Do not forget that Nintendo is a Japanese-based company, while Steam and EA are not. Japanese business practices are different from other countries.
I agree, their system is not as user-friendly as other services, but it is still nice to be able to get support from them. Imagine someone stealing your handheld and all of your physical games, and never being able to get any of those back without rebuying everything.
Sony is also a Japan-based company. That's not an excuse to be willfully ignorant of how the rest of the world works.