I think there's plenty of room for pessimism when it comes to the games industry. But Valve has (when not occasionally making games which, let's face it, isn't very often these days) become a business dedicated to the business to selling games. It offers a platform that has provided several innovations for usability to consumers ahead of competitors (it isn't continuously playing catchup - they're proactively investing) and it provides a relatively low barrier to entry for publishing a game in a pretty visible manner. I'm not certain if you ever lived with Gamestop and EBGames as your main source of purchasing games but it was pretty much impossible for small devs to get noticed that way - so small devs ended up posting their games on the internet (which was quite a strong limitation in terms of size) or trying to get on various ShareWare/Demo disks that'd circulate with magazines.
I'm sure this isn't the absolute best timeline, but it sure beats a land where Origin and UPlay successfully beatup Steam and we're all forced back onto walled gardens. And it seems sustainable, the second largest platform (IMO) out there is GOG which is owned and operated by CD Projekt Red - it seems like game studios see a lot of utility from owning a mostly open platform like this.
How does any of that support or deny my assertion that these per publisher launchers that you're forced to use regardless of where you bought the game only exist because large publishers hedging against their competitors?
I'm sure this isn't the absolute best timeline, but it sure beats a land where Origin and UPlay successfully beatup Steam and we're all forced back onto walled gardens. And it seems sustainable, the second largest platform (IMO) out there is GOG which is owned and operated by CD Projekt Red - it seems like game studios see a lot of utility from owning a mostly open platform like this.