Yes, Apple is pretty good about privacy. That'll be one reason for Meta and others to create their own stores.

Valve, Epic Games, and Nintendo seem better about privacy but are barred from iOS.

Does Valve or the Epic Games store have a privacy policy they enforce on products they sell? I didn't think so. How are they "better about privacy"?

Also, Nintendo products and Fortnight both were in the App Store store.

Valve and Nintendo are barred from iOS in what way? I have the Steam Link app on my iPad, and there are several Nintendo games in the App Store.

Steam cannot distribute apps on ios.

Steam doesn’t distribute apps on Android either? Is it even something they’d want to do?

I'm sure they'd love to - someone else pays for the ecosystem, and they just sell software in it with no markup (or they keep the markup, rather than the ecosystem creator).

I would argue that apple doesn't do this for the good of the users, apples own apps are not restricted in the same way others are. The whole point is giving their own apps an edge over everyone else. This is what gives apple the power to demand deals like the recently covered deal with Google that gave them billions in search revenue.

And just by pure coincidence, Apple started to push much more of their ads in their App Store around that time.