People understand that Microsoft Games Pass and Epic Games Store are only a good deal because they NEED to undercut Valve to compete with Valve. Yet if they we

People understand that Microsoft Games Pass and Epic Games Store are only a good deal because they NEED to undercut Valve to compete with Valve. Yet if they were in a position of power, how much do people trust Tencent or Microsoft to not use their vertical integration to monopolize the market and extract higher rents than Valve ever did? Why does Apple deserve any credit for building a store you were FORCED to use with asinine submission policies? How much can publicly held companies be trusted to value long term customer loyalty over short term profits? Valve is just simply the only company you CAN trust, and that's their massive competitive advantage and something Microsoft and Apple and Google with their trillions of dollars can't buy. When they make a decision that makes people upset, the CEO will directly talk with customers on sites like Reddit. They've been a force against the imposition of heavyweight DRM. They've voluntarily introduced liberal policies like family sharing and offline play that other companies refused to implement. Valve is an honest company in an industry full of conmen operating at a loss.