I agree, but I think two factors are at play here:
1) Valve is not in desperate need for capital, Steam and their older games are money printing machines therefore they don’t feel the need to release new games all the time. This is a pro and a con, they don’t feel the need to release same-y, barely iterative titles to make ends meet which means the overall quality of the games we do get is much higher. But at the same time it’s no telling when Valve just decides the juice isn’t worth the squeeze anymore.
2) the games that Valve do release are always a standard deviation above the other games of that similar genre at the time. Their ability to take a mechanic, or an engine, or a combination of the two and meaningfully expand and revolutionize in that space cannot be understated - and as game technology progresses, making similar impacts at that scale takes longer and is much harder than the previous title. Half Life Alyx was such a quantum leap in VR quality and I don’t think it’s talked about enough. Deadlock takes the MOBA genre to a whole new level in terms of gameplay depth and complexity. I think they’re taking their time with titles and they know the predecessors that came before them.
For that, I’m willing to wait.