GOG exists, go use GOG. Steam is popular because they don't fuck over buyers, and they run a good business model, people are ok not "owning" things if the service is reasonably well put together.

Gabe has made billions by stealing profit from the workers that actually make games.

steam takes a 30% cut, which isn't all that high, especially when you consider that they develop things like proton at zero cost to anybody, including developers. You're also getting the single largest and most widely used publishing platform, period. It's really hard to beat something of that caliber, so it's definitely a tradeoff. There are also cases of devs making games that become so popular they pull in millions of dollars worth of revenue.

They host tons of malware and shovelware and outright scam games and even protect them from “”““review bombing””"

in defense of steam, if they specifically curated high quality games people like you would accuse them of gate keeping the platform. Scams are definitely a thing, malware, technically is. I've not seen malware ever in my personal experience, and i doubt most people have, and whenever it does happen, steam responds accordingly so i'm not sure its a fair statement.

They pushed “early access” into the mainstream.

there's nothing necessarily wrong with early access, i actually think it's a really productive way to provide tons of play testing and development potential for smaller dev teams. Does it also incentivize shovelware? Sure, but it's a platform you can make money on, that's not abnormal. And again, it's usually very well known when games are abandonware.

And because of people like you that would literally suck Gabes dick for the meme, they get away with it.

surprised you didn't mention gambling, that's probably the most significant argument against steam right now, they effectively run what can be considered an online casino.