Valve pay their employees what they’re worth and share their success with them rather than devaluing them and extracting value from them. That’s pretty good going. And given how much they do with so few, it says a lot about their culture and ethic.
Gabe Newell is a literal billionaire. Valve executive are not taking a hit to pay them fairly, Steam just prints so much money that they can pay them more than they have to. Rather than lowering prices for the rest of consumers they decided to pay their staff exorbitant salaries in addition to themselves. It’s better than just paying themselves, but it’s not noble or good on a broad scale, it’s them taking more societal resources than they need to provide a service.
I don’t know about other gamers but I dislike EGS because it’s simply an inferior product and I vote with my wallet. If they offer me more value than a competitor, I’ll gladly use them. I use GOG, itch.io, and Xbox GamePass so it’s not like I’m averse to other platforms. I just don’t see why, if a game is on EGS and Steam (and not on GamePass), what value is there to me as a consumer with going with EGS?
Again, not saying anyone should prefer EGS, but this thread started off because someone said Epic was a bad publisher, which is just based of their hate for EGS, not based on anything to do with their merits as a publishing partner.