Check this and respond if you have the same opinion after reading: https://bsky.app/profile/torrent-empress.bsky.social/post/3luowfzohet2y
Steam choose to bend the knee, true, but that doesn't mean they had to. Do you know of any businesses which has actually been blocked by VISA/MasterCard over this? Their strength lies in throwing their weight around discretely, without having to actually go through with it.
If Steam had just ignored them, I don't think they would actually have blocked Steam. Most likely, nothing would have happened. Steam is simply too big. But even if you don't believe that, can we at least agree that Steam is big enough to have done at least something? Posted a protest banner, anything? You assume good faith, believing Steam only bent their knee after a long and painful soulsearching, but another possible scenario is that Steam management simply not cared all that much, and chose complience.
"Do you know of any businesses which has actually been blocked by VISA/MasterCard over this?"
Do you know of any people who didn't hand over their wallet when someone held a gun to their head?
The payment processors hold a disgusting amount of power here, and most of their targets are far too small to fight back.
We can't rely on companies or websites to fix this shit because they'll be shut down as soon as they try. This is something the people need to fix.
Steam is very small and they can't sustain not being able to work when Visa/Mastercard just block them. You are just naive when you think steam can do anything about it. You can only complain to visa/mastercard and try to pressure goverment to pass law against that kind of thing or just contact goverment and tell them that visa and mastercard are abusing their power.