I’ll wait for the hard data to substantiate the claim that steam forums are a hell hole first, of course

Disco Elysium Rimworld Cyberpunk 2077 Expedition 33 Dragon Age Origins

Yes, they could just shoot themselves in the foot I guess and exclude themselves from features and put yourself at a disadvantage.

“Well if minorities want to stop being made so sit in the back of the bus, maybe they should start their own bus!” type argument

I’m doubtful there is like a ‘study’ on this but steam takes a 30% cut, which is absolutely massive considering its no secret plenty of developers say they really don’t justify it by having poor communication.

Unfortunately however, more importantly if you are a developer or create a project that is an easy target for bigotry you will see absolutely no help from the platform in protecting you. Which is crazy that you would be required to participate in the platform in order to succeed, then be abused on it and have the people profiting ignore you. (https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/feb/16/bigotry-steam-pc-moderation-developers-speak-out)

If this is genuine you are quite the interesting specimen

I think this is a very priveleged take if we actually care about advocating for digital sovereignty.

In a perfect world, sure, build and manage a server with self hosted infrastructure. In reality people care about this stuff rarely actually have the money, time, skills or drive to manage a project like that confidently.

Its normal for people to want to allocate management of their services to a provider with trust to circumvent this.

For actualnconstructive advice to the people who can’t do this: Try looking up to see if their are any nonprofit email hosting services in your country - they exist but usually don’t do marketing and are often built on strong values. If not I really think using services like Tuta, proton, etc is leaps forward for your safety, privacy and ethics compared to Google, Microsoft, etc.