You make good points, but I doubt you’d continue to feel that way if you were a shareholder

It’s always funny to see periodicals talk about Valve like they’re a normal puplicly traded tech company.

Valve is private. That fact alone is neither inherently good, nor bad. What it means though, is that Valve will very likely behave very differently than other companies in the same market. Heck, I very much doubt half life Alyx would exist if they were public. If we get HL3, it will likely be a similar case.