It will be a sad day if HTC affiliates with Steam
It will be a sad day if your car affiliates with gasoline.
Since Steam has a huge monopoly on distribution of PC games, and since more gamers visit both the Steam website and use the Steam PC application than any other single thing in the PC gaming world - how is this a sad day? Obviously there are costs to a company like HTC in terms of whatever Steam charges them per customer, but any customer that comes to HTC through Steam is a huge bonus, a customer that was VERY unlikely to have ever come in through some other route. They can always just jump off the Steam click through subscription system - or whatever that ends up being - and join through HTCs website.
Most smart gamers will figure this out on their own anyway, and understand that having Steam running in the background will be an unnecessary thing...
Congrats HTC. Lots of action happening recently, how can any of it can be called "sad"? Very positive steps since AH3 has come out, so many things, from Bustr's map, to VR, and now to Steam.