in limited amounts, and add friends if the other party sends the request. 15 people who are going to lose sleep over not being able to chat on the phone app? If they've never spent $5 on digital titles, what kind of investment do they have in the platform that they would care about losing trivial community features?
Well, in my opinion the only feature that hurts are the friend requests.
My 15 people are the only people I know of, but I don't think it is unreasonable to assume, that there are many active steam accounts who only have one or some big retail games.
Why is it okay to take away their community features?
Why don't the new rules only apply to new accounts?
Your situation is weirdly specific and not likely a very broad experience.
I was trying to be as specific as possible as far as it relates to the topic.
Do you really think there's a lot of people out there that are forgoing buying games on their own account because a friend has a payment method setup already and are just going to give him the cash directly?
No, but I think there are many people who only use retail games or key-sellers.
If anyone seriously can't find a game that they're marginally interested in and runs on one or more of their computing devices (Windows, Mac, OR Linux) then I will personally come to your house and buy you a $5 meal of choice, hell I'll even cover the goddamn taxes and tip.
Nobody is denying, that there are cheap and good games on Steam's storefront.
But that doesn't mean one is actually interested in playing them. Some people are contempt with the games they have.
I think we enthusiasts on boards like NeoGAF, who have backlogs in the double digits, or care about hats, or jsut buy games because they are on sale are the exception and not the rule.
Now some people are suddenly forced to spend money you were not going to spend, if you want to keep access to features you had before.