I was looking back at the GTFO drama and noticed that reviews for that game that criticize Tencent got censored by Valve staff, including my own. Said review stated that the deal itself is a privacy and IT security risk because Tencent is a PRC company and thus legally required to bow to the demands of said dictatorship, including all subsidiaries.
My review text:
Even though they added matchmaking, the devs sold out to Tencent and have been caught censoring complaints related to this.
The reason the Tencent deal is bad is because said company is controlled by the dictatorship known as the Peoples Republic of China, meaning that due to the majority share by Tencent the devs must leak any data they have including sensitive information to said dictatorship on demand, or get the game stolen from them right under their feet. They may also be forced to add PRC spyware to the game as well.
Edit: If you want proof go to this thread, post about how Tencent is a security risk and archive it with archive.is, and watch your comment disappear without warning: https://steamcommunity.com/app/493520/discussions/0/5625537320598621172/
Except they're not "breaking the monopoly", they're trying to replace it with something objectively worse. For as bad as Steam has become, I will still prefer it from those two options. Not supporting the objectively worse option is not excusing the failures of Steam. People really, really need to break out of this binary mindset where saying one thing is somehow part of what is ultimately a false dichotomy.
And frankly, there is no "good" options left outside of piracy. CDPR has rolled over a few times now, so they're not that much better than Valve except for the fact that GoG gives you DRM free products. Nobody is going to consider Origin, Microsoft Store, uPlay or any of the other AAA shitshow launchers (and for good reason). itch.io is a cesspool of pretentiousness and therefore woke assholes. So what's left after that?
This is part of the problem. Pretty much everyone already knows that Valve is shit (or at the very least for people dragging their feet on admitting it, heading in that direction). Even outside of the woke/political sphere, their business practices have objectively gotten less beneficial for the consumer over time. But without a viable alternative, it's ultimately pissing in the wind unless you're going to stand on a pro-piracy stance. And while I'm fine with that personally, there are plenty of people who won't make the jump to piracy, so it will never convince them.
I know and agree that the "muh valve is perfect" tends to be this strawman from Epic shills, but the asserted dichotomy that it's either Epic or Steam is so fucking annoying, and far too few want to acknowledge the strawmanning, false dichotomies, and binary thinking that's taking place in this situation.
I agree, I find that Epic is a big case of actively making things worse while dressing it up with pretty words. And because they have little actual objective good qualities compared to Steam, their defenders pull out the "muh gaben is perfect" strawman and just list off Steam's failures without acknowledging what Epic actually does that's better than any of those faults.
I think if a real competitor ever reared its head, most people wouldn't be that attached to Steam to act anywhere near as defensive as Epic shills think they would. GOG showed up and did its own thing, and nobody really hated on them for it. As long as it was functional and offered it own value, it would probably carve out its own niche and given time likely emerge as a valid competitor.