I hope Gabe Newell stays strong and keeps to his fundamentals. I guess all contributions to making gaming easier on Linux would have not happened under a publicly traded company.
The fundamentals being extracting 30% of small indie developers' game revenue? Even with payment processing and a healthy profit margin, 12% appears to be a fair cut. Imagine what game developers could do with an extra 18% of revenue in their hands to pay their employees.
Also game developers are forced by Steam not to sell their games at lower prices at other places. It's taboo to criticize Valve/Steam/Gabe on HN and Reddit so I fully expect to get downvoted like in the past. The community attitude of Gabe worship is weird to say the least.
I use Steam because they care about Open Source. Not many "ecosystem" hustlers ever give back to the community they take from, but Valve does, and I appreciate the work they do as a non-Windows user. Were it not for their efforts in DXVK I wouldn't be able to play Indie games at all, Valve-published or not. The "community attitude of Gabe worship" largely springs from the fact that the guy still answers emails, manages his business, and keeps Valve private to avoid shareholder intervention. A lot of the current Valve "spirit" is associated with Gabe Newell's dedication to avoiding venture capital and supporting Open Source appropos of nothing.
Nonetheless, are Valve, Steam and SteamDeck the only reasons I spend money on games. Where other publishers just provide a storefront for their own games, Steam builds a customer-pleasing platform where, unlike Apple, you have the choice to go to another store. Additionally, their recommendation systems encourage people to buy niche/indie games and not only the most expensive AAA titles.