Ask linux Kernel maintainer or mesa, Vulkan, wine etc. what they profit from valves cooperation. Yes, valve is very involved. Yes, Google and the like also contribute improvements from time to time, but for the most part it remains with their proprietary accessories that only they themselves benefit from. Gabe has also built up a lot of things to earn this. As I said, competitors are always welcome to improve their launchers and build a backbone comparable to that of valve.
Valve has a huge backbone it also needs for daily traffic. Valve is pushing gaming on linux big time. Crossover wine etc would have taken at least years. Provide space for the community for forum, workshop, other data ( all running costs ) Epic origin uplay purely stock market oriented with junk launcher which is far worse spyware than Steam. Valve offers refunds. Their efforts with Steam link, controller, deck and whatnot. Valve offers the player a hell of a lot. Competitors offer junk spyware launcher mostly for games with rootkit compulsion… do not offer a forum or anything else but refer to steam. Would prefer not to offer anything directly on steam but have a right to use the platform… Would the competitors instead of suing… would invest in the products and think about the players instead of the shareholders… then there would be no monopoly. Damn valve even opens up to others for free… Steamos, for example, will also exist outside the steam deck, whereby competitors could also adapt it directly as something of their own.
NVMe uses SSDs as well as flash memory. NVMe is just the protocol.
You said it! Valve actively supports OSS and that in many projects from which people beyond games also benefit (yes, they also exist). That Valve with Proton has just made sure that MS monopoly position is no longer so secure (oh wonder that in the most popular games devs then simply turn off linux support in anti-cheat…). ). You can certainly criticize a lot, but valve gives back a lot of things differently. Just no other Play Störe alternatives because the competition only complains, offers a junk launcher with dubious methods to offer a game for free every week… ( no risk but because of fixed amount possibly significantly less the developers… besides, the money comes from fortnite addicted children ). epic ubisoft ea use dirty methods anyway and known 30%… what they are hiding is that the 30% is the case with steam keys. however, they also have the possibility to link it to their own store with their own keys while it would be listed for free on steam only they would have to do without any steam feature ( anti cheat, workshop, forum, support, download from steam depotetc. Oh and have enough servers themselves regarding downloads.
By the way, about your comparison with android… Take a look at their Chromebooks. Have fun gaming!xD