Fuck it. I'll do a discourse.
There was a popular tweet circulating yesterday about how Epic's company practises are worse than Valve's, and therefore this justifies Steam's 30% cut, and man, I'm really not feeling it. The framing of Valve as a "neutral, non-ideological entity" versus Epic as an "aggressive monopoly-seeker" is misguided.
They are both driven by the same ideology: profit-seeking libertarianism. The only difference is that Valve's current strategy is to minimise drama because they already hold a monopoly position and don't want to risk damaging their reputation. I have no doubt that Valve would act more aggressively if they were in Epic's position... and they already demonstrated this in the past, with their undercut pricing and forced installer to gain an advantage over physical PC sales.
Even today Valve still engages in some aggressive capitalist measures, with their skins, trading cards, and anti-competitive practises that resulted in legal action from the EU and Australia.
The alternative to the current system isn't an Epic monopoly — let's be real, Gamers™ would never let that happen — it's a marketplace where Valve is pressured enough to be more considerate of developers' needs*. If any developer is unwilling to work with Epic to get there due to the company's dubious ethics, then I fully support them, but let's not pretend that Valve is "neutral", and let's definitely not use Epic's unethical practises as a justification to shut down discussions about Steam's predatory 30% cut.
One thing's for certain: Itch.io is the only ethical player in the game.
*Actually, there are spicier alternatives, but that's another discussion.
