Does it really "milk" developers though... The "customers" of Steam are the developers not the people buying games. They make money not by selling games (well o

Does it really "milk" developers though... The "customers" of Steam are the developers not the people buying games. They make money not by selling games (well okay, Valve does sell first party games via Steam too) but by selling the ability to sell games to developers. App stores like Steam, for all their problems, provide real tangible value to developers. It simplifies distribution of files and updates (no need to set up your own CDN/P2P network and write server/client code to handle game updates), provides integration of payment (no need to negotiate your own deals with payment processors), and in Steam's case also provides extra gaming specific value-adds like cloud saves and DRM that would also be costly to build/integrate in-house. If you think about all this, the cut they take could be justified for the right customer. The difference between Steam and something like the Apple App Store is that Steam does not have have monopoly power over PC game/software distribution. As a developer you get to decide whether Steam's cut justifies their value to you individually. If you don't like Steam or it doesn't make sense for you, you don't need to use it. And many indie developers do exactly this -- they sell at conventions, release physical media, offer direct downloads/sales from their own site, use competing platforms like itch.io, Patreon, Dlsite etc. Steam is good because the platform they are on is competitive and thus to succeed you have to justify your value.