Valve does a lot of things pretty badly, it's just that they and the fans control the narrative.

Well, yeah…I mean it’s a non-zero group of people that specifically avoided consoles because of the walled gardens and monopolistic behavior by the companies that make them and the stores you get locked into.

So when one of the main vendors for your PC gaming platform starts behaving similarly of course you’re going to notice it.

Doesn’t matter how you got there, if you have become a monopoly you should be brought low.

I wish Valve weren't so efficiently run. One of the few companies I wouldn't mind working for, even though they're not perfect. But they only have a few hundred employees and I'm not that good at anything, unless they need a full-time love-maker.

I'm no steam fanboy, we've been at odds ever since they decided to stop supporting Windows 8 and 7 and deliberately breaking the client so it stops working with those old systems, but there's no denying that Steam does a bunch of things right.

All these Monopoly charges are just bitter competitors envious that they can't just walk in throw some money and start getting market share from the PC market, they would actually have to put in an enormous amount of effort to to even approach all the functionality and feature set covered by Steam.

The PC is an open platform, you're not obligated to anything, there are multiple storefronts which you can decide for or even go at it without using storefronts. Tell me again what are the alternative storefronts on the Xbox, PS, Nintendo, Apple and Android ecosystems?

And for the "if you're not on steam you might as well not exist" crowd, isn't that, like exactly that, the value that Steam brings to the table? You only need to decide if that's worth the 30% cut they ask in return, like with any other purchase or contractual decision you make in your life.

I mean ... all roads that lead to a monopoly ... do lead to a monopoly.