[AmbroseBierce]

Attention span is finite and Steam took a big chunk of it from gamers, in other words there is a chance that in a world where everyone hated closed platforms like steam (for not allowing reselling or any other reason) direct ads would be more favorable for developers than steam, or word of mouth, or any of it's alternatives.

[BobaFloutist]

Ok, so now you're criticizing them for being too successful.

They don't own the OS, they don't (until very recently) own the hardware, they haven't really made any major uncompetitive or anti-consumer moves I'm aware of, and they provide a service that the majority of devs consider worth it.

I guess you could argue they're taking advantage of a bit of a "natural monopoly", but there's still plenty of room for other people to eat their lunch, and things like itch seem to have carved out a niche for devs that would rather keep their money than get the additional services Steam offers.

I don't think Steam is flawless, but for how powerful they are, they sure seem a lot less evil than almost every other large corporation.

[cortesoft]

Sure, if we were in an alternative reality, things would be different.

Valve built a platform that gamers like, and gamers like it for all the choices Valve made.

I also find it interesting you chose "not allowing reselling" as a thing that would have made users not like steam... but not allowing reselling is probably the feature that game developers like the most! I wouldn't be surprised if developers would choose to keep the 30% fee over dropping the fee but changing to allow reselling.