It's because they actively fight for the consumer rather than the publishers.

It's funny though because valve has so much fucking money because they are not chasing next quarters arbitrary gains...

Valve is proof that if you don't try to screw over your customers somehow you end up with profits. Weird how that works, and instead of companies learning something from that we'll... they do what capitalism does....

It does make me nervous though that one player has so much power.

But certainly in the here and now as a consumer, I use steam because it makes life easier. It makes it super easy to join and host multiplayer games, gives me access to convenient game recording stuff without having to have separate software, lets me share games with my found family, and most games have achievements, which my silly achievement-whore brain loves. I'm also grateful because if not for Steam's work developing proton, I doubt my switch to Linux would have been as straightforward as it has been.

I agree that it does seem like a targeted attack on Steam by industry hacks who I trust infinitely less than Steam. Corporations are never our friends, merely our temporary allies. However, the hacks attacking Steam are definitely my enemies, and the enemy of my enemy is my temporary ally