Well, I can say I have been a fan of Steam for more than 20 years. Some of your points ring true. All I would say is that Valve is actually quite small (in terms of employees) that is not an excuse for bad consumer practices, but it is often a reason. I would love to see Valve have a presence in Europe (Glasgow would a perfect location), and benefit from more employees to handle customer problems. (Hey I can dream).

No storefront/digital platform is perfect. But PC players at least have the luxury of choosing from a multitude, so vote with your wallet and use GoG instead :-)

Quick question - when you say Steam and Valve have a small number of employees, what exactly do you mean?

How many employees does Valve have?
How many of them work on Steam?
How does this number compare to other digital storefronts?
As a fully digital storefront, how many employees do you think they should have?

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/13/24197477/valve-employs-few-hundred-people-payroll-redacted

That answerd the first question