Valve is in a really dominant position and has almost always been, so they got a lot of sway on what the industry standard is. So can’t really blame other corporations here for the 30%.

they probably went with what worked.

That’s one way to say it. I think early on they had the cost advantage to retail and needed to convince people to buy digitally instead of traditionally, so lower cut. But of course they, as any company, would keep it near to as high as possible while being competitive. I’m not trying to shit on Valve by saying that, it’s just how it works for any company.

What I really hate about Steam and all online shops, is that you can’t resell something you purchased second hand.

I think that was actually one usecase for NFTs or whatever. There was much talk about it a while back but after the whole jpeg fiasco and shitcoin stuff I think it was all killed off.