What is a Steam's cut? Also 30%?
And additionally steam isn’t a walled garden, there is actual choice, and steam goes out of its way to be usable on multiple platforms. Very different situation to the locked down apple ios ecosystem.
They could probably lock this hardware down to only allow steam games, but they don't
Steam is also a monopoly but it doesn't abuse it's monopoly. E.g. impose terms like games can't release on other stores for a lower price &c.
Nothing stopping a competitor from coming in with a superior game store.
People forget there's nothing inherently wrong with monopolies. It's only when they abuse their monopoly position that there's issues.
Steam's customers are game publishers. Steam provides a service to connect publishers to their audience. Their business model is not "takes money from customers in exchange for goods". It is "takes a cut of each sale that a publisher makes on their platform"
Given that there is no real friction for end users to install Epic Launcher or GoG launcher, is Steam really a monopoly to their customers, the publishers?
If Steam tries to muscle a publisher, they can refuse to publish on Steam and still have options. When popular games aren't on Steam, it does seem like people have absolutely no problem installing another launcher/storefront to access it
Look at the massive success of Fortnite, which is only on the Epic Launcher
Valve remains as one of the rare early tech company successes that has not suffered from enshitification the way so many others have. A key to that is that they have found a way to make a ton of money, and their leadership is happy to be very rich without continuing to expand and grow at all costs. If that business model is threatened, I’m not convinced that gamers and game devs would necessarily be better off.