Just like you can't pretentiously claim and misrepresent the people that support the platform to begin with. It's basically like saying that interior decorators aren't real designers at all as any persons set up of living has a design, a purpose behind it, the builders enable people to creatively decide what that interior will look or feel like after the builders have done their jobs.
Let me ask, do you think there would be more "Indie" "devs"* with more drive to make more games not aimed at streamers and the masses short attention spanned appeals if there was higher chance of financial incentives behind it? Or will they just sell out and bend at the knee and take that steam route? How many claim to make games because they want to, but be pissed when someone DOESN'T like their games? or use some thinly veiled attempt at sarcasm, "ownage" or use the old reddit user "Well actually" type route of passive aggressive behavior to cope with their feels of wanting people to appreciate what they create. Which in and out of itself is not a bad thing, it's reasonable. But not realistic, why else do most devs go the old get a publisher and go microtransaction tf out of some skins or whatever else takes the LEAST amount of development time to call themselves "Talented" and call it a day?
Lots of Universities are filled with the MOST pretentious, know it all, judgemental people who ironically will defend to the DEATH the people they put down and use and provide with trashy, half assed content? Game development isn't what it used to be definitely.