It's a long article and they deserve the click so go ahead and read it
https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive
This is the Good Guy everyone seems too afraid to call out, the toxic friend who is so popular that upsetting him will just make things worse for you, so you convince yourself he's really not that bad and that everyone else is over-reacting. Once the Good Guy illusion has disappeared, we're left with the uncomfortable truth: Valve is nothing more than one of the new breed of digital rentiers, an unapologetic platform monopolist growing rich on its 30 percent cut of every purchase — and all the while abrogating every shred of corporate or moral responsibility under the Uber-esque pretense of simply being a "platform that connects gamers to creators.”
A company which will spend what has to be millions on legal fees to avoid having to pay you $15 in refunds, but which isn't “evil.” A company which exploits, underpays, deceives, obfuscates and refuses to cooperate at nearly every turn, but would never be caught dead doing “evil.”
The imaginary Gabe, the one in our memes, is a cultural defense mechanism, a happy fiction we all invented to make us feel better about the fact that we were, and remain, willing partners in installing PC gaming's biggest, most opaque, exploitative monopoly — one which we know deep down doesn't care about us at all.
Maybe it's time for all of us to wake up.
