95% of the game community consider Steam (and thus its c-founder and president Gabe Newell) as the primary reason why other gaming digital marketplace cant nickel and dime the *** out of their customers.
Despite steam having a large slice of the pie there are plenty of competing platforms, some of them having sales that are cheaper than what you can get on steam.
So if price was the only argument shouldn't 95% of the games community worship those outlets instead?
I've read arguments that steam offers other services like 2 hour/2 week refund windows that justify the higher price. If we're being honest though then devs avoid most of those refunds by focusing resources on the first couple of hours of gameplay.
Another argument are community hubs or workshops and I guess they can be a plus, in particular for indie devs. But then I can't help and compare steams solution to 3rd party solutions like FFXIAH and come to the conclusion they can't be the driving force behind steams success either.