And conversely, I see a ton of people who criticize Valve extremely, sometimes literally hysterically, over issues they fundamentally do not understand, over things that … Valve doesn’t have any real control over… things that basically every comparable actor on the same stage does to a far worse degree than they do.

People just don’t like it when they cannot put things ideas and/or people into either the good box or the bad box.

People don’t like it when things are complicated, when things are a mixed bag… people do like it when they can be very emotional, either negatively or positively, about anything.

Like here lets try this:

Loot Gambling? Bad, very bad.

Gacha games, Robux, etc., also bad, very bad.

Open source development of Proton? Good, very good!

Same with many, arguably as or even more important open source frameworks, systems, libraries, etc.

30% ish cut of game sales? Not great, not terrible.

Arguably reasonable, given all the awesome stuff Steam does in terms of free marketing and discoverability and distribution… definitely not perfect though.

Steam Machine expensive, bad.

But also… they’re a company of less than 500 people. They’re literally nobodies in terms of volume and sourcing parts in bulk for theoretical price discounts, and they actually have way, way less money to throw at stuff like that than what people are used to from other console manufacturers.