People can always buy on another platform if a publisher chooses to make it available. This isn't the iPhone app store, where you're mostly stuck with whatever Apple demands from you.

You are also absolutely wrong about indie titles. Many of the games that I'm presented on my personalized top pages on Steam are indie. And Steam makes it very easy to find indie games.

I don't understand your point on "marketing exists for a reason and it's also costly". You seem to be undercutting yourself by saying that the marketing provided by the Steam store provides actual value.

Selling hardware at a loss only makes sense when you control everything that's done with it. Consoles can be sold at losses because they can't (generally) be used for purposes other than playing games on which the console makers make money. But a Steam Deck is just a PC. If they sold them at a loss, people could just buy them and use them as PCs.

Steam is literally a monopoly. the Apple argument doesn't cut. you are free to use (F)OSS but go freelance graphic design with Gimp or Krita telling your clients to f*-off Adobe files. or any CAD work. the average Windows Nvidia user won't trade convenience

just take a quick check on wishlists, buys and views of indie people releasing games on Steam without marketing budget (money or popularity wise). it isn't a magic bullet, otherwise, marketing would be obsolete... even AAA industry burns millions of USD at

30% is a huge hit on top of all the thing studios have to pay. they just comply because it's either that or go home on the PC market; with rare exceptions like Minecraft and whatever popular is out there nowadays

If you buy a steam code via other means than the steam store, they don’t take a cut, and the distribution, hosting, etc is in fact free. Same for steamworks (so the achievements you mentioned).

This is utilized by some publishers who sell keys on their own website, same for e.g. humble bundles.

So yeah, it is in fact a 30% cut for just the store and visibility.

Steam DRM is optional. It's the developer/publishers choice to add it. No one should be getting mad at Valve for providing an option that the publishers ask for. Yell at the publishers.

The fact you want a distribution service to be peer-to-peer kinda implies that distributing a game can have some significant costs. Maybe that 30% isn't quite as abusive as you make it sound?

If it’s optional then they should show a flag in the store indicating whether a game uses it or not. From the player’s perspective they can’t tell if a game doesn’t.

The chances of having your indie title being seen anywhere is minimal.

The P2P network exists, it's called bittorrent

Selling anything at a loss should never be allowed because it's inherently anti-competitive. A big established company can sell at a loss far longer than a small newcomer.