you seem to imply these costs should be passed down to us instead

They already are.

I really think you know nothing about what you talk or how the market works, this isn’t even fun.

Steam doesn’t tell developers or publishers how much their games are worth. They only provide the tools for them to sell them, and they obliviously get a cut from it, but only if you sell. They don’t ask for money in advance, they don’t ask for any contract.

Valve is a store front, not a publisher. I’m thinking you are just confused about how they operate.

A lot of indie companies would still be around if it wasn’t for this clear cut collusion

Can you tell me how has Valve affected the indie industry? In a bad way of course. Most of my steam games are indie games that I assure you I have bought thanks to Steam’s shop visibility, review system, forums, easy refunds, cloud saves, and basically all the ease of use it gives. They don’t buy small teams and extinguish or terminate them, they don’t artificially inflate prices, they don’t install rootkits in your computer…

How is the indie games industry worse because of Valve?

Stop it with the fucking yatchs already, seriously. Just look at the differences between Vale and the other companys you mention. If you can’t see any, you are just a troll.

You can’t say anything bad about Valve other than “they make a lot of money”. It gets boring.

Steam spends a lot of money convincing everyone Gaben is just a really cool dude and not your average billionaire.

Or maybe he is a really cool dude…

people should always keep that in mind when praising him

Why?? Good for him, stop being so envious. It’s thanks to Valve I started to buy games instead of pirate them anyway. Good prices and good practices.

A billionaire from a game industry is not the same as a billionaire from a real state company or a bank. Games are not a basic need.

“Cheaper is cheaper” kind of overlooks the core issue

You said this:

I’d love to buy my games cheaper lol.

I don’t know why you need them to be cheaper before the discount, but okay, I don’t care.

I would genuinely love if you could point me to an example where the non-discounted price of a game is lower outside of Steam than it is on Steam — I’d love to buy my games cheaper lol.

Fanatical and humble bundle (the good old days) are good examples. I don’t know what you say “non-discounted”, cheaper is cheaper no matter what.

This part confuses me. Are you trying to clarify to me that Steam isn’t taking a 30% cut of what gets sold on, say, Epic Games Store?

Steam doesn’t get a cut from keys sold in perfectly legal thirth party stores like fanatical, humble or gmg. Epic does not sell steam keys so obviously no.

You can find games sold cheaper than in Steam in many places. You can even buy games outside of Steam and they see 0 revenue from it.

Find me a game that has been de listed from Steam because it was sold cheaper elsewhere. You can’t, so don’t bother.