With my backlog of games I have, but never played, I really find it hard to care. I'm not running out of games. Keep piling on reasons for never buying your games. So I won't. Not my loss.
Eventually it'll be enough reasons for enough people that they'll notice. Guessing it isn't that time yet though?
I would argue it's still better than keeping it closed though. It really is a half way mark. It allows those that do care and have the know how to actually fix the game they wanna play.
I highly doubt it'll lead to Valve selling copies, let alone a financially relevant amount. So it can't exactly be classified as exploitation either. Basically I think it's fine.