I love steam, but let's get real here for a second. Valve will change some day. Enshitification is inevitable.

Steam is an example where I'm not sure when it would happen.

It already comes with a hefty fee of 30% per sale on the platform. I don't think they can raise that without serious backlash. And there also isn't really a need, Steam prints money. It prints money because it's where users are. Users are there because they like the features. Some good features are only there because of laws (e.g. refunding); Valve can't remove these.

So how would you make the service even more profitable?

Enshittification happens because corporations want (more) money out of a service that built a userbase. These were often running at a loss. To turn a profit, they need to change.

Steam can sell you licenses to games you don't own already. It's up to each publisher. Valve doesn't care, they just deliver.

Arrg matey!

They will never go public so enshittification rules don't necessarily apply

Sure, but hopefully that's a very long time away, and there's always piracy. Hopefully Gabe lasts for another 20 years or longer. Hopefully he has a high-quality person as a successor.

Many of those Steam Deck, I bet.

https://partner.steamgames.com/ says there are 132 million monthly active Steam users, so that's more like 2.5 million Linux users on Steam.

Also keep in mind this is peak concurrent players. I imagine the MAU is much higher, since most of the world doesn't game at the same time.

This is just steam. It's estimated that about 3 billion people regularly play video games.

Sure, but 38,000,000 x $60 = $2,280,000,000. And that's if they all spend only $60/year, and only on Steam, and the average I'm sure is much higher.

COVID-19. 😏

To think that we have lived so long.

Cant believe this actually exist xd https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colonel_Sanders_A_Finger_Lickin_Good_Dating_Simulator/

At this point, there's nothing anybody can do to compete with Steam. GOG exists, and despite their awesome raison d'etre, their launcher UI is crap. Epic is probably the closest thing to a competitor, and even its nonstop free game offerings (mostly unheard of indies now) isn't enough to get me to switch. Also, its UI is crap and the launcher itself is really unstable (constantly refreshes your library and sends you back to the top). The time to launch a competitor was in 2005, when Steam wasn't that good yet.