Gaben said it best when he said "piracy is a service issue, not a price issue." There is no other company that even comes close to matching Steam's services, both to consumers and developers. The industry could become a different place when he dies. I don't see any other CEO continuing to spend money to innovate and expand services rather than offer less and charge more to extract record profits.

They really figured out the infinite money glitch.

Provide a decent service then sit back and watch your would-be competition develop increasingly effective footguns?

That's what you can do if you're not publicly traded. The supposedly "wise" market whenever anything goes wrong always seems to insist on burning down decades of good-will to extract a few bucks.

When Gabe dies, steam falls

There's also the gambling, and the 30% cut that allows them to make $3.5 million per head.

Steam is pushing the industry forward on Linux support though, so they have my support.

Flash sales were great but refunding is better.

While they are worse now, part of the problem is that long time users already have many of the games that get big discounts in the newer sales.

Why have great service and be profitable when you can have terrible service and be 1.6% more profitable?

I suspect a fair chunk. Steam for gamers and devs is great and all but its underbelly of opening up the world of gambling to kids is real gross. Its insane how valve has been getting away with it for so long.