'What happens to features'

You keep saying this like Steam would strip away features that bring users/customers/dev/publisher to their platform.

No one has insulted you, just disagreed. Don't worry yourself.

My apologises for that, I'll retract that too.

Certain features need maintenance, Moderators on forums, new Steam Emoticons to be commissioned etc, which in theory are supported by the 30% or Valve is being awfully kind and paying out of their own pocket.

My arguments are purely theoretical without Valve's actual expenditures. But I'm assuming Big Picture mode and the Linux OS wasn't for free, and Valve needs to maintain some revenue.

Granted features won't be stripped away, but future support is questionable.

Now, you are asking for something like an universal joke, that everyone can agree on, is funny. But that doesn't exist.
You can tell us why you don't care. The very same reasons that made you not care anymore, can be the reason why someone else would care about this issue.
If you try to justify your emotions, you just waste your time rationalizing something that doesn't need justification. And if you truly didn't care, you would have been fine with either way. I.e. that initial point wouldn't be a point of contention.

This all could be just badly framed as well. For example: If I say I don't care about graphics, I couldn't complain about graphics in AAA games. But most people who say that, are actually talking about the focus of cutting edge graphics in AAA gaming. They can still care about good or bad graphics.

Steam have multiple revenue sources beyond the Steam store itself. Their item market is incredibly successful, they have their fingers in tech, licensing and aspects beyond video games. They're not going anywhere anytime soon. Could they change? sure, any company/product/service can, but currently there's not much real competition.

Epic store is a barebones mess that isn't even global (no China release, sorry China), GOG just tried an exclusive which flopped and Gwent which is seemingly shrinking, Discord is a non-entity currently with nothing really to show. Uplay/Origin aren't really in a similar space, especially Uplay. As for Bethseda...well Fallout 76 was a flop, Wolfenstein 2 undersold all they have really is Elder Scrolls and possible Fallout 5. Battle.Net is Battle.net.

Beyond all the hype and clumsy media coverage, Stem is still at the top of the chain, with everyone else looking up at it from quite some distance.

If you ignore all the non steam successes then everyone is still looking up at steam. However it's not exactly hard to find counter examples, Apex Legends which ain't on steam has had a massive launch literally in the last week or so, and Epic is in the position they're in precisely because of the- non steam- Fortnite.

CDPR may have had unrealistic expectations for Thronebreaker but it hardly flopped. Indeed, if it's a failure then so was... Witcher 3, since after 4 months of sales Thronebreaker is just behind Witcher 3 in sales here and vanilla W3 had ~a years worth plus anyone buying vanilla over the GOTY later.

As for steam cutting features if they reduce their cut, they won't cut features. The features are there for lock in and potential monetisation not to benefit its users, so they're net assets rather than costs. Workshop for example may cost a bit to maintain but it's there as a potential money maker and to tie producers and consumers into steam the service by offering convenience as a form of competition to alternatives like Nexus.

Fundamentally extensions are designed to make steam integration the default so there cannot be any 'competition' except that which is beholden to steam by using steamworks and having all competitors sell steam keys (which functionally cannot undercut steam), so they won't cut features as that is the crux of their strategy.

I didn't click the topic, but it apparently ends with "steam is love, steam is live."

No. What brought forward this launcher rabbit hole in the first place? Ah, Steam. Steam is why something like Epic exists.

It is quite fun to see them lose their steam exclusive for perpetuity games in favor of epic exclusives and suddenly all hell's loose. Again, let them taste the hole they dug for themselves.

Wannabe services that don't stack up to what's already available aren't good for anyone, period, especially the consumer. Epic are wannabes, plain and simple. Cancelling the planned Unreal Tournament game that was going to come out is proof enough of that.

Yeah, you know the real reason why the Epic store exists? It's called wanting a piece of the pie. You wanna talk about bias, pretending that Valve is evil and every other company is good is one of most hilarious non-arguments in the history of the entire friggin industry. Honestly, it makes me laugh every single time.

FCK ResetERA!

I'd personally laugh my guts out if ResetERA got bombed!

A1, Yep that's right bloodmist they are wannabe's too.