Valve could have not allowed other storefronts to sell steam codes easily and yet they would still be the dominant gaming platform for PC. You seem to forget that Steam is probably the main thing that pulled PC gaming out of the really low point it was in a decade ago, and it became dominant without humble bundle, green man gaming, and even G2A existing. They did not have to even start allowing third parties to sell steam keys to become dominant because they were already dominant then. VR is just one part of the gamiing space they have pushed innovation, especially when they didn’t really have to.
Valve has also been extremely big on innovation in the gaming space, and it’s a huge force in driving the extremely competitive landscape for VR that we have right now. Facebook didn’t put a lot of money and put out really good touch controllers out of the goodness of their heart, they were getting laughed at because Vive had had them a long time ago.
In the mean time while you try and claim that Steam is some boogeyman that eats it’s competition we have had Origin, Gog, Battle.net, Oculus, itch.io, etc… which are actually doing extremely well and host a lot of games you literally can’t buy on Steam.
Then you look at the fact that Steam is supposedly dominant and yet it’s probably the worst place to launch a new game because of how competitive it is (unless you have a LOT of money for marketing). There is a huge opportunity for more curated and focused storefronts that people actually want to browse to find new games.
But whatever. You can just ignore facts and live life thinking it’s impossible that a company can only have nefarious goals if it benefits it in the slightest. I guess companies only do good things when it hurts them, otherwise it wasn’t done because it was an overall good thing to do. Not everyone is out to screw you over.