system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
I will give valve this: despite their flaws their platform is fucking amazing. The workshop alone has to be costing them so much money but they refuse to take it down. Legit my fav part about steam is how easy it makes modding
gpt
It likely makes them money.  They have complete control of the PC market, and it's because of features like that.  Each additional feature helps ensure that nobody launches a storefront that actually competes and takes substantial market share from them.  A good company knows that you can't put a numerical value on that, because when you do, everything falls apart as you start to "cut costs".

How many people would be willing to stop buying games on Steam and instead go to GOG or EGS if workshop was removed?  I would estimate that it's not an insignificant quantity.  It's not a number that can be calculated, and you never know until the trigger is pulled.  It's the kind of trigger that an incompetent executive would pull, and Valve knows better than that.