Mindustry has other ways to donate directly if you choose. The dev obviously thinks paying steam a cut is still worth it in increased sales and marketing.

available (nearly) anywhere, built in support forums, refund capability, and until a couple of years ago being able to use bitcoin to pay (buy steam gift cards with bitcoin). family sharing - where another computer can play games you've bought if it's on the same network, is also a nice feature. I know it doesn't matter here because the game is open source (or whatever), but in the general sense it's reduced my spending on games. When my kid wants to play a steam game i either do work or play a game on xbox for windows, gog, battlenet, whatever. As i type he's playing BeamNG on his computer via my steam login on my computer.

Also, i am a bit biased. I'm part of the steam class action, and potentially will receive $500 or more from valve due to their "cut".

Damn, this is the first I've read about the steam class action. Did you just sign up via one of the firms advertising online?

The first one I found wants a 40% cut of any settlement. I have no basis to know if that's reasonable or not - on its face it doesn't seem crazy, and 60% of something is still more than nothing, but I can't help but wonder if there's a better deal out there. How are you being represented in the class action suit?

I got an email about it earlier this year from some law firm. I'm not sure what their cut is, but that amount was my "cut" of what they would attempt to recover before "needing" to go to arbitration. You had to have spent money on the steam platform between june of 2016 and january of 2022 (iirc); i don't know if there was a dollar amount trigger in involvement.