A UK tribunal has given the go-ahead to a £656 million ($901 million) collective action lawsuit targeting Valve over alleged anti-competitive practices on PC storefront Steam.
You can start shopping on another store, like GOG. But also, the add-ons thing feels like these folks have never shopped for video games anywhere else, because everyone does that.
The work they do to get all the strange controller setups working (and let others make configurations) is a huge time saver when all you want to do is play your games.
Free cloud saves are a life saver when you go from device to device.
The Linux work they do is fantastic.
It goes on and on. But yeah the biggest deal is that if they ever go full corpo…we are in trouble.
I’m going to nitpick the controller stuff too, because they could have done it in a way that was store agnostic, but of course, they benefit if they don’t do it that way.
Yeah, Steam Input could have been huge for the entire gaming industry, but instead it’s only for Steam and so only can get fixed by Valve, who just doesn’t really care about coming back to things and keeping them working after initially building something. Frustrating to see something almost so good just kinda limp along, accumulating bugs no one will fix because Valve doesn’t really care beyond the simple button mapping use.
Just like how dynamic collections could have been pretty great, but Valve got a rudimentary version working, patted themselves on the back, and left forever without even implementing the most basic tools anyone would need to actually use them (boolean combinations, actually using the tags you set on games, etc). It could even have been a slick new interface to Steam’s tagging (imagine if you set a collection specifically as a tag, and Steam took your manually adding and removing games there as tag votes) that might’ve helped ease some of the dumb problems tags have (there’d be a lot more info for Steam to draw on than just the people actually updating tags on the store page).
I’m kind of impressed no one makes a better gaming social-launch client than Steam, but then Steam’s own client has a massive lock in advantage so you basically can’t make something that wholly replaces it, and Valve doesn’t care to play nice when they want that obvious Steam-game vs non-Steam-game divide.
Oh yeah totally. But it deals with proprietary drivers…so im not 100% sure what the restrictions are there. The mapping could be done open source if there was a need/want.
GOG offers them, but they’re inconsistent and only work with their launcher. While I have some GOG games on my Steam Deck, they don’t transfer saves over to my PC.
This is exactly why this shit constantly annoys me. Steam is not unique in how they handle their store. If you don’t want to pay Valve a fee as a dev, then don’t put your game on Steam. No one is forced to do that.
Now, you will lose many sales. But a service being popular does not make it a monopoly. Other stores exist, and are even discussed in the article. All of them have some similar method of getting add-ons. Steam’s happens to be very easy – again, that doesn’t make it anti-competitive.
Also: the fact that this is about “PC monopoly” and “Microsoft” is not mentioned is just… wild. And sad.
If that happened, that would mean you’d be able to buy DLC for all of your free EGS games on Steam as well. Selling DLC for those games is probably just about the only money that store brings in outside of Fortnite.
Hah, not from me! It won’t be the first time that I buy a game on Steam that I previously played for free on EGS, just so I can buy the DLC. I will never spend a cent on EGS.
While I don’t buy a lot of PC games, I did pick up Stellaris on GOG.
The weird second-class status I get when it comes to betas and mods is enough for anyone to scream. Especially since if I wanted to move to steam, I’d have to re-buy every add-on I want to play.
Add-on lock-in really is a thing. Even if it may be as much a lazy publisher as it is a greedy storefront.
An extremely similar API exists in GOG, for better and for worse, because it functionally is the only DRM in GOG. And of course Epic offers the same thing, too.
It happens all the time. Sometimes it’s a disclaimer on the store page, or sometimes they just list “multiplayer”, and I have to find out via forums if the game is actually DRM-free or if they’re using the equivalent GOG multiplayer service. And the reason it’s there is to entice those developers who rely on the equivalent Steam services, but I wish those API calls could somehow be co-opted into actual DRM-free multiplayer.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
You can start shopping on another store, like GOG. But also, the add-ons thing feels like these folks have never shopped for video games anywhere else, because everyone does that.
Steam has some upsides most take for granted.
The work they do to get all the strange controller setups working (and let others make configurations) is a huge time saver when all you want to do is play your games.
Free cloud saves are a life saver when you go from device to device.
The Linux work they do is fantastic.
It goes on and on. But yeah the biggest deal is that if they ever go full corpo…we are in trouble.
I’m going to nitpick the controller stuff too, because they could have done it in a way that was store agnostic, but of course, they benefit if they don’t do it that way.
Yeah, Steam Input could have been huge for the entire gaming industry, but instead it’s only for Steam and so only can get fixed by Valve, who just doesn’t really care about coming back to things and keeping them working after initially building something. Frustrating to see something almost so good just kinda limp along, accumulating bugs no one will fix because Valve doesn’t really care beyond the simple button mapping use.
Just like how dynamic collections could have been pretty great, but Valve got a rudimentary version working, patted themselves on the back, and left forever without even implementing the most basic tools anyone would need to actually use them (boolean combinations, actually using the tags you set on games, etc). It could even have been a slick new interface to Steam’s tagging (imagine if you set a collection specifically as a tag, and Steam took your manually adding and removing games there as tag votes) that might’ve helped ease some of the dumb problems tags have (there’d be a lot more info for Steam to draw on than just the people actually updating tags on the store page).
I’m kind of impressed no one makes a better gaming social-launch client than Steam, but then Steam’s own client has a massive lock in advantage so you basically can’t make something that wholly replaces it, and Valve doesn’t care to play nice when they want that obvious Steam-game vs non-Steam-game divide.
Oh yeah totally. But it deals with proprietary drivers…so im not 100% sure what the restrictions are there. The mapping could be done open source if there was a need/want.
Believe you can download the this project https://github.com/Alia5/SISR and get what you want
Oh wow thanks
Is there any launcher that doesn’t offer free cloud saves these days?
(not neglecting that Stream normalized it, for the record)
Consoles, though I suppose those aren’t what you’re talking about.
GOG offers them, but they’re inconsistent and only work with their launcher. While I have some GOG games on my Steam Deck, they don’t transfer saves over to my PC.
I mean, Steam cloud saves only work with Steam, no?
This is exactly why this shit constantly annoys me. Steam is not unique in how they handle their store. If you don’t want to pay Valve a fee as a dev, then don’t put your game on Steam. No one is forced to do that.
Now, you will lose many sales. But a service being popular does not make it a monopoly. Other stores exist, and are even discussed in the article. All of them have some similar method of getting add-ons. Steam’s happens to be very easy – again, that doesn’t make it anti-competitive.
Also: the fact that this is about “PC monopoly” and “Microsoft” is not mentioned is just… wild. And sad.
Personally this reeks of being a shadow lawsuit by Epic games.
With the end goal being to let people buy and play the games on Steam, but then buy the addons via EGS.
If that happened, that would mean you’d be able to buy DLC for all of your free EGS games on Steam as well. Selling DLC for those games is probably just about the only money that store brings in outside of Fortnite.
Hah, not from me! It won’t be the first time that I buy a game on Steam that I previously played for free on EGS, just so I can buy the DLC. I will never spend a cent on EGS.
While I don’t buy a lot of PC games, I did pick up Stellaris on GOG.
The weird second-class status I get when it comes to betas and mods is enough for anyone to scream. Especially since if I wanted to move to steam, I’d have to re-buy every add-on I want to play.
Add-on lock-in really is a thing. Even if it may be as much a lazy publisher as it is a greedy storefront.
It’s strange, because if I buy an expansion for a board game, I don’t have to shop at the same store that I bought the base game from.
Unfortunately that doesn’t help with multiplayer games that rely on steam
An extremely similar API exists in GOG, for better and for worse, because it functionally is the only DRM in GOG. And of course Epic offers the same thing, too.
How many devs actually take advantage of it though?
It happens all the time. Sometimes it’s a disclaimer on the store page, or sometimes they just list “multiplayer”, and I have to find out via forums if the game is actually DRM-free or if they’re using the equivalent GOG multiplayer service. And the reason it’s there is to entice those developers who rely on the equivalent Steam services, but I wish those API calls could somehow be co-opted into actual DRM-free multiplayer.