"I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality." - Gabe Newell
Yeah, the existence of SteamOS, Steam Machines and eventually Proton were a hedge against Microsoft’s perceived shift into locked down distribution .
I think a lot of folk have a hard time reconciling that there may have been non-altruistic intentions behind something that is enjoyed today.
Similarly, Steam itself was a hedge against physical distribution to cut out the middleman. It wasn’t originally envisioned as a store for anyone but Valve.
But here we are today, and both have positive side effects that actually have outlived the original design.
https://www.neowin.net/news/valve-co-founder-windows-8-is-a-...
Take a wild guess when they started pushing steam on linux, and which version of windows introduced a store.