For devs who routinely boast about their (ineffective) anti-cheat, this is truly some amateur hour code. No wonder cheaters run rampant in their games.

As much as I agree the 30% cut can be a bit steep, I do appreciate that part of it is going into ongoing R&D like Steam Deck and Proton benefiting the whole gaming industry. I’d like to think of it like Valve are investing into PC innovation similarly to the way Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo do for their new consoles.

Depends really. Nowadays publishers push out fake CGI marketing trailers and paid reviews to premptively muddy those information sources long before release. Same goes for social media (not that they were ever reliably accurate or objective anyway). There are even promises of DLC roadmaps that never materialise such as the OW2 story mode.

By the time actual independent reviewers have their embargoes lifted, the preorder sales window has closed and it wouldn’t make much difference to those who already sunk money into the game. Those waiting in vain for DLC and patches are merely sacrificing their refund window.