Games

Valve have really opened the floor for others to make good games though, right? I remember hanging out in indie game dev spaces about... 15-20 years ago, and many people's best hope was to get accepted by a publisher and get 40% of sale revenue (publisher kept 60%). Getting onto Steam back then was very difficult (before greenlight).

Now anyone can publish on Steam, for better or for worse, and there are heaps of really cool indie games that rise to the top. Indie games were instrumental in the early days of VR as well.

Valve seem to have switched to a supporting role. They are developing hardware because it's a gap they see in broadening their audience, and they let developers fill in the software because today being a game developer is really accessible.

To be fair, HL: Alyx was a pretty great game, that arguably gave you experience jumps like the original Half Life. I don't remember much about it but I remember enjoying playing it. The little moments when you discover things like how you can write on a whiteboard by picking up a pen, or that you can only carry two grenades on your belt, but you can pick up a bucket and carry it around full of grenades, things that weren't really possible in the same way until that new medium that they developed top of line hardware for.