Steam itself, by dint of being another layer between gamers and their games, have to justify its existence and value to them, and generally does through a variety of features as well as its legendary sales. But being a marketplace and distribution network alone does not get you anywhere, not when the cost of setting up shop on the Internet is so low these days.
Actually I don't think anyone has said it yet, but the truth is 90% of the value of Steam is in marketing. Steam gives you millions upon millions of impressions from people actively looking to buy a game right now.
Steam also does a lot to reduce piracy by providing a seamless way to patch your game. This allows you to release tons of patches which make it very hard to torrent the current version of your game.
The problem is the "just fine" part. For indie game shops it has been far from "just fine".