Well, you usually don't want to run Steam as root anyway.
Although I run my Garry's Mod server as root.
You shouldn't be running anything as root unless it's any sort of installation process. In case you didn't catch it (I can't honestly tell, I'm not trying to be an ass here) I was just being sarcastic with the login as root sentence.
There's your problem.
YEAH, GOD. INSTALL GENTOO, COMPILE EVERYTHING. HACK THE PLANET