I haven't had any real issues with AMD, so take it nots universal. Especially on my mac, the windows ones have been fine as well, but a little less stable since those drivers are more cutting edge.
Scotland isn't really that left wing, I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who lives in Scotland (currently and for most of my life) and has lived in England and abroad. People here just like to pretend they're superior, you're no better or worse, frankly you're not even very different, you just have a chip on your shoulder.
Valve provides hosting, advertising, support, billing etc. Bathesda is essentially providing licensing for the ip and taking a risk they you mod won't harm their product or users, also a little bit of plain old capitalism. Frankly I'm okay with this, it creates a monetary incentive for publishers to create modding Apis etc which can only help in the long run.
I've started seeing it prejnstalled on a few machines and Google has rather obvious marketing on the Google homepage, enouraging you to 'upgrade to chrome'.
And thats why you can do it your self. Forcing everyone to perform a repetitive task which can be easly automated (for 90% of people) is not a sensible default to take.
Honestly steam as much a social network as a games platform at this point and that's what gives them the data, and we've see. How Apple and googles multiple attempts at social platforms have panned out.