Offering those less capable of paying, a reduced price isn’t abusive or exploitative.
There is a huge difference between the things you’ve mentioned and this. You’re being intentionally dishonest at this point and there’s no further point in this discussion.
And more importantly no business is going to charge everyone the low price instead of charging everyone the high price if forced to pick one or the other.
Valve said that the charges didn't pertain to PC games sold on Steam, but that it was accused of locking keys to particular territories at the request of publishers
It’s not like Valve played no role in this.
Games can be sold on other places besides the Steam store. This still negatively impacts consumers.
The original charges centered around activation keys. The commission said Valve and five publishers (Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax) agreed to use geo-blocking so that activation keys sold in some countries — like Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Latvia — would not work in other member states. That would prevent someone in, say, Germany buying a cheaper key in Latvia, where prices are lower.
Nothing about Starfield is that amazing that you couldn’t replicate it in something like Unreal or even Unity.
Graphics are dead easy on either. Exploration is faked, it’s fast travel to a procedural terrain/level, with a few hand made destinations in between, nothing hard. Modular ship design? Simple. FPS RPG system, simple. Physics engines already exist, storing the location of player placed objects is trivial.
What exactly about Starfield makes you think an engine would need serious modifications for a SF-like game?