Yes, the Steam Deck is great, and Steam is definitely one of the best games platforms there is. And Valve has done great work supporting Linux and open source development, and forcing more transparency for sellers on Steam.
But I feel like people sometimes just love valve for everything they do. GabeN is still a billionaire, buying super-yachts and stuff. Valve makes a ton of their money from gambling on loot crates in CS2 and TF2, and have not done enough (imo) to stop even more predatory third party item gambling sites. And whenever I bring stuff like that up people keep defending Valve.
We should be able to praise their great games and hardware, at the same time as criticising other parts of the company.
I similarly got ripped apart by Steam fanboys for trying to tout GOG over Steam.
I thought the people behind gog were super problematic though? The transphobic stuff, the nazi imagery, the shitty responses when called out for the above…
GOG has an edgelord reputation for its public-facing sides of things, but overall nothing comes even close to Steam’s track record of enabling and tolerating hate and bigotry, further amplified by its market share of over 75%. Here are a few articles on some of the issues: