They’re a monopoly because they’re the best in town and it isn’t close. Steam has a(n easily circumventable and long, long-beaten) DRM available, but it’s hardly the selling point of the platform nor a requirement. Steam provides automatic game updates, social and community help features, a built-in mod uploader/downloader, image hosting and a screenshot button, cloud saves, excellent network implementation (holy shit I do not miss the days of trying to get Gamespy and GFWL to let me connect to my friends), the Community Market and cross-game trading, built-in control remapping support, Twitch-style drops and giveaways from livestreams, recommendation features like Discovery Queue to find new and interesting titles, a community reviews and tags system that while imperfect is definitely the best I’ve seen thus far, an in-game overlay that has semi-recently gained some excellent features like game recording and the ability to pin a clock or notepad on top of the game, and one of the most recent updates reworked family sharing so that any five accounts can basically just merge their libraries and all play each other’s games at the same time, an extremely convenient feature that far and away beats out consoles’ digital sharing or traditional “pass the disc” borrowing.
Additionally, huge proponents of non-Windows gaming. Initially trying to do Mac ports, but moving onto perpetually pushing Linux as Apple continued to not care about gaming at all until like five minutes ago when they started paying Capcom and Ubisoft for ports.
There are a lot of games at 30 I’ve played through just fine, but for FPS games that extra 10-15 is about my minimum unless it’s on console with aim assist. I grew up playing Saints Row 2 at single-digit framerates, but I just can’t do that anymore.
Also “a bit too long and some noticeable jank” but damn if I don’t get really into it sometimes. Had to switch to the easier difficulty after something like 25 hours of playtime because I’m not very experienced in these types of RPGs but it’s okay because there’s still some challenge there, just not enough to really actually worry.
The Half-Life franchise, maybe. Half-Life 2 and up has a lot of physics stuff including the Gravity Gun, but considering HL1 is free to play via Sven Co-op it wouldn’t hurt to start there. You’ll need something like Synergy or Obsidian Conflict to play HL2 cooperatively.
So much to play that’s free nonetheless. If I’m going to get screwed by live service nonsense, it’s gonna be a game like Fortnite or the upcoming Skate or even Genshin Impact, not a full-priced title. All this means to me is that they just announced that there’s no reason to buy at launch, like with Shadow of War from ages ago with now-removed singleplayer loot boxes.
The Rocket League Racing, Rock Band clone, and LEGO survival mode are wild additions that I honestly really appreciate. BR got old ages ago, but now there’s a whole swathe of new free stuff to play.
Microsoft works in mysterious ways. Another oddity is how the Microsoft Store version of The Evil Within is a more-updated, more-featured version of the game than every other version including on console, and I don’t think they’ve ever acknowledged it. It only released when they bought Bethesda, so maybe it’s a similar story here where they’re just putting out some unreleased work.
People used to form “gaming-clans” in order to find people to play games with to begin with, and that structure for a community around a game is likely to become relevant again simply to be able to fill matches with people who you can be sure are honest players.
Unlikely imo, because modern game devs have been killing the viability of that for years. User-hosted servers are gone, crossplay is reliant on SBMM to be realistically possible, and private matches often block players from receiving XP and rewards because they’re worried about FOMO and people getting too much fun without spending enough. Even CSGO got an update in the months leading up to CS2 where they removed the ability to earn drops on community servers, driving another nail into the coffin as one of the last kinds of these games that still retain the mere ability to run servers of our own.
Not new management, but they definitely changed direction. From Portal 2 to Half-Life Alyx was a dark age of live service titles and hardware. Fortunately, it seems like they’re finally getting back to their old selves?
Alyx was supposedly their re-entry into releasing games (hopeful that HLX is good), the Steam Deck caused them to go back and fix several of their titles (plus do the huge Half-Life update we just got), and while they’re not exactly making their games as open as they used to, they’re letting the community handle things like TF2 events and L4D2 patches.
So, I dunno, cautiously optimistic for their future. At least as long as Gabe is running the company.
I wouldn’t play Web3 games, I don’t really see a future for web3
There’s no future for these because the big players that could pull it off have no reason to do so. Game publishers love FOMO and thus hate trading, and platform owners would probably look at Valve’s success with the Steam Marketplace instead of the continued failure of crypto.
I also don’t really see a future for VR/AR.
This one doesn’t have that same sort of constraint where it fundamentally doesn’t make sense.
VR has a future as an entertainment system for sure. Probably not as widespread as simply grabbing a PS5 and playing Madden, but there’s a ton of potential especially as older hardware drops in price and game libraries continue to expand. Porn is gonna keep this concept alive forever either way.
As for AR, its future is utility. Seeing map directions on the road itself, interactive models during meetings, having real life Shadowplay built into your glasses since they’re camera peripherals, etc. Or porn but in your room with your own parts idk.
Oh boy a slow moving camera panning over some NPCs to show the scenery and some cutscene shots of a game launching a year from now, two years if on PC.
I’m Rockstar disillusioned, that’s the problem with waiting over a decade to put out a sequel, I went from 15 to 25.