Indeed, I was one of those who hated the idea of Steam when it came out. However they won me over by just not being anywhere near the evil I predicted they would be. In the process, they basically saved PC gaming from almost certain doom, helped create the indie explosion, and made buying games so easy and cheap that many people have not even played a third or more of their library. Then they went and made Linux a viable gaming platform for free. Then they helped create a VR system and opened it to everyone unlike their competitor.

I like Valve too, its a really smart company in a world of stupid, but the Steam client is a really lazy thing, it has not improved much in many years, it is not worth a 30% cut to me.

The 30% pays for the infrastructure, more than the client. Besides, the client has added controller support (even for games that don't support controllers), big picture mode, family sharing, streaming, and just recently online emulation of local co-op.

To put that in perspective: Epic still does not have a shopping cart.

It was and still is very poorly optimized with terrible UI.