From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
Nobody with two brain cells says foss can’t have spy/malware. What’s true is only that in important projects, it is very likely it will raise flags very soon. For example, see your link