Honest question - do we, as PC gamers, really want all major publishers to splinter off and have their own individual clients for their games?

For reference, I've been on Steam for 12 years, so I clearly have a stake in Steam sticking around long term. I'm only up to 237 games, but it's been my go-to PC client since digital distribution became a thing. Nowadays, since I work full time, I only have two clients that I use and I'll keep it at that indefinitely, but I'd really honestly rather use one. I use Steam for everything, and Battle.net for Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, because I've been a Blizzard fan since the Warcraft 1 days.

Anyway, Speaking generally, without bringing up the merits of the various clients people currently use, how does this benefit us as the consumer? A comparison I like to think of is Netflix versus HBOGo, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc - It's pretty annoying to have to hop between which service I'm using to get the show I want, and I'd way rather have it in one place for convenience sake.

With Steam, it definitely is not perfect, but how would having to install Origin, uPlay, Steam, and whatever other client major publishers would eventually have us use (hypothetically) benefit us at all? I could see the more direct customer service being a plus, because publishers who release their game have a stake in making sure the experience is as nice as possible, but... what else?

Personally, I lived through using multiple things for PC gaming. The clunkiness and user-unfriendliness of having to use AllSeeingEye for some games, GameSpy Arcade for others, a few different downloading services to hunt down the latest patches, not to mention individual clients for games... It was hellish, and I really think a key turnaround in the early-mid aughts that helped resurrect PC gaming was the versatility and success of Steam as a platform. Within a few years of Steam being released, the countless articles and blog posts about PC gaming being dead, or dying, seemed to vanish. I think a lot of people seem to forget that in 2001 and 2002, it was incredibly rare to see PC Ports of games, and Console/PC gaming were very much so separate economies. The whole "PC Gaming Master Race" thing is really a recent invention, all things considered. For a very long time, PC gaming was in its death throes, and that wasn't just console-magazine hyperbole. Shit was dire.

Having a single client is a great thing in my book, and like I stated earlier, since I work full time and have a life outside of gaming that I need to tend to nowadays, I no longer have any interest in splitting my time across multiple clients with different friends lists and different usernames and different passwords. It's so much easier to have one simple client to use. On top of that, Steam is pretty damn good, especially from where it came from. I think people don't realize how much Valve brings to the table for publishers/developers...

Steam handles patching, installing, file management, fixing errors with games that used to require a re-install (Now I just right click, verify files), and optionally provides anti-cheat in the form of VAC, DRM in the form of Steamworks, mod support and installation in the form of Steam Workshop, social tools (that have become way more popular than I ever personally imagined), and basic customer service for tons of easy-to-fix problems that come up. These things, together, are no easy task, and it's all what Steam provides. I don't think people remember how much "fun" it was to manage tons of physical media, keeping track of eighteen floppies for installing games, or six CDs, plus hoping that CD-keys wouldn't smudge and the like.

Hell, as an anecdote, I recently built a new computer after five years. I set Steam to install 50+ games overnight, and when I woke up the next day, it had installed all of them, zero problems, patched up and ready to go. That's fucking magical compared to what PC gaming used to be, and about as close as it can get to buying a console game from the store, popping it in my console of choice, and getting right to playing without having to worry. I dunno, I find that pretty mesmerizing nowadays.

Maybe I'm ignorant, so exactly what benefit would it have for consumers as a whole if we had multiple individual clients based on publishers or developers? I think we stand to gain more from having one single powerful digital distribution tool that has all games on it. I've seen nothing but benefits and positives stemming from Steam becoming a thing, and I've had it since October of 2003. Enlighten me, I might be totally off-base and wrong.