Gamer tribalism, like with anything stupid in gaming. Gamers are so tribal about everything, from genre to storefront to glowy plastic things they play games with, this much worship of a *store* was really just a matter of time. Normal people wouldn't demonize a higher cut for devs as much as a certain subset of steam fans does, but gamer tribalism will do that.
Just imagine this kind of hubbub among, say, among dollhouse enthusiasts. You can't. It's too silly a hill to fight on. Only gamers would even have this discussion to defend ~their~ store.
In any other hobby, the reaction would be "oh, cool" or "*shrug*".
With social media and twitch and other word of mouth platforms, I imagine being actually featured on the Steam store is becoming less crucial.
Social media really doesn't do that much. Twitch in particular is a perverse incentive, because it further incentivices games that are particularly watchable, but at the same time aren't done over with by a LP. That limits design a *lot*. Might even contribute to certain genres dying, while others get clone upon clone - twitch viewership & exposure makes even the bad ones more viable by proxy. See the xth zombie survival sandbox a while back.
Steam's system keeps getting exploited through review bombs.
Steam reviews have been utterly useless for years. They mostly show which games have gamerbaby outrage, while at the same time allowing bad devs to astroturf a positive initial review amount. I'd actually say bad devs abusing it is the main issue, only followed by gamerbaby review bombs when they discover another game that *gasp* has a female character or *gasp* a gay one.
