Valve is the company where we spend a lot of money and they deserve it.
The rest is companies that trick people into giving them money (battlepass! lootboxes!) and they don't deserve it.
People often forget that consumers as a whole are the ones holding the power, and the sad part is that rewarding a company with a good product with your money stopped being the business model and it's now the exception.
I don't disagree with most of your statement, but Valve has and continues to make lots of money from loot boxes in both CS and TF2. Just want to point out that they do do stuff like that too.
Valve is not literally the first but they played a big part in normalizing both lootboxes and micro transactions. Don't rewrite history just because you are a fan.
Not to mention their role in you not owning your games.
> Not to mention their role in you not owning your games.
I do use Steam to "purchase" games, and it irks me that they're still allowed to show "Buy" when in reality you're essentially leasing/renting the game, can't believe it's legal for them (and others) to trick people like this still.
A Steam purchase I have more confidence in than a physical game copy to survive. I trust Steam to honor its agreement with me more than I trust in myself and my feline overlords to keep a game CD alive.
In a previous timeline, this has led to me going on ebay to find CDs of a long lost game (EarthSiege 2), which I promptly uploaded to the Internet Archive as the one distributed by the current license-holder at the time had an older, unstable version with bugs and, more importantly, no audio and my own original copy got damaged to hell and beyond...
Sure, I agree with all of those things, but the fact still stands, Steam is actively lying to customers as the store pages say "Buy" and "Purchase", not "Rent" or "Lease", which are more accurate. You don't actually own the product.
Don't get me wrong, as mentioned, I use Steam and like Steam/Valve, but that move is a bit shitty regardless.
How could it be confusing when that's actually what happens? Imagine HN showed "Delete comment" instead of "Reply" under the comment input, don't you agree that be misleading?
There is a product in the cart, which is a game, and the button says "Purchase", no where does it say anywhere that it's a license (although that's obvious), nor that I don't actually "own" this game after I "purchase" it.
Sure, minor detail perhaps, but I'd still argue that something Steam could do better, and since the industry is lacking self-regulation about this, I'd argue more regulations are needed for this even.
It's on the cart page, before you check out. And I do agree that it should be much more front-and-center, rather than the sort of fine-print thing they have now.
What? Valve basically invented making money with skins and lootboxes, it started with TF2 hats. There is an insane amount of money in the CS2 skin market.
I didn't say Valve is perfect. But they're definitely worth the money I spend there. Great service, proper support, regional pricing, and the list goes on. Everything works today. The work they've put on Proton/Linux gaming easily wins my support.
Did they screw up sometimes? Sure. And I'm from the days when Steam didn't exist. I remember the NoSTEAM game versions in shady sites, including Half-Life 2. Steam was hated with a passion back then. They won by ultimately providing great value and service.
I had a rough time with Proton a few years ago and ended up setting up my most recent gaming rig as a Windows 11 machine. In retrospect it was probably unfair to judge it on dime-a-dozen Humble Bundle leftovers from a decade ago when most of the effort is spent on supporting new releases.
But yeah... just this week I was traveling for work and my kid reached out wanting to play a little Deep Rock Galactic with me. I couldn't believe how easy everything was from my Ubuntu 24.04 laptop. Steam, proton, Discord, all of it just worked and I wouldn't even have realised it wasn't running natively if I hadn't noticed the extra proton download in the Steam client.
> The work they've put on Proton/Linux gaming easily wins my support.
Lets not be naive here, this is the money they are saving in Windows licenses for the Steam Deck, and having their own store instead of Windows Store/XBox PC App.
Yet they are doing zero to foster native Linux games.
There isn't much they can do to foster native Linux support beyond trying to increase the number of people gaming on Linux. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, and you need to make the platform desirable to developers before they will start developing for it.
This is the chicken-and-egg problem though. If you don't get the Linux/Steam Deck audience large enough first, then that tradeoff won't be worth it to developers.
Valve have the money to pay developers to make a Linux port or ensure it works with Proton (maybe they already do in some cases?), if they really wanted to put the heat on Microsoft. Well, any not owned or being published by Microsoft i suppose.
Valve seem happy to let things happen more organically however.
> Yet they are doing zero to foster native Linux games.
"zero" might be a bit harsh, considering that they do some things at least, compared to others who literally do nothing. Steam the platform has native Linux support, what games are natively available is visible on Store listings, and a bunch of the SDKs (all of them even maybe?) are available natively on Linux too. The situation could have been a lot worse.
It will get more worse, with Proton there is no value in e.g. using Vulkan, just use DirectX, and the convinience of modern GPU programming tooling in Visual Studio, HLSL code completion with CoPilot, PIX debugger, and then let Valve have to worry about running it on Linux.
> with Proton there is no value in e.g. using Vulkan
Valve themselves seems to disagree with you here, considering they still have Linux native SDKs available for integration, and are releasing their own games with native Linux support.
I'm guessing if what you say is true, Valve would be the first to move towards that reality you paint, but we haven't seen that yet, I'm doubting we'll ever see that, but the ones who live will see I suppose :)
Valve will get their OS/2 and netbooks moment if they don't foster a proper native Linux games ecosystem, but yeah lets cheer for Windows games translation on Linux while it lasts.
I think there's a reasonable argument that the most stable Linux gaming API surface is actually Proton.
None of this is really going to change until we end up with a situation like the EA/Apple Store conflict: a major player unable to sell a game on Windows for some reason.
Also, it's something of a pragmatic choice -- Valve did put major effort into native Linux games around 2013, but the effort fell flat for a number of reasons.
Proton is them trying a different path towards severing or lessening the Windows dependence, in my opinion.
Totally agree with you there, as much as I love to hate non-transferability, revokable licenses, permanent VAC bans on accounts that got hacked, I still find Steam the most convenient path to "owning" games in one place.
The Linux work done for Steam Deck is fantastic and I do credit their efforts with inspiring others to work on similar projects that extend and complement what Valve achieved. Much of the hard effort did go into Windows games on Linux before Valve looked at it; everything the WINE project, Codeweavers did, gaming via Lutris since 2009, however Valve have definitely been a force multiplier.
Trust is earned and I think Valve are doing pretty well on that front, especially when you look at the differences to other PC stores, Ubisoft, EA, and to some extent Epic. GOG and Itch are very different beasts.
To some extent I miss the time where Steam was totally curated, you had to make an impact to get your game on the platform, back before it was a free-for-all of shovelware and low-effort slop. Occasional controversies aside, at least on Steam the tools / marketing funnel are there to keep the popular games at the forefront of the store whilst also being fairly open to allow devs to publish without being the chosen one.
Is there a danger of doing to games what Spotify has done to music? Maybe, but I reckon the super deep-discount sales have calmed somewhat and are happening later in game's long-tail part of the lifecycle or used as promo for sequels.
There are plenty of publishers that choose to mainly avoid going that route, often the traditional established publishers with console outlets they don't want to cannibalise, for example Sony and Konami.
> Is there a danger of doing to games what Spotify has done to music?
I think such business model ultimately doesn't scale well for games (several million-dollars production budgets sharing minuscule pieces of a ~$20 all-you-can-eat subscription pie).
Microsoft always knew this, they didn't try to win the market, they tried to subvert the business model, probably expecting the industry as a whole moving towards it -- which didn't happen at all, at least not yet.
Simple math would prove this. There's no way acquiring half the good studios in the world and make them release flop after flop was a break-even operation. It's several orders of magnitude behind.
Most of the market talks Nintendo, Sony, XBox, Apple Arcade, Android.
Exactly because they aquired half the good studios, they happen to be one of the biggest publishers, people forget some of those studios keep using their own branding instead of anything Microsoft, and it would hurt Steam if Microsoft decides all those studios would pull out of it.
Microsoft moved to a subscription service because they botched the launch of the Xbox One, with users accumulating digital libraries on the PlayStation, and that failure is something that has continued to drag them further and further down.
I agree that turning CS into a casino wasn’t a tasteful choice on Valve’s part but as someone who has played CS at least once a week for decades I can understand that they needed to find a way to cover server costs somehow. I paid $15 dollars for CS:GO and have clocked 4,500 hours in the game. I don’t gamble but I’d rather those who choose to fund the server costs than Valve charge a monthly subscription to everyone. Skin sales alone would have accomplished this without having to have loot boxes and keys and that’s where I think Valve went overboard with it. Also, for a game that provides so much revenue I expect better anti-cheat and more VAC bans, which are rare.
They didn't need to cover server costs for CS 1.6. I wonder why that is? Hint: CS 1.6 wasn't designed from the ground up as a microtransaction vehicle so could have servers run by the community unlike CS:GO where centrally run servers are needed to make microtransactions work, not the other way around.
The lootboxes drop as a normal course of gameplay, you buy keys to open them. People still play TF2 so presumably some still open boxes. It's also the base unit of trading for high value items.
CS lootboxes are the least shitty ones in the entire industry. There is 0% pay to win, if anything the skins are a disadvantage because they usually stand out.
I didn't say that lootboxes were pay to win and most lootboxes in games are not. That doesn't mean it's not still profiting from and enabling gambling and addiction.
There's a lot of evidence showing that gambling as a child leads to gambling problems as an adult, and loot boxes are just gambling aimed to a large degree at children.
Valve games are even worse for this because Steam trading allows 3rd party sites to sell cosmetics directly for cash, and some of these cosmetics are worth tens of thousands of dollars. It's just children gambling money but with a thin veneer of video game over the top.
And I see no problem with that. I have never bought a single skin for Counter Strike nor Team Fortress 2 and I have bunch. Well, I used to, but then CS2 came out and all of a sudden my skins and unopened boxes were valued at hundreds of euros and I sold them on steam.
If you think enabling childhood gambling addictions and unregulated gambling systems aren't a problem then I don't know what else to say to you. Lootboxes are gambling, plain and simple.
Gamblers will always find a way to gamble. I like getting cosmetics for free even if they are randomized. I don’t think I have ever bought keys to loot boxes, I just don’t see the point.
Americans would rather mention TF2, a game with less than 10 thousand concurrent players and probably making a modicum of money, than ever pretend that game exists or has influenced other games.
Regardless of how many concurrent players it has now, TF2 was massively influential to other FPS games, and it's still held with high regard by the community. It was also one of the first major games to introduce loot boxes.
Valve uses battlepasses and lootboxes (i.e. gambling for minors) as much as the worst in the industry. They are far from a good corporation.
Gabe is just better at PR than the competition and gamers are irrationally tribal and will defend whatever they consider to be part of while ignoring all the bad parts.
I'd like to have an honest conversation about this, but imo Valve is no better than the iOS app store: it aggressively rent seeks and has essentially destroyed the shareware model (which was the best way to discover software in the 80s-90s). It has also willingly been complicit in underage gambling via loot boxes for more than a decade now.
I think Gabe Newell is a visionary for building Steam in 2003, way before Jobs had the same idea, but absolutely everyone and their mother hated Steam back then. I remember the memes on IRC and various forums (and I've been on Steam for a very[1] long time, the first or second day it came out I think). Two decades later, props to them and their useful acolytes for gaslighting the entire gaming community. No idea how Gaben is regarded as some sort of Christlike figure these days, but here we are.
Maybe it's just a "lesser of two evils" thing, as companies/platforms like EA and Ubisoft are the absolute scum of the earth.
I don't know about the rest of your claims ("shareware was the best way to discover software" is really a personal opinion), but this is just factually false.
Unlike iOS, where you cannot publish an app unless you pay the 30% cut, there is nothing that prevents you from developing and a Windows/MacOS/Linux game yourself. You can simply choose to not use Steam - but the benefits of developing and publishing with it (myriad SDKs, game servers, networking, social features, trading cards, anti-cheat, achievements, payment methods, reviews, discovery, forums, launchers, updates, CDN, and on and on and on...) are so overwhelming that it is simply worth it for the vast majority of gamedevs.
Fact: Steam is not rent-seeking - the value that they provide is tremendous, and you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.
> you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.
That's not how it works. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Plenty of businesses engage in rent seeking without having a captive (by most definitions) audience. All that's required is a very modest barrier (ex network effect, non-zero switching cost, etc) and a sufficiently large audience.
Rent seeking isn't even mutually exclusive with adding value. A business can do both simultaneously by virtue of being able to multitask. Most businesses offer more than a single product or service after all.
So first off, you start out by lying about my words, so we immediately know you're not operating in good faith.
What I said:
> Steam is not rent-seeking - the value that they provide is tremendous, and you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.
That's a compound statement that you cut off to change the substance of. What you quoted:
> you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.
And now that we've called out your lie, we can move on to the substance, which is also incorrect.
The definition of rent-seeking disagrees with everything that you've said:
"The attempt to profit by manipulating the economic or political environment, especially by the use of subsidies."
> Rent seeking isn't even mutually exclusive with adding value.
This is factually incorrect - both according to the dictionary definition of the phrase, and according to the way that it's used casually, which is extraction of value without creation of it.
I'm glad that this is happening in the open - when people have to actively lie to try to push a narrative about Steam, it really shows that they have no legitimate points - every thread where these lies are exposed just (justly) boosts Valve's reputation.
You are not assuming good faith, nor are you interpreting what I wrote in the most plausible manner.
I did not misrepresent you. You made two claims and I objected to the second. My objection stands regardless of the presence or absence of the claim about Steam providing value.
Notice that I took no position on whether or not Steam is rent seeking, instead merely disputing the reasoning that you expressed.
However even if I had taken a position to the contrary, I don't see how the definition you quoted would be at odds with that. I think it is fairly reasonably to see a dominant player with network effects as possessing sufficient economic power to meet the criteria you laid out. For that matter it's quite presumptuous on your part to assume that everyone else is on board with the particular definition that you selected there.
And it goes without saying that I disagree with your latter assertion of factual incorrectness. No dictionary disputes the ability of a business to multitask.
Actually interestingly enough if we use your definition then you can rent seek while simultaneously adding value to the same product just so long as you're also engaging in unreasonable market manipulation to increase your profit in the process. Amusingly my working definition had been somewhat more restrictive.
> I did not misrepresent you. You made two claims and I objected to the second.
I made a single claim with two parts:
1. the value that they provide is tremendous
2. you are not forced to use them
And then my conclusion was: these make them non-rent-seeking by definition.
You intentionally rewrote my argument to change its meaning, you know that you are, and you're continuing to lie about it.
I don't need to argue with you further - I've pointed out that you're fundamentally dishonest to other readers, and that's all I need to do from here on.
As someone who worked in game dev in 2008, we loved Steam, for the same reason we loved the iOS App Store. We take it for granted these days but the ability to self-publish on a first class platform and receive 70% of the sales revenue literally redefined the indie game dev industry.
Use of the term ‘rent seeking’ is, in my experience, often correlated with a sense of entitlement and a lack of appreciation for what is actually provided. It’s only rent seeking if no additional value is added which is clearly not the case here.
I'm surprised you haven't been flagged or just a dead comment. Any signals that Apple is not pure evil for taking 30% is not part of the echo chamber group think around here. People never want to admit that it costs money to retail your product no matter where it is. In the physical world, there's manufacturing and delivery costs. Getting shelf space at a retailer takes a lot of negotiating where you have very very little room to bargain. Retailers will even force you to buy back unsold product. Yes, software doesn't have all of that but have their own nuances. A lot of indie game devs don't have time/skill/want to do a lot of what an app store can do. Expecting to get all of that for free because it is software is just not sane. If you are self-hosting all of it, it will not be free as you will be paying for payment processors and a hell of lot more in attracting eyeballs.
You can sponsor a promotion; sales on a bunch of games - but it's not "Brought to you by the cool refreshing taste of Pepsi" it's like "Berlin Game Developers".
Steam as DRM is basically the best case scenario. It is opt-in for developers, meaning there is no DRM at all for some games on Steam. You can download it, back it up, run it without Steam. The games that do use Steam's DRM are trivial to "crack" by replacing a DLL in game folder with a stub (you can find open source ones on GitHub). If Steam had no DRM I think publishers would lean more on other options which are worse for customers.
Shareware died before Steam. Steam launched in 2003 and didn't sell any 3rd party games until 2005. Nobody gave a shit about shareware in 2003. Nobody gave a shit about shareware in 2010 when Steam seriously became useful as a place to play more than the Orange Box and Counter-Strike.
I hated Steam when I first encountered it, but it's not a requirement to publish a game on PC/Mac/Linux. Nor is the process to install non-Steam games full of scary warnings like Google Play even on their own platform SteamOS. And they do let publishers give keys to 3rd party stores to sell unlike virtually every other platform. They aren't perfect but they are nowhere near what Apple does with iOS.
"destroyed the shareware model". You know that they only sell games, and just have the games that they made in the list too(them just being amazing and popular). It's not some easy task as recovering old systems when there are every type of games imaginable. Even if valve made a option to do that, no one will since other companies don't do anything like that.
Wouldn't the Steam digital demo system be the modern evolution of the shareware model? For free you can access a limited portion of the game to try it and consider eventually buying it.
Steam is just a storefront. They hold no monopoly position or power. It's not comparable to iOS app store. Devs are free to list their game on any other storefront concurrently.
This is the same argument Microsoft used ("we're just an OS, totally not a monopoly"). I think to anyone that spends any time doing any PC gaming, it's obvious that Steam is the only relevant storefront by a country mile.
Or did they just get there first, and stayed first due to network effects? Initially, nobody wanted steam. People definitely don't want a second steam - which in practice means sticking to the first one.
I can see why you might think that but I believe that's actually insurance against Microsoft going the Apple route and hamstringing Steam in the process. They needed a near first class platform that would never be used against them to exist and they needed the switching cost for end users to be near zero. By leveraging pre-existing FOSS projects they managed to avoid the vast majority of the development costs which would otherwise have been prohibitive.
Could say the same thing about AT&T, Bell Labs, etc. There’s a lot of precedent here, but most saliently, how you become a monopoly is not really relevant. They absolutely are one. But I’m being already aggressively downvoted with no counter arguments so the Gaben fanboys are here. (Defending a deca-billionaire is hard work, after all.)
What’s your solution then to them being a monopoly? How would you meaningfully break them up? While they outperform the sales of Epic and Gog I’m not sure how they’re abusing their position or how they’re keeping others from entering?
You could separate the storefront from the distribution platform / client. Valve's ~30% cut is often justified by the visibility being on the Store gives you but you can't opt out of that while still reaching the captured audience that definitely don't want yet another client software bloating up their system.
> Could say the same thing about AT&T, Bell Labs, etc.
No, you cannot. AT&T/Bell Labs was a monopoly - they physically controlled distribution networks that made it so you had to use them.
Valve does not. There is nothing that prevents you from simply selling your game without Steam.
And even if there wasn't, claims that Valve is a monopoly are factually false - there are many other storefronts that exist, and many games are published on more than one storefront at once. And, Steam does not gate an OS or platform like Microsoft and iOS do.
> But I’m being already aggressively downvoted with no counter arguments
Every one of your arguments is being countered (such as the claim that "relevance is anticompetitive" which isn't even false, it's nonsensical). Including this one.
> Defending a deca-billionaire is hard work, after all.
...and there's the emotional manipulation. It's pretty clear you're just a propagandist who has a grudge against Steam (maybe you work for Epic?), given that you're going up and down the thread with emotional non-arguments that try to redefine words, pull at peoples' emotions (like the billionaire comment), or just flat-out lie.
Except they do. They control the Steam distribution network. It may not be physical but you still have to use it to reach a large portion of PC Gamers due to network effects and no one wanting to run multiple clients.
Currently you have to also make use of their other services like the Store, and pay for them with a large sales cut, in order to use the distribution network, no matter if you want those services or not.
Tautologically true and therefore irrelevant. That's exactly the same as saying "Walmart has a monopoly over Walmart's physical stores" - that's not a meaningful statement and it has nothing to do with either monopoly status or consumer harm.
> It may not be physical
...and therefore it's categorically different. Don't be dishonest.
> you still have to use it to reach a large portion of PC Gamers
It's called a "distribution channel". You only "have" to use it, in the sense that most people look for stuff in Steam before they do anywhere else, but it is factually different than a telecom monopoly, where you cannot get internet from more than one provider in your neighborhood. This comparison is irrelevant and highly dishonest.
> due to network effects
No, network effects are secondary. People do not install Steam because their friends are there, they install Steam because they want to buy a game or download the games they already have. That's not "network effects" - that's using the tool.
> no one wanting to run multiple clients
Also untrue - almost every single person that I know uses multiple clients, and I've only ever once heard someone refuse to install an additional client, and it was on principle (Epic Games).
> Currently you have to also make use of their other services like the Store, and pay for them with a large sales cut, in order to use the distribution network, no matter if you want those services or not.
...and because it's one of the largest digital distribution networks in the world, this is entirely fair.
You're very clearly trying to stretch the definition of "monopoly" and manufacture harm, without actually knowing anything about Steam or how people use it.
Disagreeing with someone either ideologically or about the definition of a word or some other criteria does not mean that the other party is being dishonest. It is not reasonable to bandy about such accusations.
Steam does control the vast share of desktop gaming. But has no influence on console (Xbox, playstation, switch) or mobile (android, ios). They are a monopoly.
But they don’t abuse their monopoly so they haven’t broken any laws.
Your partitioning between those two things is good, but I still don't think that either label applies to them:
> Steam does control the vast share of desktop gaming.
Between the Epic Games Store, GOG, Humble Bundle, Xbox, Origin, Itch, and a few others, I don't believe their control is anywhere close to the fraction needed for Steam to be a "monopoly", either legally or in casual speak.
> Steam does control
...and, what's more, they don't "control" anything - what prevents you from either using multiple clients (on the player side) or selling on multiple storefronts (on the developer side)?
A monopoly has to monopolize some limited resource or market - you can't really have a monopoly if there's no limiting or exclusivity. That's like saying that Fortnite is "monopolizing" the battle royale genre because it's the most popular - it is the most popular, but there's no exclusivity because you can always play another battle royale in addition to Fortnite.
Monopolies need pie charts (limited resources that are taken by a single actor), but Steam is a bar in a bar chart.
Google controls 90% of the search market and the browser market. There is nothing preventing anyone from searching on Bing. Yet, the correct terminology is control of the market.
Google has a monopoly on search. Have they abused that monopoly? That’s a legal question that’s currently in court.
Steams share is somewhere in the 70s and it is far stickier than Google. A gamer can’t abandon their steam library easily. Have they abused this monopoly position? IMO no, but my knowledge is limited.
You're being downvoted because you're pushing punishing a company for having a better product. They do not engage in anticompetitive practices, there is no enforced barrier to entry in the market nor do they gate entry like the companies you have listed. They are only a monopoly because they have the best product.
That a really silly comparison. An OS is a big deal, you can't just switch off. Steam is a video game store. You can install shit from anywhere. People stick to steam because it's good. It's not morally wrong to have the best product on the market.
If you want the audience as an indie developer, it would behoove you to launch on Steam (because they're a monopoly). Again, MS used all these cute arguments, and they don't really work. There's a reason Valve is always playing very nicely with regulators (especially w.r.t. the gambling stuff). They don't really want to rock the boat, but a benevolent monopoly is still a monopoly and I do think that a 30% cut for running a distribution platform is pretty predatory, especially as bandwidth has been commoditized.
Again, it is not wrong to make the best product. It behooves any manufacturer to sell to distributors with largest reach, especially if it is a non-exclusive agreement, and this is perfectly normal market activity. You seem unaware of the legal definition of monopoly; Valve is nowhere near it. The made up internet definition, having a majority of sales in a market, is just what happens when the product is good. Actually it would be a bit of a market failure for the best product to not have the most sales.
Also please don't point to the failure of Epic or other stores; they're just bad products. Epic store didn't even have a shopping cart for years. No one competent is competing, and that's not Valve's problem.
> If you want the audience as an indie developer, it would behoove you to launch on Steam
Correct, because they're a huge distribution channel, and literally anyone who has ever tangentially touched business knows this and accepts that it is fair to pay for this.
> (because they're a monopoly)
Factually incorrect. Nobody forces you to use Steam. You can create and launch and sell a Windows or Mac or Linux game without ever touching steam. You can self-publish and run your own game servers and CDN, or you can use the Epic Games Store, or you can use GOG, Humble Bundle, Xbox, Origin, Itch, or any of a dozen others.
> Again, MS used all these cute arguments
This is extremely dishonest. Microsoft controlled an operating system, only one of which can run at a time. If you are running Windows, you're not running Linux. And Microsoft entered into distribution deals with OEMs to pre-install Windows, leading to massive default-choice effects. Neither of these are true for Steam - you can install and run every single platform I listed above at the same time, and I've never seen a computer come pre-installed with Steam ever.
> I do think that a 30% cut for running a distribution platform is pretty predatory, especially as bandwidth has been commoditized
So, you have no idea what Steam actually does.
Steam is, in addition to being one of the largest digital distribution platforms in the US (if not the world) - which is by itself worth paying a 30% cut for, a SDK and networking provider that gives you a social network, input (gamepad/keyboard/mouse) library, achievements, digital trading cards, update system and CDN, real-time voice comms, product key redemption, license tracking, DRM, anti-cheat, user forums, and many other things.
If you only criticize things that you actually understand, you'll end up looking a lot less foolish, and undercutting your own points as a result.
What? You can literally just download an exe from any website and run it.
If you're complaining that Valve owns a big list of games and a ton of eyeballs, and not being on that list means those eyeballs don't see you when they look at that list, idk what to tell you because they seem to have earned that part of their business pretty fairly.
Valve is the company where we spend a lot of money and they deserve it.
The rest is companies that trick people into giving them money (battlepass! lootboxes!) and they don't deserve it.
People often forget that consumers as a whole are the ones holding the power, and the sad part is that rewarding a company with a good product with your money stopped being the business model and it's now the exception.