There’s a culture out there of people that love a piece of media so much that they will defend an unfeeling child murdering automaton called a corporation till their dying breath. In a perfect world, these people would be hanged. Thank you New York City good night!!
Valve could absolutely be worse, yes, but that doesn’t make them «good». They could have taken the loss on hardware like console makers used to do, betting they’d more than make up the difference in software sales to those hardware owners.
I didn’t say they were good and I actively think they are deceptive as they are not very forthcoming on a lot of issues that the wider gaming industry is having.
As for your second point, they quite possibly are still taking a loss on the hardware or the markup is extremely thin as at home builds in the equivalent space are pretty close in price. One thing you don’t get is the compact size. I see what you are saying but they also mentioned making the entire box extremely open for tinkering so that doesn’t always come with a guarantee of software sales unlike normal consoles.