Buy European

i guess technically they have a monopoly on the market place? But it's not like they're ruthlessly destroying the competition like GOG, and itch.io, and epic games. They literally just offer, a better service. The alternative being that you have to buy games from like 12 different platforms that all work differently, which i think most people, would rather not deal with.

to steal 30% of the profits from people that actually make games.

for which they offer services in return, because it's not stealing, because that's how money works.

30% is massive. Imagine you sold something on, let’s say, Ebay and they took 30% of that money. And devs could have other options of markets to sell their games if more people realised how predatory Steam is and stopped glazing Gabe like he’s the video game messiah.

i mean sure, in the context of ebay that may make sense, but ebay doesn't handle shipping for you, do advertising, doesnt provide you any services to do photography of your product, any information about the product you're using. It's literally just an online marketplace that lets you list a product, and then ship it to somebody who buys it, via a third party customer, steam does literally ALL of the middle man work. You list your game on steam, and steam does EVERYTHING else for you, except for traditional marketing, but that's a different story. Usually if your game is good people will play it, sometimes you just need some luck, but time usually helps with that.

And devs could have other options of markets to sell their games if more people realised how predatory Steam is and stopped glazing Gabe like he’s the video game messiah.

you can quite literally just do this, it won't have the same market reach, but it hasn't stopped viral games before. Many a viral sensation has come from itch.

There’s a difference between gatekeeping/allowing only AAA games, and just having 0 standards of what is allowed on the store.

steam has pretty significant standards, especially now that you can't greelight games anymore, you have to actually pay money for it to get listed, sure a lot of the games on the platform are bad, but there are also a lot of really good games, and just because a game is bad doesn't mean it should be delisted either. Sure things like asset flips really should.

Gabe newel is a billionsire capitalist and Valve runs like any other company. Profits first and foremost.

profits first and foremost, except for the fact that a lot of people really just don't have a problem with steam, and steam manages to develop products that obviously arent intended to make money, like proton.

Why have standards to protect consumers when Gabe needs an 8th super yatch to add to his fleet.

also im pretty sure these are just normal yachts.