That doesn’t make sense to me.

Here an example that you can understand: nobody should buy gasoline or use cars but many are forced to do it because they have to go to work to earn the money they need to survive. The capitalists pushing this corrupted system are forced to do it only by their own greed, they are the ones who need to be blamed before anyone else.

Additionally though, of the major gaming retailers, Valve has the least predatory model

They promote gambling to kids, the “least predatory model” it’s still a predatory model.

Did you take into account the reasons that game devs choose Valve over other retailers like GOG? Or the fact that very often game devs will use Valve, GOG and other gaming retailers?

Valve managed to build a small monopoly on the videogame market and together with other tech corporation they managed to centralize internet around a bunch of service/platforms that people are now hooked to. Promoting anything outside the corporation world would result in small to zero visibility.

You didn’t give any specifics in your answer to me and honestly I have to wonder if you even know where the majority of Valves money comes from.

From taking a cut on selling games and from microtransactions.

Now i have a question for you, how does the ceo of valve spend the majority of his money?

How does the consumer benefit from and why should they switch to a different retailer than Valve’s Steam? What is the benefit of a fediverse style retailer and how does it work?

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/index.html

The whole humanity will benefit if we stop giving money to billionares and their private corporations who promote closed and centralized, for profit, evil, business models.