Well, with that same logic one could say that the current trend in making big engines such as Unreal and Unity free to use and more available have helped push us to the direction we are now.
On that same note, if Unreal cost thousands of dollars to use, you can pretty much guarantee next to no indie games would be created on it at all and would be AAA only. You currently have no investment risk to use it - yeah you have to pay royalties, but otherwise its free during development, which is huge for what you are getting and then potentially being able to turn around and make money off of. In that same sense, if Steam cost’s a couple grand to get your game up there, you can pretty much kiss indie games goodbye on the platform entirely. And at that point, quality surely is not reflected on monetary value. You’d probably also see a huge influx of kickstarters trying to raise that sort of money too, and as most of us know, kickstarter fund raising does not have a direct correlation with quality either.
From Valves point of view (and much like Epic’s business model) making things more widely available with a lower entry bar makes them more money in the long run I’d suspect as well?