Mr. Wardell, it's not as black and white you are trying to make it look like. Of course you said you love Valve, but you also said some other things you didn't quote in your posting above. A few examples:
"We started doing Impulse weekend sales where we mark things down 70 percent. All of a sudden, Steam starts having weekend sales."
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23085
Steam didn't start doing 75% off deals until AFTER Impulse did the 75% discount on Space Rangers 2 on Impulse.
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/381719/page/3/#2612786
It wasn't true back then and it isn't true today and I gave you proof: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/381719/page/8/#2614538
That’s the reality, I don’t want to be in the position [of being told] “Yeah, it’s free now, [but later] you have to put in this feature [if you want distribution] and make your customers subscribe to Steamworks Elite, which is $5 a month.” That’s the natural progression, but as long as there’s an alternative for publishers to Steamworks, Valve or whoever can’t ever go and say “Well, now you have to get a Steam Gold account.” I mean, look what Microsoft does now because of their monopoly on Xbox 360, you have to pay what, [almost] $10 a month for Xbox Live Gold.
http://firingsquad.com/games/elemental_war_of_magic_interview/page7.asp
You suggested without Impulse::Reactor Steam may require monthly payments from it's users. Of course this didn't happen, Valve even added more extra features for free.
That's becoming an increasing issue with publishers, who have been going to their developers and telling them they can't use SteamWorks, because if they do certain retailers or digital distributors won't carry the game. Call of Duty is the obvious exception, but other titles that have used SteamWorks have had some significant issues because they've been blocked from certain channels as a result.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/acting-on-impulse-interview
This also never happened. Quite the contrary, more and more games have been released featuring Steamworks and I can't recall a single publisher which used Steamworks before and then stopped using it since your statement. So where did this information come from? Did all the publishers change their minds or why didn't it happen?
Does this all count as badmouthing? Propably not, but it sounds a bit different from what you provided in your posting above.