It's not a hard thing to get. Over the years Valve has had relatively low amount of blunders and for the most part they were of the misjudging customer base kind but ultimately they have been very consumer oriented and have provided great value for the money. From universal refund policy to family sharing and similar. Their service consists of many benefits for the consumer but all of that is charged from the developer. Very hard not to like such approach.

Epic on the other hand did the opposite. They catered to developers and inconvenienced consumers. You get to pay the same price as everywhere but you are forced to get exclusives from them and you don't get any of the benefits Steam has. Am in fact surprised it gained as much popularity as it did. Goes to show people will sell their own pride for occasional free game you don't even get to chose.

Oh, don't mistake me preferring Steam (and GOG, for example, who have an actual value proposition to me as a consumer - unlike Epic!) to "Valve worship". They're simply the least bad option, but of course they're all huge corporations. Realistically though Valve has actually surprisingly little bad given the amount of money and market control they have, so eh... for now, I'm happy buying about half my games there (usually ends up that way, though I prefer GOG for games also releasing on that).

I remember when Valve and Steam was the great enemy in the early 2000s.

Everyone hated how buggy it was and needing it to play Counterstrike.

steam is good and egs sucks. it's not worship, just consumers voicing their preference for a better product.

it's a big circlejerk, it happens. everyone has the exact same opinion but also wants to feel like they are making a valiant statement in opposition of the bad thing

it's all a massive oversight of course, statisticly everyone here is likely going to outlive Gabe Newel. and when valve goes public someone else will control that monopoly.

What's not to get? I'm genuinely curious.