itch.io is also a lot “smaller” than Steam in terms of the teams behind it I’d wager, and they probably have a lot less money for legal representation and probably had the screws turned to them a lot harder due to that.

Yes how little was communicated sucks, but they genuinely might have not had a lot of choice if the payment processors were really turning the screws to them. They don’t have the wealth to fight something like this like Valve does, and even Valve bent over for this.