Global Offensive is still playable (at least the core gameplay) in the csgo_legacy branch of CS2 on Steam.

The problem there comes from Epic taking secret deals to settle those cases instead of let any precedent be set that would actually benefit customers.

They could still compete on I don’t know, features, quality instead of anti-consumer practices.

But Steam didn’t kill the idea of ownership of games? It never existed for digital distribution (or even physical with DRM), which existed before Steam.