Exactly.
Steem (the company) has the power in this situation, I can't be the only one to notice the power struggle with the witnesses that ended with a whole pile of staff 'resigning' a few days later. If nothing else, that shows that the owners have the real power in this dynamic.
People love to go with the Steem is not steemit is not dapps. Except that without the company, the rest just falls apart, it might still exist on servers, just minus everything that gives it value stripped away (overly simplistic, I realize).
There was a bit of a mixup; In general cryptos can operate in a decentralized way, they aren't connected to anything like with Steem, where value is at least in part derived from interaction with the platform.
That could be a nitpicking distinction.
The reality of the way blockchains are operating now is far closer to the operation of a ponzi scheme than anything else (regardless of steem), consider, anyone could create a block chain. They convince others to invest, which gives the blockchain SOME value, and the increase in value only comes in from increasing people being convinced to invest so that they gain value in the coin from future investors. Whether that be investment of time, machinery or funding into the crypto 'markets'.