I mean, I’ll give full Kudos to Valve for investing in Linux gaming, it wasn’t exactly a selfless maneuver, but it is still valuable and makes the world a better place.
And I’ll give them Kudos for contributing to VR, but they neither popularized it, nor make the best headsets, both of those titles go to Oculus. They do have the hands down best VR game ever made, but even that is not what popularized VR, Beat Saber is.
Ultimately, Valve has made billions and billions in profits on top of all that investment, and on top of paying all their employees $300k+ salaries + stock. I like a lot of what Steam offers, but it’s also objectively unquestionable that they could have offered all of what they offer for far less money, but their de facto monopoly means that everyone will buy from them no matter what.
Because, let’s be real, gamers aren’tt hating Epic for having to download mods through a third party mod site, they’re hating them for having to use a second launcher / store.