I’m one of the few who actually like the existence of Epic. Like, not necessarily Epic itself, but some serious competition is needed. I personally would’ve loved it if the competition was GOG, but it seems consumers don’t particularly care about ownership, so we have Epic.
If you are trying to argue that ownership was not even a part of the multitude reasons Stadia failed and is off the table, you should seriously need to consider evaluating your critical thinking skills.
This was supposed to be the comment where you show why ownership was a major factor in why Stadia failed, not a comment where you huff and puff and complain that something you insist on isn’t being accepted.
The problem is that all the competition to steam is far far inferior to steam in technology and ideology and future prospects. Steam isn’t a publicly traded company, has features that are pro consumers, is supporting other OS’s and doesn’t have a CEO that is a prick like epic.
Sure. But what if Gabe newel decided to sell tomorrow. Just wants to retire maybe he’s pretty old. What if Microsoft buys it and you’re left with a monopoly you don’t like. That’s the eventuality of every unhealthy industry.
Well it will be a sad day and Ubisoft, Microsoft and Epic competition won’t fix anything if steam goes to shit. Steam is basically the unicorn and once it becomes extinct we won’t get anything half decent to replace it with. Publicly traded companies are the bedrock of unhealthy industries.
Competition in the marketplace is the only thing that has any chance of saving you when that day comes.
You are in lucky days today. Tomorrow won’t be so good, but you can choose to support an industry controlled by a monopoly, or you can support an industry with healthy competition.
I would hope that Gamers aren’t so near sighted, but I’ve been proven wrong over and over again.
When steam shuts down and we have Ubisoft and Epic to replace it with I’m just moving to itch.io and probably torrenting my steam library if it comes to the worst. Also I might actually stop playing games since steam is pushing proton development forward and without them I have no reason to play or buy anything new. Epic’s shitty CEO has made toxic remarks against linux before and Ubisoft just couldn’t care less. I’ll support a company that supports my interests, epic doesn’t so I don’t simple as.
“Supporting competition” is not a good enough reason to use a shitty service. If I start a service that charges twice as much as Steam and has none of the features would you use it in order to “support competition”?
If the only reason to purchase from Epic is “they exist” that’s not good enough.
I will happily avoid Epic’s attempts to be a monopoly now over worrying that Steam might be shitty in the future.
It’s super weird to me that you guys think epic is trying to be a monopoly. Epic had 0.00001% of the market. In their wildest dreams they might expect to get ten percent.
I feel Steam vs competitors is like how after 1st wave MCU, everyone was jumping on that bandwagon, but instead of putting in the groundwork just skipped ahead, or like the monsters one just abandoned it because of one bad movie.
No, 99% of the reason they use it is that they were first to market, made it mandatory for their first party games that were extremely popular at the time (and even today) and became defacto mandatory for many third party games as it made it simpler to control piracy to just sell through them or include a key in the physical copy and force people to install Steam. The majority of Steam users are casuals that couldn’t care less about their forums, cards, social profiles and so on. It’s the same thing in everything, there’s enthusiasts that think everyone is as crazy as they are about their hobby, the majority are just casual users that will never know/use half of the possibilities available to them because they don’t care.
i would love for steam to have some competition. i will gladly switch over to the first competitor that has
a big picture / controller-friendly interface
controller configurator that
is more powerful than rewasd
is editable in the overlay
has import/exportable configs (incl. with the community)
supports the best controller i’ve ever used, the steam controller
cross-platform client
cross-platform cloud saves
workshop/modding support
proper reviews system
community page for each game
etc.
and doesn’t
buy exclusivity rights to games
i don’t mind revenue deals for exclusivity, but buying existing games takes the biscuit
actively worsen existing games
e.g. removing the impeccable siapi support in rocket league, and making it run on the shitty epic servers so it disconnects all the time
particularly now that steam has switched over to electron, so the client runs like shit
i do sometimes use gog because i like their ideology, but they’re missing quite a few from this list. any gog or itch.io games i buy, i inevitably add to steam as a non-steam game. which adds a lot of these handy features, but not all
unfortunately, until a competitor brings along something new to the table, i’m quite happy to wait and pay more for a game on steam. it just has too many features i can’t give up
particularly now that steam has switched over to electron, so the client runs like shit
It uses CEF not Electron, which it has used for over 13 years. This isn’t something they just added. If it’s running slow for you you probably have an issue with hardware acceleration.
you mean that the store has been an embedded browser? in that case yes
but the whole steam client? has always been vgui, not electron . did you even read the link you sent? just because there is reference to chromium in the commit log doesn’t mean the whole thing’s built in chromium, and just because a programme can render web content also doesn’t mean it’s built in chromium. when firefox switched from xul to html did you go “akshyually, it was always able to render html content so it hasn’t switched at all”
If it’s running slow for you you probably have an issue with hardware acceleration.
it’s not just me who has performance issues. at one point it was everyone on linux with an nvidia gpu. which is supposedly fixed (and it’s definitely better) but it’s still unusably slow on both linux and windows. also, so what. “it works on my machine” isn’t a great excuse to ignore the biggest gaming gpu brand, and electron is notoriously non-performant (if my pc can handle playing a video in ffx whilst playing recent 3d games, i think it should also be able to display my list of owned games without stuttering). my point was that i never had issues with vgui, and now i do.
edit: ah, i’ve just looked through your comment history. i don’t believe anyone who’s not a troll has -10 karma and no negative comments (especially with some comments with >100 points), and i also suspect vote manipulation. i should never have engaged. sorry. i won’t engage any more.
but the whole steam client? has always been vgui, not electron cef. just because there is reference to chromium in the commit log doesn’t mean the whole thing’s built in chromium.
The “whole client” hasn’t been VGUI. Yes now every element is CEF but many, many pieces have been CEF for a very long time. “Switched over to Electron” implies it was entirely changed but it’s just using more of the thing it was already using. Those are two different things.
it’s not just me who has performance issues. at one point it was everyone on linux with an nvidia gpu
The issue you linked had nothing to do with Steam it was a bug with the Nvidia driver itself. Not sure what that’s supposed to prove.
my point was that i never had issues with vgui, and now i do.
And my point is that is not an inherent problem with Steam, that is something specific to your configuration. If it runs fine for other people it can run fine for you. I’m on Arch with an Nvidia GPU. I have zero issues with the performance.
How is a competitor ever supposed to compete with a feature list like that? It has to come out of the gate with all those things? This is why monopolies exist.
honestly? i kind of agree. but gog spent a lot of dev time revamping their client into "gog galaxy 2.0" just to make it less controller accessible; and the epic client is just unusable
i would have more sympathy if they were little indie companies. but the itch.io client is better than either. these companies are pouring money into breaking into a market, but not bothering to develop features
that comment was more an example of why the egs isn’t yet a real competitor than a criticism of any as yet nonexistent competitors
A monopoly is a monopoly. Just because Steam is a good store today doesn’t mean they deserve to hold a monopoly over the pc gaming market. So what happens when Valve has crushed every competitor? Gamers and devs have nowhere to go if Steam turns to shit. Eventually there will be a change of guards at Valve’s C-suite when Gaben retires or is dead. There is a good chance that those new execs will hollow out Steam and extract all the value out of it for their own benefit by screwing over the customers and developers. And they can get away with that if there is no competition. Competition is what keeps Valve in check.
Doesn’t matter. It’s still competition. They motivate Valve to create a better store and keep it that way. Since that is Valve’s unique selling point and what distinguishes them from the competition. Therefore I believe devs should make their games available on every storefront. Not just the best one, to give customers a choice.
Steam was great before epic and has been adding killer features since before egs came along. EGS tactics to win over steam users is to be anti competitive…
Like Walmart coming into a town to compete with the stores already there and then putting them out of business? Then moving onto the next town to compete again?
competition is good when the rest of the competition is able or good. EGS is so shit it has to buy exclusives and give out free games and it still doesn’t work. There has to be some equality in quality to have any chance of making steam better otherwise they just exist to make anti competitive moves, what is steam supposed to do? Also pay for exclusives?
When their launcher is literal malware or they engage in anti-consumer practices like exclusives, no, they are not good for the customer.
(Not that any publicly traded company can be good for the customer, mind; by definition they can only be good for the shareholders; any benefit they might accidentally provide to the customer or to society is an inefficiency that will eventually be corrected through enshittification. The only reason Valve isn’t entirely harmful is that they aren’t publicly traded yet.)
The only thing Valve has done with Steam that apparently is anti-competitive, is actually having a decent product with good features and no one else is capable of actually delivering parity with it to be a viable competitor.
A natural monopoly is a far cry from one built through anti-competitive practices, and easily toppled by competent competitors.
Perhaps if Valve’s competition was competent, there would be better options.
True. But Google became the number one search engine by creating a better product and basically got a natural monopoly. And now look what kind of monster the company has become.
Just because Steam is a good store today doesn’t mean it will stay that way in the future. Therefore I rather not see Steam be the only game store left in the pc gaming space.
Well no. Google used to steal results from other search engines initially.v And then suppressed search results for competing products for at least the last 20 years.
Then get mad at the weak-ass competition. Start a fire under their asses to make something that is actually just as good, if not better.
Punishing the one good product for being good is just gonna lead to there being no good products and only shitty ones just as much as your slippery-slope scenario. 🤦♂️
But they haven't crushed any other competitor through any mechanism but having a dramatically better product.
They don't force you to be exclusive to be on steam. They don't force you to implement any of their Steam stuff. They are very permissive unless you do shit that potentially exposes them to liability down the road, like the NFT nonsense.
And they let you generate keys for literally free to sell on other stores.
All their stuff companies use is because it's things customers value.
When they started, they did used to force you to use products edit: aside from their own games(fair cop), some 3rd party games like Lost Planet also required it.
Certain games, and not just valve games, you'd buy in a store and the disc would force you to install and create a steam account to play the single player offline game.
They're a distribution mechanism. If you buy a Steam game you need Steam. Allowing developers to require Steam to play their game is not anticompetitive or in any way unethical.
They didn't force any developer who wanted to sell games on Steam to only sell games on Steam. That's what would be anticompetitive and abusing their market position. Games choosing to only distribute through Steam because there's no other storefront that wouldn't be a worse value if it was free isn't Steam doing something wrong.
Looks like it was a console exclusive before it released on Steam, if you're talking about Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (which is the only one I can find by that name).
Do you have more information about the release? Or perhaps it's a different game?
They didn’t force any game to use Steamworks, developers and publishers chose to use it because it offered a lot of good middleware. And of course it requires Steam to use Steamworks.
If only they supported Linux better, or really like at all… I know you can grab the files and install without DRM. But, the whole lack of a client makes it a nuisance to use. I used to buy everything on GOG when possible. Since I got a Steam Deck that’s changed. I shouldn’t have to use Heroic Launcher IMO…
Yet, ease of access is what appeals to the average consumer which leads to preferring steam for Linux for the same reason people get hardware restricted consoles. If a company wants to appeal and expand their market making themselves more accessible is how they do it. Otherwise alternative is to be an overlooked option.
Yeah, had Valve tried to push Linux again without trying to make it accessible for the average user it would have flopped like the Steam machine. Or at the very least users would have tossed Linux for Windows. Accessibility is very important, and technical users should not be looked to as guides on what is acceptable for the masses.
Because they should be able to make a launcher that works. The Windows GOG launcher (GOG Galaxy) is a joke. They want to make one launcher to rule them all but it struggles with almost every one. I have a Windows computer for games that require it (Valorant mostly for me) and even on PC I use Heroic. I don’t want crazy features. I just want an officially supported GOG client that works well on Linux and Windows.
Galaxy works fine on windows. It’s far more stable than steam btw.
In the meantime heroic or lutris work very well. So why is there even a need for something else? I’d argue it’s better if a company don’t hold your game hostage for you to play them.
I’ll admit I’ve only used Linux for the past 5-6 years, but I think the last time steam crashed for me was almost a decade ago or something? Is it not stable on windows anymore?
It does crash regularly, or it stops working and you need to restart it, and it always did this kind of thing. The obnoxious “I need to update before you’re allowed to play” is hardly a selling feature. The videos and the adds are both obnoxious and intensive on resources.
Galaxy has its ups and downs, but overall I feel its lighter and much more responsive. The interface is much less cluttered, much more logical and clear. And it’s not a fucking drm.
I thank vavle for what did for Linux gaming. Proton is brilliant and incredibly useful and valuable. But I also despise them for steam being litteraly a DRM. So I will forgive cdpr if they need time to develop galaxy on Linux and I’ll use lutris and heroic game launcher in the meantime.
It is trivial to disable all the video content (and some more) on steam if you happen to be on low-end hardware that needs that (or just if you don’t like it, really)
It does crash regularly, or it stops working and you need to restart it, and it always did this kind of thing.
Then you use it wrong. No idea how that’s possible but I run Steam on Windows, macOS, and Linux and except very early in the life cycle of the Steam Deck, I can’t remember Steam ever crashing on me in the last 10 or so years.
It cannot possibly be the fault of a shitty software and it must be me…
If you were correct, there’d be widespread reports of crashes. While no software is always free of bugs, if a piece of software is crashing for you all the time and hardy for everybody else, it’s the logical conclusion that the underlying problem is on your side, probably by installing unstable drivers.
Hahaha like people will fill a bug report everytime a software crash… I wonder whether you’re delusional or blinded by your faith into this piece if shit of a software.
I have the exact opposite experience as you. I have never once seen steam crash. My steam account is now 9 years old. I was absolutely stoked when I saw GOG Galaxy was trying to handle not only GOG games but games from other platforms as well. But my experience with that has been so bad. It’s fine for GOG games, but I’d much rather just add all my games into steam at this point. So as for stability, I don’t see any way that GOG Galaxy could ever beat Steam.
For Linux support, Steam is a DRM which is a detractor. But with all they’ve done with proton, steam input, steam deck OS… I’d say that Steam is definitely doing more for the Linux ecosystem than GOG.
Steam has been working on the steam deck for how long now? 5? 10 years? Gog has that much time to catch up.
And as I said, I don’t deny the role steam played and is still playing for Linux gaming. But it’s still a drm. And that’s something I simply cannot ignore.
I do use steam mind you. But I’ll use and support gog everytime I can. If steam did the most for Linux, gog did and still do the most for players.
I d trust a privately own company with Gabe as the head than the asshats that proliferated micro transactions and shitty always online DRM for single player games.
I would love to see some other genres covered, tho.
RIP Studio Liverpool.
At the same time I get that GoW and Uncharted sell better than WipEout… but come on, I want at least something more than different flavors of the same game type.
But Steam doesn’t have a monopoly. There’s Epic and GOG and whatever Origin’s called now and probably others. They’re all free to exist, Valve doesn’t do anything to stifle competition, and even lets other companies sell games that start their launcher from Steam.
The only thing you have to lose by using a different system is that it’s probably not as good.
All they’ve done is produce a really fucking exemplary product and it’s become really popular because it’s honestly just good. The second it stops being good or Valve stop being awesome there’s plenty of alternative ways to buy games that I’m sure will be there to replace it.
And Valve is perhaps the best PC store since they have continually pushed PC gaming forward, for example:
Valve Index - still one of the best, if not the best, VR headset out there; it made VR a lot more interesting
Steam Controller - didn’t make as big of a spash as they wanted, but it was really innovative and lead to…
Steam Deck - yeah, they weren’t first, but it’s affordable and made a big enough splash to get big studios to care; now we have a lot more options as well for handheld PC gaming
Not to mention their Linux support, awesome customer support, free dev keys, and Steam Link app. What did other stores do?
GOG - DRM-free is great! But that’s about it.
EGS - free games and lower store fee are cool
Xbox Game Pass - pretty good for users, but it’s troubling long term, and it only works on Windows
everything else - can’t think of anything special here
So no, I don’t think Valve is bad in any way. Quite the opposite, they’re the best behaved games store on PC.
GOG Galaxy is actually amazing in what it accomplishes, GOG just don’t have the resources to make it frictionless.
Gamepass is probably the main competition for Steam at this point. Publishers have been busting to make games run on the cloud, it’s the ultimate DRM, the ultimate goal of the erosion of ownership.
There will be a time where there is a push towards partial-cloud gaming and then fully cloud gaming, and it will be hard for PC gaming to compete in the mainstream when you buy an Xbox dongle for $50 and game as soon as you plug it in. That’s the real threat to Valve.
GOG just don’t have the resources to make it frictionless
They had enough budget to make Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, I think they can handle making a decent desktop client. They just don’t prioritize it.
But yeah, subscription and cloud gaming is where the industry wants to go, and I sincerely hope they don’t succeed.
Then they’re either not meeting the needs of potential customers or not finding new customers.
For me personally, I would buy more from them if they supported Linux with GOG Galaxy. I would but a lot more from them if GOG Galaxy had a good experience on Steam Deck. I can’t speak for anyone else, but that’s my price, and apparently it’s the most upvoted feature request for GOG Galaxy.
I didn’t have a Steam account until they made a Linux client (they released in 2012, I made my Steam account in 2013). I bought a few Linux native games here and there, and when they launched Proton in 2018, I bought a lot more games. Before that, I mostly bought games directly from indie devs (Minecraft, Factorio, etc), or tried my luck buying Windows games and running them through WINE (e.g. Starcraft 2).
That’s my price. If they want me as a customer, they need first class Linux support. That’s why Steam gets my money, and GOG could win my business by offering DRM-free games on top. But to me, a Linux desktop client is more important than DRM-free, so that’s why Steam gets my money.
The Valve Index is the least popular VR option and doesn’t rank near the top of VR headsets. Still being beat out by entry level Oculus.
The Steam controller was poorly made flop and has been discontinued. The vast majority of reviews put the controller well below the Xbox controller, which was already PC compatible.
Steam Deck is very expensive and has a very poor battery life. Making the handheld cable tethered. It also went against its open promise by including locked down proprietary software.
Steams customer support ranks the third worst of all top level game stores. Just above Ubisoft and Blizzard.
You mention their Linux support yet the majority of games are yet to be supported and plenty of game will never be supported due to their nature or inclusion of anti-cheat. The only thing Valve has done was release the Steam Client to Linux.
Steam popularized gambling for children and continue to be one of 2 PC companies that continue to do so.
Valve’s goal isn’t to sell a lot of headsets, but to show what’s possible with high quality VR and encourage more VR games and headsets. Valve’s ultimate goal here is to sell more VR games.
Oculus wants to sell a lot of headsets so they can push some kind of SM interaction and profit from having lots of ads. The priority there is adoption, not quality or compatibility.
Steam Controller was poorly made
No, it was well made, it just wasn’t popular. And again, it wasn’t their goal to sell a ton of them.
The goal was to design a flexible controller to build out their controller API and give an option for a decent desktop mouse replacement for a PC “console” format (i.e. Steam Machine). I think they succeeded at that, but the market wasn’t interested, probably because Steam Machines didn’t go anywhere. It was never intended to replace existing controllers, but to complement them.
Steam Deck is very expensive
It’s $400, which is really competitive. Direct competitors like the AYANEO cost ~$1k twice as much, or even more. The Switch cost $300 at launch (OLED is $350, even today) and wasn’t even competitive with current console hardware at launch, while the Steam Deck is competitive with both price and hardware.
And it’s not cable tethered. I get a few hours of battery life as long as I’m not playing the most heavy games. Most of what I play are older AAA games and newer indie titles, and I get 3-5 hours of battery life, which is longer than my play sessions anyway. If I switch to a modern AAA titles, it’s like 1-2 hours, which is still enough for most play sessions.
Their goal, again, isn’t to sell a ton and corner the PC handheld market, it’s to make PC handhelds popular so there’s more demand, thus more competition, and thus more game sales. They also want to show what’s possible with a Linux-based PC, so there’s a credible alternative to Microsoft (and most games seem to be playable, check out ProtonDB for a larger picture than just Steam’s official stamp; look at Proton DB medals, 77% are Gold or Platinum, which usually refers to “playable” and “verified” accordingly).
Steam’s customer support
You claim it’s worse, but you don’t give examples of services that are better. Here are some examples of worse customer service:
Nintendo estore - no returns
PlayStation store - no returns if you have started to download it, unless it’s faulty (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077), and even then you have 14 days
Xbox - within 14 days and don’t have “a significant amount of playtime”
And Steam’s policy is 14 days and <2 hours playtime (so the same or better than above), yet there are countless examples of refunds being issued being both the time and playtime limit, provided you don’t abuse it.
I’m not going to go through other examples because I believe I’ve proven my point, so now it’s your turn: give specific examples of other stores having better customer service than Steam.
No, they’re just one example, and perhaps the most clearly documented one, and IMO the most important one (i.e. the one that most users will need to use).
If you want to discuss another metric, then please do so.
The only thing Valve has done was release the Steam Client to Linux.
*countless improvements Valve engineers have made to the the Mesa OpenGL and Vulkan drivers as well as to the kernel graphics driver components. Not just to the AMD graphics drivers for benefiting the Steam Deck’s hardware but also to Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan and then other common infrastructure. But in this area of the Linux graphics driver support, Valve’s contributions and those of their partners have been incredibly beneficial to the Linux desktop ecosystem even outside gaming. *
I guess that depends on your priorities. It has a competitive resolution and frame rate, is a bit heavy, has fantastic controllers, and has Linux compatibility. It’s also expensive and is best to pair with high end hardware.
So if you’re looking for Linux support (like me), it’s pretty much your only option, unless you’re willing to buy used or accept a lot of compromises. If you’re looking for cheap, lightweight, or compatible with lower end hardware, it’s not going to score well.
But on the whole, outside of pricing, it does a good job in almost every category. If money is no object, the Index is one of the best.
The position makes a monopoly so I would say they are but they remain the good guys because they don’t engage in anti-competitive practices, you can have a monopoly wven if you don’t abuse it.
Monopolies aren’t based on the mere existence of competition. It’s based on power and market share. Eg, Chrome has a monopoly. Firefox, Safari, and a few niche browsers exist. But Chrome is the utter vast majority of the market and has pretty much all the power on dictating web standards as a result.
Microsoft had competitors when they got sued for their IE + Windows monopoly. But they had an utterly massive amount of the market share and used that to push their own browser.
That’s not at all what a monopoly is, it’s simply the absence of competition aka the market position. You don’t have to engage in anti-competitive practices to havw a monopoly, I don’t get why that’s so hard to understand for many here…
Other games aren’t a competition for a platform like Steam, that’s a different market. Steam has a monopoly because they have a extremely dominant position without real competition in their sector, they don’t have to engage in anti-competitive practices against games outside of steam to have that…
Fuck, this is so stupid it’s hard to even responde… Steam has a monopoly on game distribution but Minecraft isn’t a Steam competitor just like Fortnite isn’t a Play Store competitor! I am done with this thread, it’s frustrating to try and explain so many people such basic things if they don’t want to hear them!
People saying Steam doesn’t have a monopoly because other stores exist, is the same as saying Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly on PC Gaming because Mac and Linux exist. Technically true, but ultimately meaningless because its their market power that determines a monopoly, not whether there are other niche players.
While Valve and Steam have generally been a good player, and currently do offer the best product, they still wield an ungodly amount of influence over the PC gaming market space.
Epic is chasing that because they really want what Valve has, though no doubt they plan to speedrun the enshittification process as soon as they think it safe.
When people say Valve doesn’t have a monopoly, they usually mean they don’t engage in anti-competitive practices (like making exclusivity a condition for publishing on their store, cough cough).
Actually, Valve’s recent moves represent what free market capitalism should be about - when competing stores started to appear, they instead made massive contributions to Linux gaming and appealed to right-to-repair advocates with the Steam Deck. Now both of those demographics are suckling on Gaben’s teats, myself included.
I hate DRM but really like Steam, they put in a shit ton of work to achive that! It’s certainly a monopoly but I think one of the biggest differences is that it’s not a publically tradet company so they don’t have to chase that infinite growth many very influencial idiots don’t see any issue with and there for aren’t willing to destroy everything for short term gains.
Despite not having pressure from shareholders Valve pioneered or at least popularized and normalized many of the worst practices in videogame industry designed to milk players dry: microtransactions, battle passe, loot boxes, real money gambling, you name it, Valve has it
Capitalism and a free economy are good when it's serving customers by making the best product or service possible, while balancing that with paying labour to make that happen.
The problem is that nowadays, there's a third party to this for the megacorps: Shareholders, which is where the enshittification begins.
Valve is a private company, so it is not beholden to any external shareholders, which is why it's been able to chart its own course. Still, I do worry what will happen when Gabe steps down.
I just don’t think that’s the case with Valve, they work on steam and add new features consistently, it’s not like they’re providing no value for the cut they take.
I get where you’re coming from though and way too many companies get away with that kind of situation. Just what capitalism often gives us :/
I’m not talking about Valve giving things back to us. I’m talking about the fact the owners of the company get money simply by owning the company. They take money they didn’t work for. Even if the company isn’t manipulative or scummy, they’re enriching people who don’t deserve it.
Generally companies do provide a service of some sort, the problem is that the higher ups who generally do less actual “work” rake in way way more then the average worker of the company.
That may be so, but that’s not the way that the initial tweet is using the term, and not the commonly understood definition.
I’m not denying that Valve as a whole have been a force for good in the PC gaming market, but it’s pointless to argue semantics and make up definitions to better suit personal bias instead of debating the actual point that’s being made.
they usually mean they don’t engage in anti-competitive practices.
But they do. They forbid devs to sell their games cheaper on other storefronts (outside of timed sales). Basically they enforce anti-competitive pricing on products in a way that makes it impossible for the devs to move the platform costs into consumer prices.
Devs could sell the product on Epic for example for $49 and make the same amount of profit as they do on Steam when priced $59 due to lower cut, but they can’t do it because Valve forbids it. It anti-competitively protects Valve and their 30% cut against competitors who would take lesser cuts, at the expense of end customers.
Epic is chasing that because they really want what Valve has, though no doubt they plan to speedrun the enshittification process as soon as they think it safe.
Like what Steam did with Greenlight and the plague of early access asset flips that clogged its home page for years?
Greenlight had nothing to do with selling out the end user experience to cash out on providing value and leaving the service near unusable, unless you have some kind of compulsion where you have to buy everything on Steam.
The trading card feature created an ecosystem allowing cheap asset flips to quickly make the threshold. And make their money back, creating a positive feedback loop.
Steam allowed its store to be flooded with these games at the expense of its customers because it got it’s cut.
Steam is a natural monopoly, which although still not entirely good but are a wholly different beast from monopolies made by exploiting flaws in the system
What’s a natural monopoly? Valve currently has the freedom to implement anything they want within an extent because they’re so popular. If they decided they wanted to charge devs 35% would people stop using it? Probably not. Steam’s monopoly is as bad as any other for the same reason any other monopoly is bad.
A natural monopoly is when an industry is difficult to break into, making competition difficult or impossible. This favors incumbents, in fact, a lot of industries are natural monopolies (pharma, aerospace, chip production).
The difficulty of breaking into an industry may be because:
new players cannot compete with established scale
start up costs require a nearly all-or-nothing approach, high risk
Look it up? It’s an actual term, not something I made up for whatever reason you assumed to argue against something I didn’t even say. I already said it’s still not a good thing, it just would have happened regardless of whoever that was able to do it on scale first.
You may want to read up on Ma Bell or Microsoft’s legal issues with Internet Explorer in the 90s to see what specifically was so bad about monopolies like those, and then revisit this idea.
Quite certain Payday 3 could have been higher if it had better executive choices like I don’t know, an offline mode, so that it’s no today after 4 days that people can start to have some servers that are about good. Emphasis on About
Actual unpopular opinion: I don’t give a fuck, I want my launcher to launch my games, all of them do it, Steam just comes with a shit load of extra stuff I don’t care about. I buy my games where they’re the cheapest and with all the free games on Epic I rarely use Steam anymore. If they’re the same price I’ll go with the platform that give the devs the biggest share of the profit and that’s not Steam.
Based on how you completely changed what your point from one comment to the other, it seems you realized you had to have something more interesting to opine.
Guess I’ll continue to not buy playstation consoles then. Bought multiple playstations every generation up until the PS4 - PS, PSOne, PS2, PS2 slim, PS3, PS3 slim, PSP, PS Vita all bought on launch day, but after the PS3s slow change to cinematic 3rd person linear story driven games I gave up on them.
I can’t name a single other digital service anywhere near steam level of trust. things you bought don’t disappear. they are on the record saying there is a contingency in case of shutdown. they havnt a used their position. as far as market leaders go, you could do worse
I don’t want a curated store though and would rather have people be able to release games, and let users decide if it is something they want or not. I can access reviews myself and don’t need companies deciding what game is or isn’t worthy of being available. And users is who I trust more anyways, which is why for so long search term + reddit is what I’ve relied on.
I mean, isn’t community self-policing and an overly tolerant attitude towards picking what type of games are allowed on your platform exactly what we want from them?
Quality control is another word for "high barrier to entry", and especially with their market position, being rejected by Steam for some arbitrary reason would effectively kill your project.
Not only should they not restrict the ability to sell your games there without a concrete reason; they shouldn't be permitted to do so. A company with that much influence shouldn't be allowed to be a gatekeeper of what constitutes a "good" game.
Their review system and strong return policy are more than enough.
I didn’t ignore it, you just didn’t think it through.
You’re complaining about having more options as if it’s some kind of moral stand. But the only reason to be mad about those things is if you were forced to buy them. Steam doesn’t only have to sell games that you specifically approve of and it’s not some kind of moral failing to sell games that are low quality.
This isn’t even getting into how you’re ignoring history to make the claim that they did it all for their bottom line and not the huge amount of user demand for them to open up the store. This also isn’t getting into how any money coming in from asset flips specifically is negligible, and not at all like some kind of NFT scam level of dubious behaviour like you’re referring to it.
The only reason to be this mad about more games being sold on Steam is if you feel a need to buy it all.
That’s an extremely loose idea of “promotion”, to the point of manufacturing upset. A storefront does not inherently promote something merely by offering it, that’s like saying a convenience store promotes Pepsi and Coca-Cola because they sell both even though both those companies have extremely strict promotional initiatives that ensure no crossover.
Because there is a gamer. Someone who plays games.
And Gmer. Someone who’s entire personality is based around games, and not in the fun healthy way. But in the justifying a monopoly because it’s their colour way. Just look at some of the comments here and you’ll see a lot of Gmers.
Ok, so that is the what, but what is the why? Why the censored word? I don’t get it. Nonetheless I’m closer to getting it now so thank you for that much
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