Let’s be a bit fair, your local store selling a physical copy is also taking a cut of the other companies profits. The 30% valve charges would be just the same as GameStop/other store would be marking up the game from wholesale prices. (I still would rather have physical copies, but valve charging a percentage on each sale has always been a bs argument against them)

Grocery stores in my experience take on average 30-50% of the cut of anything they sell.
From working at one and managing orders/invoices.

Battle.net, with the feature to run partially- downloaded games and stream missing assets in on demand.

This just brought back a wonderful memory of playing original Overwatch and my hard drive failing in the middle of a match. Out of nowhere character models were being replaced with floating blue orbs and sounds were missing, but I could still finish the match with what was loaded into RAM!

Battle.net, with the feature to run partially-downloaded games and stream missing assets in on demand.

This one is actually a game changer if you play WoW for a bit every few years lol

Game's like 100 gigs by now, but you can get started after just a few gigabytes downloaded. Like 5 minutes on even my mediocre 150 mbps downlink.

In contrast, it used to take me several hours to get into it on a slower connection before this feature.

Valve largely stands as one of the last vestiges of consumer positive industries, save for stuff like this, which I think everyone agrees is not good. It's definitely gambling, and it definitely eroded and continues to erode gaming and civilization, in general.

However, in a world of cutthroat wolves and truly evil entities and secret boards of oligarchies, Valve alone sits as a private company, not behaving primarily as a dark pattern machine.

Attacking them needs to happen, but in a political time of rising fascism around the world, and especially as it takes hold in almost all of the federal government and many powerful institutions have recently taken radical nosedives, a power vacuum where, at WORST a grey company once stood, is the last thing we need.

Attacking Valve should happen. But not right now. "My enemy's enemy is my friend", and valve has historically stood protecting gamers, and business and industry, against many of the worst behaviors, as basically a grey paragon of hope.

Tearing them down right now is such a fool's errand where the best outcome is unfortunately a weakening of the company that gives SO MANY PEOPLE hope and peace at the end of the day.

You obviously aren't a fool, and seem quite aware of the dynamics, both legally and really. But, going off the average .ml values and rising industry of communist country gaming companies, I can only assume a motive to weaken the most powerful and successful institution that stands in the way of foreign entities gaining more momentum, be it deliberate or not.

The damage and negativity of allowing the structuring of gambling in this past time is undeniable.

But cutting off one of the hands of one of the few institutions and leading companies that isn't a brazen flagrant late stage capitalist machine, bowing and tithing the fascist federal government is fucking stupid.

Sue EA or an actual auto shitty company instead. Valve will take notice. And if they don't change their ways, wait until there isn't a Nazi sympathizer as president who's being very successful replacing the heads of all information and power throughout the country.

But until then, people need to see attacking Valve for what it really is: attacking virtually the last industry leading and extremely powerful company that stands against everything Trump stands for. As grey and imperfect as they are, they, alone, stand above as a Paragon against the darkness.