Right now even Valve realizes that Steam will literally run out of steam. This is why they have been trying to become more like Nintendo and selling their own hardware (with varying success) .
Hmm, citation needed on that one imo. Consensus is that their hardware strategy is in service of selling more games. Hardware revenues for Steam Deck are proportionally tiny; Frame and Machine aren’t going to meaningfully change that.
Valve wants a boat that is independent of microsoft. Not to go down with that Tit.A.I.nic seems like a smart move.