There is only a decent option in the market and its name is GOG. I fail to see Steam as fair or enforceable in any capacity, but they are so big they dictate the trends.

I only buy my games on Steam and GOG (I mean on PC).

Valve says they have something in place where if they have to close you'd be able to download all your Steam games and play offline.

Now to youe point of "only good monopoly", the reason a lot of gamers say this is Valve has earned the respect of PC gamers with how they treat them and how they treat developers. On top of that they made Steam more than just a storefront, it's a community. They have voice chat, forums, reviews, a good refund policy, an easy to use interface and storefront, an excellent Early Access Program, seamless and free cloud saves, free streaming, great customer support, etc.

It feels like they don't treat the customer bad by giving them a great experience unlike Epic and Xbox PC where there's multiple reasons not to use those stores. PC gamers wanted Epic to compete with Valve when they announced the Epic Store because that would be great to have two big companies battle it out to get our attention, but Epic completely missed the mark of how to get PC gamers to use their store. Microsoft has done a better job offering Game Pass and Play Anywhere as an incentive to use their store, and GOG offering DRM Free games. There was and still is no good reason to use the Epic Store, as there is nothing unique they offer over the others and everything they have is inferior to Steam.

I have noticed something of a cultish air about Steam fanboys, where people fanatically defend them and act as if they can do no wrong and that "Gaben" is some kind of messiah/christ figure.

You've never heard of MoistCritical? He's pretty big.

"Lord Gaben" is literally a meme. Don't take it seriously lol. I still remember when Steam was hated by PC gamers for years when it first launched.

I still have Sega Master System games from the 80s which I got in the 90s and they work just fine...

As with any hardcore fanbase it's hard to tell which people are memeing though and which literally believe Steam is this perfect service that can do no wrong.

Even as a joke, it's pretty cringe.

I have a modest size steam library (91 games) and if anything ever happened to Steam those 91 games, or at least most of them, can be found via torrent. And someone would probably make some type of launcher that mimics Steam to play your already purchased library if the company ceased to exist. So in short, no, I am not worried at all about my steam purchases.

I'm pretty ok with Steam right now. It really is the most consumer-friendly gaming platform out there, even including the console-makers. It is worth a lot to be having such a big company that didn't went public and has to cater to investors.

However, I'm always a little skeptical when thinking about the future. Some day Gabe Newell will step down and I don't have a clue what might follow. But I suspect that Valve will be going public one day, and from that day forward things will get messy. Maybe I'm too skeptical. But I wouldn't rely on Steam staying the way it is forever. I still prefer physical games at the end of the day.