> 30% was set when they were handpicking every title ... they could legitimately replace a publisher taking 60%

The "handpicking" era was a walled garden developers spent years protesting. Greenlight was a direct response to developer demands for openness. The "slop" you complain about is what developers asked for. Valve then built discovery tools (reviews, curators, personalized queues, Next Fest) to handle the volume.

> they whittled away the value they provided time and time again

Since 2003 Steam added multiplayer matchmaking, cloud saves, Workshop, Proton, anti-cheat, Remote Play, game recording, Steam Families, regional pricing, refunds, the Steam Deck/SteamOS ecosystem, and ongoing VR investment. The effective commission dropped to ~24% for successful titles through tiered reductions. The rate went down while the platform expanded massively. That is the opposite of whittling away value.

> leaving a skeleton crew to run the ship

Valve grew from 78 employees in 2003 to ~550 today. Revenue per employee is high because the business is efficient. A company "extracting every dollar" does not fund Proton to make Windows games run on Linux at its own expense, develop VR hardware, or sell the Steam Deck near cost.

> gamers villainize Sweeny for being the person that they think Newell is

Sweeney himself explained the difference in 2019:

"It's nearly perfect for consumers already... There is no hope of displacing a dominant storefront solely by adding marginally more store features or a marginally better install experience. These battles will be won on the basis of game supply, consumer prices, and developer revenue sharing."

https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-ceo-the-only-way-to-displace-st...

He admitted Steam was already an excellent product. His conclusion was not to build something better. It was to buy exclusivity and remove games from Steam, forcing consumers onto a store that lacked basic features for years. Epic spent $444M on exclusivity deals in 2020 alone. It wasn't an affinity for some gabe cult that consumers rejected Epic but because Epic offered them fewer choices and a worse experience.

> make $1,100 PS4s as a side hustle

Valve sells hardware to establish new platform categories, not as high-margin "side hustles." Valve's hardware strategy has always been about expanding the Steam ecosystem, not milking unit margins and current hardware shortages fucked them.