Steam and Lutris work well! I can game on XFCE Mint just fine. I actually have an easier time of it than on a number of distros, thanks to the combination of flatpaks and the Ubuntu base. But, I am not “the kids”.

I think “they prefer” Arch because a lot of them just bought a Steam Deck and that comes with Arch and it just works.

SteamOS is arch, so some of the derivatives are too.

Steam shouldn’t really care though.

Reasons are usually just newest kernel/mesa/etc. Most of the time the difference is very small, and often inconsequential. However, every now and again there is a major development that might make it worth it (IE: The graphics pipeline that all but made dxvk-async obsolete)

I’m a complete noob in the games department. Btw, I see that you don’t use Arch.