Well it's survival, innit?
It's the old wolves' dilemma from game theory.
Wolves want to eat sheep. But if wolves do eat all the sheep, they themselves will starve...
As wolves are, by definition, selfish they will have to eventually go against their nature and feign altruism to stave off extinction.
I don't know what's the retention rate for the platform, but steem $ value is dropping. If the whales want to retain their gains they will have to make concessions otherwise they will quite literally melt away.
Whether they are capable of this, I don't know. Saint Darwin will judge them in the end, just like all of us. There is no cheating natural selection.