Are you a bot? The value they provide has only increased over time. Do you even know what proton is? They rebooutionized Linux gaming and made it open source. Steam input is a godsend, both for developers and players, and I speak as someone who's both. The steam workshop and community market make it easier than ever to add mod support to your games (and to mod your games, from a player's perspective. Just compare modding The Binding of Isaac before vs after the Repentance DLC), and to have marketplace for in-game items, respectively. That's without mentioning the sheer reach that the steam store gives your games.

They've always been the most pro-consumer company in all of gaming. They're still the only company who still gives full, first-class modding and community server support for their multiplayer games. Not a SINGLE other company does that, and as a player, I highly appreciate that. It's the only thing that keeps me from getting too mad about the way Valve has been treating TF2 in the last decade. Other companies (including Epic!) just let their games become lost media.

They're the biggest for a reason. Players choose them, and developers choose them. I have tons of free games on Epic. I even bought some games on there. But I just never play them. Logging in is a hassle, the app is slow, and it's just not as smooth, especially on Linux. Epic never gave a fuck about me. Valve helped me at times I thought no company possibly would. I managed to refund a game weeks after the deadline, because a Valve employee noticed I hadn't actually played the game until nearly a month after purchase, and they let me get my money back. Would Epic do that? I doubt it.

The PlayStation comment is just so uneducated and ignorant it's not even funny. I won't even take the time to argue with that

> 30% was set when they were handpicking every title ... they could legitimately replace a publisher taking 60%

The "handpicking" era was a walled garden developers spent years protesting. Greenlight was a direct response to developer demands for openness. The "slop" you complain about is what developers asked for. Valve then built discovery tools (reviews, curators, personalized queues, Next Fest) to handle the volume.

> they whittled away the value they provided time and time again

Since 2003 Steam added multiplayer matchmaking, cloud saves, Workshop, Proton, anti-cheat, Remote Play, game recording, Steam Families, regional pricing, refunds, the Steam Deck/SteamOS ecosystem, and ongoing VR investment. The effective commission dropped to ~24% for successful titles through tiered reductions. The rate went down while the platform expanded massively. That is the opposite of whittling away value.

> leaving a skeleton crew to run the ship

Valve grew from 78 employees in 2003 to ~550 today. Revenue per employee is high because the business is efficient. A company "extracting every dollar" does not fund Proton to make Windows games run on Linux at its own expense, develop VR hardware, or sell the Steam Deck near cost.

> gamers villainize Sweeny for being the person that they think Newell is

Sweeney himself explained the difference in 2019:

"It's nearly perfect for consumers already... There is no hope of displacing a dominant storefront solely by adding marginally more store features or a marginally better install experience. These battles will be won on the basis of game supply, consumer prices, and developer revenue sharing."

https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-ceo-the-only-way-to-displace-st...

He admitted Steam was already an excellent product. His conclusion was not to build something better. It was to buy exclusivity and remove games from Steam, forcing consumers onto a store that lacked basic features for years. Epic spent $444M on exclusivity deals in 2020 alone. It wasn't an affinity for some gabe cult that consumers rejected Epic but because Epic offered them fewer choices and a worse experience.

> make $1,100 PS4s as a side hustle

Valve sells hardware to establish new platform categories, not as high-margin "side hustles." Valve's hardware strategy has always been about expanding the Steam ecosystem, not milking unit margins and current hardware shortages fucked them.