I’m pretty sure they can afford it. But I’d be happy for the tag system to continue being meaningless if they would just hoist genre out into a separate system curated only by Valve.

Yes, they can afford to ensure the quality of their systems.

The tag system has been so badly abused that you can’t do this without collateral damage though. It’s not fit for purpose. I have mixed feelings about Valve curating games… but I think they should absolutely curate the tags.

I think you are assuming that the vendor must be the one doing the lock-in. Not all developers have the skills/budget to decouple from Steamworks. This is just a reality of software development. It’s not Valve’s fault and it’s not “nefarious”. The same problem applies to Tantrum Tim’s cloud services… doesn’t matter how loud he shouts “bbbut it’s free*”.

They aren’t wrong… vendor lock-in is bad. Not seeing any proposed solutions though, only shit slinging.