The DRM policy for Steam is essentially the same as for the Xbox One games you buy online with the exception that you don't have to phone home once a day. People aren't complaining about Steam DRM and that's my point here.
A lot of people do complain about Steams DRM. But there are many key differences.
1. There are games that you can buy on Steam that you don't need to run the Steam client at all for, it is up to the pub/dev if they want to use the Steam DRM.
2. There are alternatives to Steam for the majority of games that come out. Yes, some require Steam, but most do not require the game to be registered to Steam.
3. Because there are alternatives to Steam, they have competition and have a lot of sales at very very deep discounts. When you can buy a game that came out 6 months ago for $5-$10 you can deal with not being able to trade it away. Even new releases you can get for half off within a month a lot of times on the PC.
4. Steam provides a lot of extra features that most people like and are willing to accept as a trade off for the DRM.
5. While they are both companies and companies exist to make money, MS is publically traded and has shown time after time they have no problem screwing the consumer over. Valve, while not perfect has shown they care about their customers and isn't looking to nickle and dime them at any opportunity.
6. Steam has offline mode, while it has some bugs for some people, they have been improving it. You can stay offline a very long time and play your games without having to check in with the servers.
7. No paywalls on Steam. You purchase the game and that is that. You don't have to pay to be able to play online.