I think what they're implying is that the difference here is that they're not Valve employees. For instance, I know that Valve pays Codeweavers to improve Windows compatibility.
That isn't to say it isn't worthwhile that Valve is doing it, and the article kinda sorta touches on the scale of Valve's activities, but not really. Okay, they've contracted over a hundred devs to work on OSS projects that they rely on. Are those all full-time contracts, or part time? How long are they contracted for? How does that compare to other companies that have similarly contracted devs to work on OSS projects they rely on? As is, the article is essentially "water is wet" for anybody who pays any attention to the interaction between OSS and enterprise. I learned far more pertinent details from one comment[0] on another HN thread on this a couple days ago. PC Gamer couldn't find one of the contracted devs and ask them two or three questions to give some substance to the article?
Seems pretty good open source success story to me?
As opposed to a lot of other hardware manufacturers, where the end-user is 'part of the ecosystem', along with advertisers, and other 3rd parties.
Microsoft and Sony certainly look at Xbox end users (aka gamers) a bit differently than Valve does. They need to keep publishers and advertisers happy. Valve has one audience...others have three (maybe more!?).