Yes, the Steam Deck is great, and Steam is definitely one of the best games platforms there is. And Valve has done great work supporting Linux and open source development, and forcing more transparency for sellers on Steam.
But I feel like people sometimes just love valve for everything they do. GabeN is still a billionaire, buying super-yachts and stuff. Valve makes a ton of their money from gambling on loot crates in CS2 and TF2, and have not done enough (imo) to stop even more predatory third party item gambling sites. And whenever I bring stuff like that up people keep defending Valve.
We should be able to praise their great games and hardware, at the same time as criticising other parts of the company.
Yachts are not a bad thing in and of themselves. If they run on fossil fuel, sure, that’s not great. But someone has to build, staff, and maintain those yachts and that means they actually have a kind of trickle down effect.
It’s much worse when billionaires just sit on their money and let it increase passively by investing. That money is unavailable to anyone else. Or when they use it to gain political influence. But when billionaires actually consume, the problem with them being overly wealthy is lessened somewhat.
I still believe that nobody earns more than a billion dollars but we need to focus on the important things. Keep money out of politics and redistribute wealth. Let rich people have their playthings.