> Valve isn't in the business of preventing you from playing your games on niche operating systems

Getting your Steam library to work on Linux before it got Valve's blessing with Proton wasn't a great experience. If they wanted to, they could have easily decided to block games from running on Linux and gave some statement about preventing piracy and protecting users from malware.

I'm optimistic that this investment means we'll see more open standards and large browser makers being forced to collaborate and create simpler standards without compromising security.

> Getting your Steam library to work on Linux before it got Valve's blessing with Proton wasn't a great experience.

There weren't any real roadblocks for that caused by Valve. And it definitely wasn't as hard as you're implying.

> If they wanted to, they could have easily decided to block games from running on Linux and gave some statement about preventing piracy and protecting users from malware.

They could have just like any software developer could but they didn't. They also didn't block the Steam for Linux client from running on unapproved distributions or even FreeBSD.

They at least still put out a native Linux client, even if there weren't that many native Linux games.

That at least demonstrated, to some extant, that Valve doesn't care where you run your games, as long as you buy them on Steam.