Last year, they all came crawlin' back to Steam, and this year was another strong one for Valve.
From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
I don’t mind things being slightly spread out, even. What is like most though is if there were regulations that you cannot have exclusivity deals. Beyond a publisher not bothering to publish on store XYZ, there should never be a way a store is inherently excluded.
Maybe there’s a disproportionately high amount of linux users on lemmy, cause I keep seeing it come up in the comments. But I would use Epic if they had linux support. Heck some games like satisfactory I have access to on both cause I paid for it twice lol
Call me whatever, but Valve does so much for Linux gaming that when I do buy games I make sure to get them through Steam. Between Proton and the Steam Deck it seems like Valve is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Linux gaming is in a great place right now and Valve deserves a lot of credit.
They also have Steam Input which is incredible. The customization and control you have over your experience is insane.
Epic Games on the other hand can’t even be bothered to support Linux properly. Valve earns their cut.
For reference I do have it installed… i think… The one that runs overwatch/blizzard games, haven’t played or launched it in about a year though. As apart from fortnite, which I just dont play because of lockout, satisfactory is the only one I have on there i care about. Plus I can share the epic login with my less fortunate windows friends… dont tell anyone I said that though haha
It’s funny that back in 2009 Gabe Newell was talking about the focus on the customer, and making the DRM be above all useful and do things that benefit customers instead of just benefitting the developer/publisher…and here we are today where people really don’t give a shit about the revenue split, but the fact that Steam is an extremely convenient and useful platform that does a lot of legwork for the end users that people don’t even think about anymore.
Epic is trying to wave a banner of revolution, where we the end users just want our shit to work and run nicely. Obligatory mention of Linux here as well, where it seems Valve is truly trying to foster an ecosystem that benefits customers as opposed to fucking them over. That’s in lieu of the Polygon hit-piece https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive where they point out the scummy things Valve has done…but if you take Valve away you’re left with a barren landscape of shitty publishers that actively treat customers awful with none of the good things Valve does.
That article thinks people aren’t smart enough to realize that Valve is a corporation like other ones, but it’s one that strives for the “win-win” scenarios, where other corporations strive for the “win-lose” (AKA profit above all).
People don’t mind if a corporation makes money, as long as they do it ethically (products that are priced fairly, not harmful to their customers, works well, and last a long time), and also takes care of their customers, treating them with respect.
But that article doesn’t seem to realize that, it tends to write that all off as just some kind of psyop by Valve on their customer base to ‘pull the wool over their eyes’ while they fuck them over.
Such a weak article. One of the arguments is that valve is awful because… people talk about steam sales, thus giving them free marketing.
Personally, I just don’t want to have to use 6 different game stores/launchers and I’m happy with steam. Just having game pass also is enough to illustrate how much of a pain it would be, since I’ve bought a bunch of games and have later noticed I could have tried them for free on the Xbox app.
Man, you weren’t kidding. Their strongest argument was that valve can run steam for essentially free, which is just fucking ridiculous. Valve defined content service in the 21st century, they paved the way for streaming and netflix. How anyone that is arguing in good faith can think reliably serving data thats 10x-100x larger than a Netflix stream is ‘basically free’ is unbelievable.
Also, it is not “pulling out all the stops” to drag out an international business court case if that case took eighteen months. I’ve seen international filings where you havent even gotten a hearing date after 18 months, what in the hell is the author smoking…
Well… Not to take away any points from Valve because it’s still a big chunk of infrastructure, but this made me pause… I think steam content is arguably easier to serve than something like Netflix. Netflix has to deal with encoding content and it’s important for streams to not buffer, so it has to consistently stream data at a decent rate (if steam hiccups it sucks, but it’s not a problem where you’re interrupted mid game, at least). Games can be a lot bigger than videos, but I’m not sure how much that matters for this. Storage is relatively cheap and Netflix will probably have multiple copies of each video in different codecs and bitrates which might make it more equivalent storage wise? Per hour of entertainment my guess is that Netflix actually has to send more data over the network than steam on average. There’s plenty of smaller games, and people can often spend hundreds of hours in a single game. If somebody rewatches a show they’ll stream it again, but if they replay a game they might still have a copy downloaded…
I don’t know any of the actual details, but I’m curious now how they actually compare! I’d guess Netflix probably has twice as many active users as steam, and I’d guess Netflix uses more bandwidth per user than steam (I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it was 10x as much… I think people could easily stream 50gb per day, and I maaaaybe download that much from steam in a couple of weeks on average). Would be curious how it actually works out!
This isn’t to say steam is free to host, it obviously isn’t, I just think Netflix might be harder. I’m a tiny bit worried about Steam’s back catalog long term, eventually it may not be deemed profitable to keep hosting old games “for free”. Like eventually if nobody is buying a game anymore, but people keep downloading it, it couuuuld technically cost steam more to host than they made off of it, and maintaining storage long term costs money too (though hopefully this keeps getting less expensive over time). The margins for Valve are super high, though, so hopefully it doesn’t matter!
I’m fine with them existing, but if there are clauses preventing publishers from proposing their games both on steam and elsewhere while they can’t make it cheaper elsewhere, I would like these clauses to stop. I read somewhere there are such clauses and these kind of clauses seem very uncompetitive to me and I wonder why they are legal (if they are).
I don’t see a problem with it. Steam provides a ton of service as a marketplace and distributor. The social aspect of steam friends seeing what games you’re playing translates into advertising for your game. They allow for regional pricing adjustments so it’s not about blocking players from poorer countries from affording the game. And they have huge frameworks for digital item trading, achievement management, community discussion, modding and more. Their 30% cut of each sale policy is unilaterally enforced and in line with the fees charged by the VAST majority of other distributors. They don’t make exclusivity deals in exchange for taking a smaller cut, unlike some much less consumer-friendly markets. Their market is completely fair across the board. I think it’s also pretty fair to ask publishers not to push that 30% fee onto the consumer, by requiring the price on Steam to not exceed the price on any other marketplace.
That policy is to the benefit of steam customers, because they can be reasonably sure the steam price is the best price (currently) available. It’s not about exclusivity, it’s about protecting the value that Steam offers to the consumer.
I don’t see how any of that justifies that valve prohibits publishers from selling their games for cheaper on a platform other than steam.
If anything, the 30% cut is significant and if a developer finds a cheaper platform elsewhere, why wouldn’t he also be allowed to sell his game for cheaper there too?
It’s really dubious to see valve try to control developers market strategies on platforms other than steam.
I think it only prohibits them from selling steam keys for cheaper elsewhere. It serves to protect steam from bad actor publishers that would try to cut steam out by selling keys on their own website, not paying the 30% platform fee while still using steam’s infrastructure to deliver the game to players. Source
It’s amazing that steam offers this functionality at all, not even mentioning they don’t charge anything for generating keys.
Reddit is not a source, but the source linked in that post isn’t really clear.
However, in this Ars Technica article they state ‘Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this “parity” rule only applies to the “free” Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn’t responded to a request for comment on this story.’
Has that lawsuit gone anywhere? I’ve seen games published on origin and GoG for cheaper then they are on Steam. And Steam will honor developer provided game keys (hence why places like Humble and Green Man can sell games so cheaply). And after trying to research the claims, all I found was reports about the lawsuit existing. It seems like if that was real, there would be more than reports of a lawsuit and contradictory evidence by way of literally being able to buy games for cheaper on other platforms.
Not saying it’s total bullshit, just seems kind of suspect all things considered.
I don’t have any, but I see the following:
Cyperpunk 2077, which is available on steam, is cheaper than on the developer’s own platform (gog.com), despite both being at 50% off. Is there any incentive for CDPR to sell it more expensive on their platform?
They’re exactly the same for me, 50% off from 59,99€?
If the pricing is not in EUR or USD the comparison between pricing become much harder than because it’s a whole other world with regional pricing and currency conversions etc. that I don’t fully understand. It’s most likely the case that Steam does a better job at calculating the pricing into your currency than other storefronts.
Count this comment as irrelevant if you will, but I think one of the biggest missed opportunities of EGS is mod support. They have this world-class game engine, and they do so little with it. Maybe it is because of Unreal Tournament 4 failing to take off. Maybe they think just hamfisting a bunch of this modding stuff into Fortnite is all they need, but still I feel like the EGS version of the steam workshop is an open goal. Hell, with the money they’re saving from pawning off Bandcamp you can even buy off mod.io to get support for virtually no work at all. Like why hasn’t this happened yet?
do not give them good ideas. I need steam to have all games since it is the only one with any good linux support. it does not matter if EGS have free games if i can not play them.
What’s forcing a publisher to sell for the same price on Epic or GOG than on Steam? They could always just not sell there (on Steam), or do a different edition of the game for each platform so they’re independent tax units, or immediately run a coupon system for the other platform.
Mind you, that’s the choice of the publisher. Not the platform. Someone else already corrected me that epic is doing something like this but that’s based on the store not the publisher.
Plus, there’s something to be said about a central store. For all we decry monopolies, most people have serious issues in their lives. Just got one random example, the recent free days I’ve heard consistent screaming and banging from my neighbor’s flat. Turns out her eldest daughter is there, and her ex is using the children’s against her, which in turn has caused the one that was already mentally unwell to become violent and aggressive without provocation being caught in the middle of all of that (and he keeps the children support money which draws out the legal process as she cannot hire a good lawyer).
Anyhow, point being: in such a situation, having one less tiny worry on your mind (like which of 1500 stores is safe or not) is quite good. The less extra shit to think about, the better. Android has other stores too but there’s real value as a user not having to hunt down which place to get which app from. Mich like for physical goods Amazon got so big because having it all in one central place and for delivery is, well, quite convenient. Got real issues to worry about, no time to worry about small shit.
It of course feeds into a terminal monopoly, sure. But I cannot fault users who don’t have the brain space for such issues for not investing into their choices of an immediate solution is easily available: just buying on steam.
(Plus, real value in something like Steam Link, modding, discussions, guides and reviews)
They can trivially get around that, as I’ve said. Plus there’s always the option to avoid the anticompetitive place, like companies avoid selling through Amazon.
They literally cannot. If they offer a game at a lower price than Steam on other storefronts, Valve delists the game from Steam, which publishers cannot afford to since it’s the de facto leader of the industry, and forfeiting Steam sales means forfeiting a huge chunk of sales. Listing “they could just not sell on Steam” as a “trivial” way to get around Steam’s monopoly is so willfully moronic on so many levels that I don’t think I need to explain to you why that would be a bad idea.
As for “doing a different edition of the game for each platform”, that’s also a no-go. The content parity clause extends to DLC as well, and the link provided above by the other user includes multiple examples of games that were forced to match Steam’s price on other storefronts despite not being compatible. One such example:
There are ample examples of Valve explaining and enforcing the PMFN.
Valve enforced the Valve PMFN, for example, to block competition from the Discord Store. As detailed below, Discord launched a competitor to the Steam Store that charged only a 10% commission. As Discord offered a much lower price, some publishers wanted to steer customers to Discord, where the publisher could charge a lower price to the customer while growing its own revenue.
In late 2018, for example, one publisher had been selling its game on the Steam Store for $5, but launched its game on the Discord Store (enabled for Discord’s gaming platform) for free. Valve detected that the publisher was charging different prices on the two storefronts, and told the publisher that offering its game for a lower price on Discord violated the Valve PMFN. Valve insisted the publisher renegotiate its deal with Discord and ensure that gamers buying the Discord version pay the same price as gamers buying the Steam version.
Valve’s enforcement of the Valve PMFN harmed Discord, publishers, and gamers. Discord was unable to use price to grow its share of the market. Publishers were unable to reap the benefit of Discord’s lower commissions. Gamers were denied the ability to purchase the game for a lower retail price.
Having a central store is nice and all, but I should not be forced to pay my games on GOG, Epic or whatever the same price that Valve charges on Steam. That doesn’t benefit me in the slightest. Heck, if anyone else other than Valve was forcing their competitors to match their prices, the outcry from the gaming community would be huge, and justifiably so. But since it’s Steam, nobody cares and “having a central store” is used as a smoke screen to cover their shitty monopolistic anti-consumer practices.
EDIT: My god, the Steam fanboys in this thread are insane. You can like the storefront and still criticize its anti-consumer practices. Your Lord and Saviour Gaben won’t knock on your door to kiss you, no matter what you do.
I know everyone loves Valve, but it feels super weird to be celebrating a monopoly so much and so ferociously. (I know Steam isn’t a technical monopoly. We don’t need to have that discussion)
Gaben is old, and he’s gonna retire. It’ll likely be a lot sooner than anyone here is comfortable with. When Valve gets sold, or even when gaben isn’t in total control anymore, things are going to start changing, and there isn’t going to be a healthy, diverse marketplace to soften that.
There is a very good chance that the PC platform will be a really horrible place because of the lack of consumer choice in which they can purchase and play games.
It’s just fanboyism. Everyone shits on PS and Xbox users, but PC gamers weren’t privy to the fact that the PC master race trope was meant mockingly and kinda just ran with it. Now they stan a corporation.
They try hard to monopolize mods for that. An issue especially with GoG & Steam multireleases; they hog all the mods (community work) on their Workshop.
The only reason I support them as a monopoly is because they are the closest thing to an ethical/moral capitalist company around. They are proof positive that treating employees, customers, and vendors fairly can lead to an obscenely strong company with profit margins that the amoral assholes out there looking for every way to shaft everyone to make an extra penny can are envious of.
From what I understand discussing the issue with friends who run game studios and deal with Valve/Steam, the employees pretty much have his mindset from the bottom to the top of the org chart. He has been smart in who he hires and who is promoted so leadership is not a bunch of sniveling money grubbers who will sell out immediately when he retires. 🤞
That will be a shame for already purchased Steam libraries, but because the PC is an open platform and their “monopoly” is drastically overstated, it might just be the opportunity for GOG to rise up. Or maybe even Epic, if it actually bothers doing better. Valve can’t, and won’t ever be able to completely control where people buy PC games.
You know, as opposed to consoles like Playstation, which, if you don’t like how they are doing business, you just gotta deal with it.
I wouldn’t call it fighting for a monopoly. It’s just that for the last decade people have been doing exactly what everyone keeps saying to do, voting with their wallet. Steam isn’t a clear market leader because people wanted it to be, it’s one because every competitor has not put in the effort to compete but rather chosen to be shitty towards the customer rather than be beneficial to the customer.
Steams biggest competition isn’t another launcher, it’s piracy. Gabe is wise enough to know that, if the next guy to take over is a chode they’ll learn the hard way.
Absolutely. I have not pirated a single game since I got steam. Before that it was almost exclusively pirated games. no shops close by, and buying on mail order took FOREVER! and was very much hit or miss… And impossible to return.
I did buy most of the games that i enjoyed, and played a lot. Since i wanted the box on the shelf. but i still played the pirated version. since that was much easier then puling out the book and look at the 5th word on the 3rd paragraph on page 121 for the copy protection. :)
Yes, but its only use (in the vast majority of cases) is playing games so it’s not comparable to Windows PCs (a versatile tool) which are 96% of the market and are comparable to Linux PCs. The people who buy a Steam Deck intentionally buy it to play PC games with a portable device and couldn’t care less what OS is on it, the people who run a Linux PC intentionally use Linux.
Although now that I say that, I wonder how many Deck owners are just Linux users who bought it out of OS loyalty and wouldn’t have shown any interest in the equivalent product (ROG Ally, Legion GO)… When wouldn’t make them much better than the Apple fanatics if we think about it…
that the difference, instead of getting their ass fucked for what ever stupid decision microsoft do, they created their own market, that btw already run faster than the microsoft’s one
while windows is getting worse day by day, linux is getting better, an they are doing it in the most pro-user way
Yeah so that article you’re referencing doesn’t have any credibility when you actually understand how sampling works.
One computer setup, ignoring the games that don’t work at all, Windows offering marginally lower performance at peak but much higher fps stability… Let’s present it as a major win for Linux!
Do you know what my stats teacher would have told me if I had presented a study based on a sample of one? They would have told me “See you in this same class next year, you clearly didn’t understand anything I taught you so we’ll try again.”
Caution, though, this same principle applies to the disabled, and soldiers; both groups gaming companies have made many direct attempts to support even if it’s just for a positive public image.
I really don’t understand this argument. Aren’t you basically pointing out that Steam is better because they cater to a demographic that most companies won’t consider because of the small market size?
No, I’m pointing out that it’s perfectly normal that other companies don’t see the point of spending money on it. Steam has 70% of the PC market which is 96% of the market and you think it’s a good idea to put energy into trying to capture some shares of less than 2% of the market where they have basically a 100% hold.
I understand that it’s normal, but the argument still doesn’t make sense for the purposes of this discussion. For people who do use Linux, it is worthless since they can’t use it. I also can’t blame Linux users for not liking a company that has been hostile to them (i.e. removing Linux support from a game that had it.) You’re just reinforcing that Steam is a better option for them.
The problem is that the complaints aren’t “It might be a good product, I can’t try it because they don’t support my OS of choice and that’s understandable considering the small user base” which is perfectly reasonable, the complaints are “Epic sucks because they don’t support Linux and [insert a bunch of stuff that hasn’t been true for years or that also applies to Valve as a company]” which isn’t reasonable.
It’s not just that though. A lot of people have already pointed out that Epic appears to be actively hostile towards Linux by removing compatibility for games that had it before. People have also pointed out that turning on Linux compatibility for EAC is fairly trivial, but they refuse to do it. For some games, Linux users have to go through extra loops just to make it work. So when it looks like a company is treating a certain demographic as something that’s worth less than shit for no apparent reason, I’m not surprised that they’ll have a negative attitude towards that company.
And say what you want about Valve, but they have pushed Linux compatibility and it’s not surprising why Linux users have a more positive view of them over Epic. As I’ve already said, your argument reinforces this point.
You have a comforting and appealing way of getting your point across that totally leaves the listener/reader readily open to considering your opinion. Keep doing that.
Next CEO will literally just kill the program and pocket the money. Saying they need to focus on their core windows users, times are hard, “the economy”
There is nothing exclusive to steam with respect to Linux support. All of the things required for games to run on Linux which valve support are fully open source and even existed before valve got involved. They just threw money at the efforts and turbo charged it (which is great).
All of the things required for games to run on Linux which valve support are fully open source and even existed before valve got involved.
Yes, which makes it even more puzzling that the competitors don’t even try to capitalize on the success of Steam Deck and publish their own store on Flathub, utilizing the very same FOSS technologies to make the games run.
Because there’s no money in Linux. Valve can afford to target Linux for long term growth because they aren’t a public company that has to answer to investors every quarter. People mistake that for valve being pro-consumer, which they’re not.
Lol it is literally steam’s fault and they intended to be this way from the very beginning. They intentionally cornered the market with HL2. It’s incredible how people act like this just accidentally happened because valve made a supposedly good product.
Epic is worth 5 times as much as Valve and EGS is still fucking garbage years after it launched. If anything, Valve is the underdog here, yet Steam is objectively better than every other store. It’s not their fault if competing products are trash. Valve is not responsible for UbiSoft being incapable of making software that works as advertised, of for Epic refusing to support Linux.
You can’t solve this problem with money. People don’t want multiple game launchers. It’s like asking why Apple hasn’t cornered the desktop market when they’re one of the largest companies in the world.
You are sure an old head, you saw Half-Life 2 bound to Steam once and never forgave it. People don’t care that much about Half-Life 2 today, it’s not that which is keeping them there. Meanwhile today Epic not only makes their in-house games exclusive but games from other publishers as well.
The gaming market is much more fickle than general computing, one generation Sony might be on top, and the next one is Microsoft or Nintendo.
Sure people don’t want multiple game launchers, but a launcher that has their favorite game and does all that they need would be enough to get people to switch over. Epic got Fortnite and loads of players because of it. If their launcher did all that players wanted it to, maybe more people would make it their main platform. But Epic doesn’t care to add features to it. If I want to read guides, or listen to game soundtracks, or mod games, I can do that without leaving Steam. But other than exclusivity, you know, the thing that you denounce Valve for having done, there is nothing that Epic does better than Steam or any other store on the market.
I found out recently GOG was created by CD project, the same company behind CD Project Red which made The Witcher and CyberPunk. Was very glad to find out about that.
It’s worth buying from them every chance you get. Even if they disappear you will own your games so long as you can store them, unlike every other store front, steam included.
It’s absolutely weird and unhealthy to celebrate it.
Gaben is old, and he’s gonna retire. It’ll likely be a lot sooner than anyone here is comfortable with. When Valve gets sold, or even when gaben isn’t in total control anymore, things are going to start changing, and there isn’t going to be a healthy, diverse marketplace to soften that.
This is it. Look at history and every major company in the past 200 years. Once the shift happens, it all goes to hell. And yet people are still shouting about some “Steam Victory” like wtf?
Meh, I think there are some private companies that manage to remain vigilant in their purpose even as leaders change.
In my opinion, most problems happen the second a company goes public. So I’m just hoping that Valve never chooses to go public and is thus never legally beholden to shareholder interests.
Nothing lasts forever, but occasionally things can hang on for awhile. Nintendo isn’t quite the beloved company they were a few decades ago, but they’ve been doing ok for the past ~130 years.
This genuinely doesn’t get talked about enough. Steam is a private company and Gabe Newell seems to be the de facto “head” of the company, despite its famously “flat” management structure. There is no guarantee a new leader will have the same values or lead the same way. There is ripe opportunity for Steam to become a steaming pile of shit. I don’t know about the exact ownership structure beyond Newell, but unless the employees are far more empowered through things like ownership stake in the company, new leadership could effectively destroy how things currently work at Valve to be replaced by any number of terrible business decisions.
This genuinely doesn’t get talked about enough. Steam is a private company and Gabe Newell seems to be the de facto “head” of the company, despite its famously “flat” management structure. There is no guarantee a new leader will have the same values or lead the same way. There is ripe opportunity for Steam to become a steaming pile of shit. I don’t know about the exact ownership structure beyond Newell, but unless the employees are far more empowered through things like ownership stake in the company, new leadership could effectively destroy how things currently work at Valve to be replaced by any number of terrible business decisions.
Agreed, further the behavior of valve has to be understood like that of bandcamp before it was sold, an anomaly in a capitalist system that is vastly underperforming and dysfunctional from the perspective of those with money and power. It isn’t, valve is doing great (so was bandcamp) but and I really want to stress this point for the naive gamers here who dont have a very well developed sense of the political realities of capitalism as an ideology (as opposed to some “natural order” of commerce or trade), it doesnt matter if valve is in its most profitable state right now. When it falls under the control of different rich business people it will immediately begin having its heart ripped out, rationality actually comes a lot less into the picture than you think if you believe in economics as a pure science rather than a belief system that uses more math and acronyms than most.
If there arent robust alternatives to valve then, it will be a big step back.
Hopefully they have some sort of transition plan for who will take over when Gabe retires. As long as they hand the reigns over to someone with similar ideas and not some business type they could be fine given they are privately owned.
I know Steam isn’t a technical monopoly. We don’t need to have that discussion
That’s one way to swat away all criticism about the premise of your comment…
When Valve gets sold, or even when gaben isn’t in total control anymore, things are going to start changing, and there isn’t going to be a healthy, diverse marketplace to soften that.
Considering the fact that Steam is not a monopoly and alternate storefronts continue to exist (Microsoft will not stop selling games individually on their own store even if it’s just an afterthought to GamePass but it’s the same platform as GamePass), there will be alternatives to Steam if Valve turns anti-consumer. There is little actual loyalty among gamers. Just look at Blizzard: At one point their customer base was almost as die hard as Nintendo’s and it took only a couple of years to throw that away. (I noticed it when the audience actually booed at the Diablo Immortal reveal.)
In the Epic trial, Google made some of the same arguments as those used to defend Steam, like the presence of competing stores or the claim that it wins people over by the quality of the product.
The difference is that Google’s software is forced onto OEMs without them having any real choice. That Google makes them sign contracts forbidding other default app stores. That Google has secret back room deals with some app developers and not others waiving the store fee, giving them an unfair advantage.
Valve does none of that. Can you point me to valve forcing, say, Dell or HP to pre-install Steam and no other game stores? Or them not taking a cut for some games?
I said pointing to the Google antitrust case and equating them is misleading, not that it’s impossible for Valve to engage in any anti-competitive behaviour.
And the reason why I said that is because they’re completely different and not even in the same stratosphere in terms of shady ongoings. Nor are they doing the same thing. The Google case has zero bearing on this one.
As for the 30% cut, that’s been deemed fine. See the Apple case and the Google case. Even in Google’s case, where Google lost, it wasn’t down to pricing.
And Valve would have an easier time justifying it too. They could point to their service being much more bandwidth intensive, and including things like friend systems, a messenger, voice chat, streaming, cloud saves, Linux compatibility layers, compatibility for controllers that the OS doesn’t natively support, matchmaking APIs, Steam overlay, custom control options for when the game doesn’t officially support it, etc.
In an ideal world, if Gaben was a real saint, he would turn Steam into a foundation or steward-owned purpose organization before he retires, that can’t be sold.
People fanboy over Steam endlessly without realizing that with time, it will turn to shit as well.
More competition is good, and maybe Epic is shit today but if their leadership changes then maybe it could actually significantly improve and surpass Steam.
But if it doesn’t exist, then if Steam turns to shit then you’re much more likely to just be stuck with shit.
And they’re probably gonna figure out the account isn’t being used by the original owner and delete it when it’s 120 years old or some shit.
They actually have terms that cover that. You can’t sell or transfer accounts, and upon the death of the owner of each account, the account will be closed and licenses to games revoked. So yes, effectively, they will have accounts with a general “time limit” for existing, although they’re still coming up on the first time they might invoke that, at being a 20 year old service. The oldest people who have bought games on Steam are probably in their 50’s and so they may be facing it soon. As the user base ages, you might see more “end of life” account options. You know, so you can make sure all those anime porn games disappear and your grandkids won’t be dealing with that after you’re dead.
You can’t sell or transfer accounts, and upon the death of the owner of each account, the account will be closed and licenses to games revoked. So yes, effectively, they will have accounts with a general “time limit” for existing
How does that work with the family share games option in the Steam client?
If they’re playing a shared game does it just disappear on them all of a sudden?
Well, hold on. Why shouldnt we rely on pirates for preservation?
Valve is the only major PC game store that isnt public. Possibly the only PC store period, tho I dont know that for a fact for the smaller distributors. The private nature is why they currently operate as the best option for users, and the odds of the other stores going private is basically zero. So when valve shifts winds, they will be the end of an era.
Do you expect us to be able to request or rely on public companies to ever do better for game preservation and user to user trade than a private company does? You already arent pleased with valves stance, and there is no indication anyone will ever do better than them.
Who else would ever do better? Pirates are the best option.
Preservation is a joke. Sure, for super old games sold on cartridges it works. But for anything around… 1998 to 2010 or so? Forget it.
Even when you owned the original PC CDs with the box, the game updates are no longer available (Developer might not even exist anymore, site is shutdown). And if you get the wrong DRM like SecuROM you can’t start your game at all. Valid CD key or not (I tried it with Sacred 2, couldn’t get it to run due to the DRM servers being gone. Support from the shop I bought it years ago just gave me a Steam key afterwards, lol). And of course even if you get things to run, the online servers are no longer available, so that limits it to singleplayer games mostly.
Looking back at all the games I bought right now Steam is doing the best job when it comes to actually keep them running. GOG is a good second place. Hell, my PC doesn’t even have a DVD drive anymore, it’s simply not necessary.
Having played on PC for the last ~27 years I really don’t understand the nostalgia. PC gaming back then was a major hassle between physical media, manual game patching (version 1.01a to 1.01b to 1.02 to 1.1 to …) and shitty DRM that barely worked. We can only hope Steam isn’t going down the gutter, but for now they rake in tons of cash and it’s a privately held company so it should be fine.
Well, physical media breaks, discs get scratched and you might no longer find the updates.
If you want to preserve your games nowadays your best option is buying from GOG and backing up your installers (it’s DRM free and with no launcher). But it’s a massive hassle compared to just using Steam and having auto updates. The GOG launcher that does updates for you exists, but it’s a bit meh.
Anything that’s delisted will, outside of piracy, die when the account holders die.
Not totally true, it’s allowed to bequeath your account to someone through your will. At least for your Steam account. Of course you have to take care to do that before you die…
Valve isn’t going broke anytime soon, they get around a 30% cut of every game sold and on top of that they also get a cut from all the steam market transactions. Valve is a privately owned company, which means no shareholders who want constant growth for any price, so for a company worth around 7.7 billion USD in 2022 I’m really not afraid Steam will go away anytime soon.
And even if Steam has to shut down, Gaben at least made the promise to give you downloads for all your purchased games. You can decide how much that’s worth.
No exception was provided for this last time I looked through the subscriber agreement. I’m not real keen on reading through it again. Can you share the relevant portion?
As for the big red button at Valve, I can only find snippets of information. The only “official” one: https://imgur.com/4sa1Ln6 Most information is just from interviews or private messages, claiming there is an inner senior circle at Valve and they do have a contingency plan.
Btw, some sort of “optional Peer to Peer”, where volunteers host the platform P2P and everyone else can log in normally, does something like that exist?
To have a decentral platform for mods, against the near duopoly of Steam Workshop/Nexus.
I agree with all your points… but… IMHO some things keeping Steam honest are services like GoG and if course the High Seas, but more than that there’s the plethora of other entertainment options.
This isn’t housing, air, or water. A person can just not play if it’s too much hassle or too costly. If Steam or any given entertainment option isn’t worth using, people just won’t. There’s no shortage of things to do other than play games, much less use Steam for gaming.
I agree that we shouldn’t imagine Steam will never change, nor should we blindly worship or glorify Valve/GabeN. I just think that games and entertainment generally is an arena where market forces actually work to benefit the consumer.
Of course employment practices and company culture is a whole 'nother thing…
There is a very good chance that the PC platform will be a really horrible place because of the lack of consumer choice in which they can purchase and play games.
I agree with the sentiment that Steam will eventually have a shitification, but I remain optimistic because the PC platform is more open than mobile platforms.
GOG and Humble are existing, smaller stores. Microsoft had three stores they use to sell and install games. Half of the FAANG companies would love to get in on this space if an opportunity showed itself. If we get past high interest rates, I can see VCs getting in on this space.
It won’t be pretty and we can support smaller options now. But I don’t think it’ll be horrible.
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
Why is it so hard for companies to build a game launcher that doesn’t suck? Is it just a lowest bidder situation?
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
People complain because the EGS launcher is shit and not getting better in any meaningful way. Plus all the anti consumer shit that they do.
EGS didn’t come out last year. Heck GOG galaxy is fairly decent and it’s not even required and they have a fraction of the budget. And guess what a lot of people like and support them.
Epic started out shit, and then used their fortnite money to impro… No, wait, sorry, they used their fortnite money to buy exclusivity of games people had already preordered from other stores.
Starting out shit and then slowly improving is one thing. Starting out shit and then kicking your customers in the teeth is completely different.
No, not exclusivity. Pointedly spending large amounts of money to take already purchased games away from people.
Exclusivity isnt a new concept. Im still patiently waiting for the next horizon game to come to PC at all. Exclucivity isnt kicking your customers in the teeth.
Wagging your fortnite cash in peoples faces by showing them you can take away what they already paid for is the kick in the teeth.
And, more importantly, it showed me how they value me. They will spend extra money to directly inconvenience me in the hopes Im stupid enough to pay them for inconveniencing me. Bad launcher? Thats fine, blizzards launcher is dogshit and I played overwatch for years. Exclusivity again, fine. Ill wait if Im really going to be stubborn, and I wont if I really want the game.
But going out of their way to antagonize other users of the competition, as if Im supposed to find that cute and rebuy what I already purchased at a store I already chose? Zero respect for your customers means you will do the same or worse to me even if I am stupid enough to pay you, if you think antagonizing me again will wiggle out more of my money.
Fuck them forever, they cannot rebuild that trust. The only reason they havent done it again is because steam changed their tos. And they will do it to you as soon as they think theyve got a stable userbase
Origin is still bad and so is whatever Ubisoft’s launcher is called.
edit: for the record I didn’t say that steam was the best launcher, but I have found the launchers for world of warships and warthunder to be serviceable
It’s kind of funny. I feel that the rebranding was because those launchers sucked ( a common marketing tactic.) The thing is though, the EA App still sucks so it doesn’t do anything for its reputation.
IMO my favorite launcher to use out of all is probably Battle.net, even over Steam. This is probably mostly because Steam is terrible unresponsive and its startup is still kinda ass (I just tested the start and noticed its 3 fucking loading screens: Verifying installtion, Logging in and finally loading the page. All as separate windows).
Yeah I agree. I don’t play Blizzard Activision games for other reasons, but the battle.net launcher was by far the best.
I don’t get why, when PC gamers spend thousands to get a quick, smooth machine, that they put up with the shitfest that is Valve. I mean, it’s 2023 why is the UI still a website? Why is it that I can’t stop the news from popping up? And it’s so damn unresponsive and laggy.
I think it’s just priorities, those other companies weren’t interested in making a launcher, they were interested in tying their customers into their eco system.
Steam started out like that in appearance at least, nobody really wanted it and it was kind of forced on you if you wanted to play HL2 but since Valve seemed to understand the value in a platform like steam and actually work at making it good it became pretty good.
At this point it’s actually kind of hard to fully appreciate how much work has gone into steam. Not just the basic stuff like chat and forums and a store with a functioning search, or the banal stuff like inventories and trading cards and points I still don’t understand, but also the stuff most people don’t see like all the stuff for developers launching a game on steam and managing sales and keys and betas. Not to mention all the experiments they’ve done along the way to try and figure out what the best way forward is.
Steam is kind of a huge undertaking and unless a company is really invested in competing with it they’re simply not going to be able to.
If your goal was only to make a good launcher, it would be easy. If your goal is a lot of DRM shenanigans as if we were still in 1998, it’s really hard.
This article didn’t research the VR bits…Gabe has said multiple times, even recently, that they are working steadily on VR and it’s hardware. Their next headset even has a codename, Deckard.
Also, I don’t think most people realize Valve doesn’t have much of an internal structure. It more resembles a community of people working together because they want to.
Pretty sure Gabe lives in New Zealand now. Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, he just got stuck there during COVID and then never left once restrictions were eased.
Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, he just got stuck there during COVID and then never left once restrictions were eased.
Yeah, there was some fuss recently about him getting ordered to attend as a witness at some trial in the US instead of video conferencing as is the norm since covid.
Valve has objectively done far more good in the gaming space than any other company so I would say yes, their achievements are worth celebrating even if it is monopolistic. They’ve proven to be trustworthy for the time being, unlike other companies.
It’s not a monopoly in the way that valve has does bad things to keep it that way, just that every other try has so far failed. Nothing has been close to as good as steam, and probably never will. GOG is good but they’re not directly competing in the same way.
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.
Now Epic games are next, hopefully.
I hope epic game store burns in hell, personally.
I don’t mind things being slightly spread out, even. What is like most though is if there were regulations that you cannot have exclusivity deals. Beyond a publisher not bothering to publish on store XYZ, there should never be a way a store is inherently excluded.
As in, fuck Epic.
The power of a monopoly
Maybe there’s a disproportionately high amount of linux users on lemmy, cause I keep seeing it come up in the comments. But I would use Epic if they had linux support. Heck some games like satisfactory I have access to on both cause I paid for it twice lol
Call me whatever, but Valve does so much for Linux gaming that when I do buy games I make sure to get them through Steam. Between Proton and the Steam Deck it seems like Valve is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Linux gaming is in a great place right now and Valve deserves a lot of credit.
They also have Steam Input which is incredible. The customization and control you have over your experience is insane.
Epic Games on the other hand can’t even be bothered to support Linux properly. Valve earns their cut.
https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher
Works like a charm.
can confirm!
For reference I do have it installed… i think… The one that runs overwatch/blizzard games, haven’t played or launched it in about a year though. As apart from fortnite, which I just dont play because of lockout, satisfactory is the only one I have on there i care about. Plus I can share the epic login with my less fortunate windows friends… dont tell anyone I said that though haha
🤡
It’s funny that back in 2009 Gabe Newell was talking about the focus on the customer, and making the DRM be above all useful and do things that benefit customers instead of just benefitting the developer/publisher…and here we are today where people really don’t give a shit about the revenue split, but the fact that Steam is an extremely convenient and useful platform that does a lot of legwork for the end users that people don’t even think about anymore.
Epic is trying to wave a banner of revolution, where we the end users just want our shit to work and run nicely. Obligatory mention of Linux here as well, where it seems Valve is truly trying to foster an ecosystem that benefits customers as opposed to fucking them over. That’s in lieu of the Polygon hit-piece https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive where they point out the scummy things Valve has done…but if you take Valve away you’re left with a barren landscape of shitty publishers that actively treat customers awful with none of the good things Valve does.
That article thinks people aren’t smart enough to realize that Valve is a corporation like other ones, but it’s one that strives for the “win-win” scenarios, where other corporations strive for the “win-lose” (AKA profit above all).
People don’t mind if a corporation makes money, as long as they do it ethically (products that are priced fairly, not harmful to their customers, works well, and last a long time), and also takes care of their customers, treating them with respect.
But that article doesn’t seem to realize that, it tends to write that all off as just some kind of psyop by Valve on their customer base to ‘pull the wool over their eyes’ while they fuck them over.
Such a weak article. One of the arguments is that valve is awful because… people talk about steam sales, thus giving them free marketing.
Personally, I just don’t want to have to use 6 different game stores/launchers and I’m happy with steam. Just having game pass also is enough to illustrate how much of a pain it would be, since I’ve bought a bunch of games and have later noticed I could have tried them for free on the Xbox app.
Man, you weren’t kidding. Their strongest argument was that valve can run steam for essentially free, which is just fucking ridiculous. Valve defined content service in the 21st century, they paved the way for streaming and netflix. How anyone that is arguing in good faith can think reliably serving data thats 10x-100x larger than a Netflix stream is ‘basically free’ is unbelievable.
Also, it is not “pulling out all the stops” to drag out an international business court case if that case took eighteen months. I’ve seen international filings where you havent even gotten a hearing date after 18 months, what in the hell is the author smoking…
Well… Not to take away any points from Valve because it’s still a big chunk of infrastructure, but this made me pause… I think steam content is arguably easier to serve than something like Netflix. Netflix has to deal with encoding content and it’s important for streams to not buffer, so it has to consistently stream data at a decent rate (if steam hiccups it sucks, but it’s not a problem where you’re interrupted mid game, at least). Games can be a lot bigger than videos, but I’m not sure how much that matters for this. Storage is relatively cheap and Netflix will probably have multiple copies of each video in different codecs and bitrates which might make it more equivalent storage wise? Per hour of entertainment my guess is that Netflix actually has to send more data over the network than steam on average. There’s plenty of smaller games, and people can often spend hundreds of hours in a single game. If somebody rewatches a show they’ll stream it again, but if they replay a game they might still have a copy downloaded…
I don’t know any of the actual details, but I’m curious now how they actually compare! I’d guess Netflix probably has twice as many active users as steam, and I’d guess Netflix uses more bandwidth per user than steam (I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it was 10x as much… I think people could easily stream 50gb per day, and I maaaaybe download that much from steam in a couple of weeks on average). Would be curious how it actually works out!
This isn’t to say steam is free to host, it obviously isn’t, I just think Netflix might be harder. I’m a tiny bit worried about Steam’s back catalog long term, eventually it may not be deemed profitable to keep hosting old games “for free”. Like eventually if nobody is buying a game anymore, but people keep downloading it, it couuuuld technically cost steam more to host than they made off of it, and maintaining storage long term costs money too (though hopefully this keeps getting less expensive over time). The margins for Valve are super high, though, so hopefully it doesn’t matter!
having a company that is not actively trying to exploit us is surprisingly refreshing.
HAHA
I’m glad steam and gog exist. Both provide an amazing service.
I’m fine with them existing, but if there are clauses preventing publishers from proposing their games both on steam and elsewhere while they can’t make it cheaper elsewhere, I would like these clauses to stop. I read somewhere there are such clauses and these kind of clauses seem very uncompetitive to me and I wonder why they are legal (if they are).
I don’t see a problem with it. Steam provides a ton of service as a marketplace and distributor. The social aspect of steam friends seeing what games you’re playing translates into advertising for your game. They allow for regional pricing adjustments so it’s not about blocking players from poorer countries from affording the game. And they have huge frameworks for digital item trading, achievement management, community discussion, modding and more. Their 30% cut of each sale policy is unilaterally enforced and in line with the fees charged by the VAST majority of other distributors. They don’t make exclusivity deals in exchange for taking a smaller cut, unlike some much less consumer-friendly markets. Their market is completely fair across the board. I think it’s also pretty fair to ask publishers not to push that 30% fee onto the consumer, by requiring the price on Steam to not exceed the price on any other marketplace.
That policy is to the benefit of steam customers, because they can be reasonably sure the steam price is the best price (currently) available. It’s not about exclusivity, it’s about protecting the value that Steam offers to the consumer.
I don’t see how any of that justifies that valve prohibits publishers from selling their games for cheaper on a platform other than steam.
If anything, the 30% cut is significant and if a developer finds a cheaper platform elsewhere, why wouldn’t he also be allowed to sell his game for cheaper there too?
It’s really dubious to see valve try to control developers market strategies on platforms other than steam.
I think it only prohibits them from selling steam keys for cheaper elsewhere. It serves to protect steam from bad actor publishers that would try to cut steam out by selling keys on their own website, not paying the 30% platform fee while still using steam’s infrastructure to deliver the game to players. Source
It’s amazing that steam offers this functionality at all, not even mentioning they don’t charge anything for generating keys.
Reddit is not a source, but the source linked in that post isn’t really clear.
However, in this Ars Technica article they state ‘Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this “parity” rule only applies to the “free” Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn’t responded to a request for comment on this story.’
deleted by creator
It’s not about what the publisher sets as price, it’s about restricting his options.
Has that lawsuit gone anywhere? I’ve seen games published on origin and GoG for cheaper then they are on Steam. And Steam will honor developer provided game keys (hence why places like Humble and Green Man can sell games so cheaply). And after trying to research the claims, all I found was reports about the lawsuit existing. It seems like if that was real, there would be more than reports of a lawsuit and contradictory evidence by way of literally being able to buy games for cheaper on other platforms.
Not saying it’s total bullshit, just seems kind of suspect all things considered.
I wish someone would actually link that clause because I’ve searched and I didn’t find it.
I don’t have any, but I see the following: Cyperpunk 2077, which is available on steam, is cheaper than on the developer’s own platform (gog.com), despite both being at 50% off. Is there any incentive for CDPR to sell it more expensive on their platform?
They’re exactly the same for me, 50% off from 59,99€? If the pricing is not in EUR or USD the comparison between pricing become much harder than because it’s a whole other world with regional pricing and currency conversions etc. that I don’t fully understand. It’s most likely the case that Steam does a better job at calculating the pricing into your currency than other storefronts.
Yes, it seems you are right. Nonetheless, even at equal prices, isn’t it surprising?
Especially GOG being DRM free but they really need a Linux client.
Heroic is currently the best option imo, it at least has cloud saves and updates.
Hard ask for a Linux client when the Windows client is barely functional.
It would be nice but I like Heroic launcher a lot. I probably wouldn’t bother installing a gog Linux client.
Why? The website works fine.
downloading 30 separate 4GB files one by one is an unecessary chore. A ‘download all’ would make the website good
My friend said he installed gog galaxy onhis steam deck just fine
Try Lutris
Count this comment as irrelevant if you will, but I think one of the biggest missed opportunities of EGS is mod support. They have this world-class game engine, and they do so little with it. Maybe it is because of Unreal Tournament 4 failing to take off. Maybe they think just hamfisting a bunch of this modding stuff into Fortnite is all they need, but still I feel like the EGS version of the steam workshop is an open goal. Hell, with the money they’re saving from pawning off Bandcamp you can even buy off mod.io to get support for virtually no work at all. Like why hasn’t this happened yet?
True, UT4 was supposed to all about user-modding.
do not give them good ideas. I need steam to have all games since it is the only one with any good linux support. it does not matter if EGS have free games if i can not play them.
I’d also be winning if I could force all my competitors to match my prices despite my fees being higher than theirs.
What’s forcing a publisher to sell for the same price on Epic or GOG than on Steam? They could always just not sell there (on Steam), or do a different edition of the game for each platform so they’re independent tax units, or immediately run a coupon system for the other platform.
Mind you, that’s the choice of the publisher. Not the platform. Someone else already corrected me that epic is doing something like this but that’s based on the store not the publisher.
Plus, there’s something to be said about a central store. For all we decry monopolies, most people have serious issues in their lives. Just got one random example, the recent free days I’ve heard consistent screaming and banging from my neighbor’s flat. Turns out her eldest daughter is there, and her ex is using the children’s against her, which in turn has caused the one that was already mentally unwell to become violent and aggressive without provocation being caught in the middle of all of that (and he keeps the children support money which draws out the legal process as she cannot hire a good lawyer).
Anyhow, point being: in such a situation, having one less tiny worry on your mind (like which of 1500 stores is safe or not) is quite good. The less extra shit to think about, the better. Android has other stores too but there’s real value as a user not having to hunt down which place to get which app from. Mich like for physical goods Amazon got so big because having it all in one central place and for delivery is, well, quite convenient. Got real issues to worry about, no time to worry about small shit.
It of course feeds into a terminal monopoly, sure. But I cannot fault users who don’t have the brain space for such issues for not investing into their choices of an immediate solution is easily available: just buying on steam.
(Plus, real value in something like Steam Link, modding, discussions, guides and reviews)
Steam’s anti-competitive price rules
They can trivially get around that, as I’ve said. Plus there’s always the option to avoid the anticompetitive place, like companies avoid selling through Amazon.
They literally cannot. If they offer a game at a lower price than Steam on other storefronts, Valve delists the game from Steam, which publishers cannot afford to since it’s the de facto leader of the industry, and forfeiting Steam sales means forfeiting a huge chunk of sales. Listing “they could just not sell on Steam” as a “trivial” way to get around Steam’s monopoly is so willfully moronic on so many levels that I don’t think I need to explain to you why that would be a bad idea.
As for “doing a different edition of the game for each platform”, that’s also a no-go. The content parity clause extends to DLC as well, and the link provided above by the other user includes multiple examples of games that were forced to match Steam’s price on other storefronts despite not being compatible. One such example:
Having a central store is nice and all, but I should not be forced to pay my games on GOG, Epic or whatever the same price that Valve charges on Steam. That doesn’t benefit me in the slightest. Heck, if anyone else other than Valve was forcing their competitors to match their prices, the outcry from the gaming community would be huge, and justifiably so. But since it’s Steam, nobody cares and “having a central store” is used as a smoke screen to cover their shitty monopolistic anti-consumer practices.
EDIT: My god, the Steam fanboys in this thread are insane. You can like the storefront and still criticize its anti-consumer practices. Your Lord and Saviour Gaben won’t knock on your door to kiss you, no matter what you do.
I know everyone loves Valve, but it feels super weird to be celebrating a monopoly so much and so ferociously. (I know Steam isn’t a technical monopoly. We don’t need to have that discussion)
Gaben is old, and he’s gonna retire. It’ll likely be a lot sooner than anyone here is comfortable with. When Valve gets sold, or even when gaben isn’t in total control anymore, things are going to start changing, and there isn’t going to be a healthy, diverse marketplace to soften that.
There is a very good chance that the PC platform will be a really horrible place because of the lack of consumer choice in which they can purchase and play games.
It’s just fanboyism. Everyone shits on PS and Xbox users, but PC gamers weren’t privy to the fact that the PC master race trope was meant mockingly and kinda just ran with it. Now they stan a corporation.
They try hard to monopolize mods for that. An issue especially with GoG & Steam multireleases; they hog all the mods (community work) on their Workshop.
There’s no good company, only less shitty ones.
The only reason I support them as a monopoly is because they are the closest thing to an ethical/moral capitalist company around. They are proof positive that treating employees, customers, and vendors fairly can lead to an obscenely strong company with profit margins that the amoral assholes out there looking for every way to shaft everyone to make an extra penny can are envious of.
From what I understand discussing the issue with friends who run game studios and deal with Valve/Steam, the employees pretty much have his mindset from the bottom to the top of the org chart. He has been smart in who he hires and who is promoted so leadership is not a bunch of sniveling money grubbers who will sell out immediately when he retires. 🤞
I’ve been weaning myself off of Steam for years now.
I only use it at this point for games I’ve already bought and games that are exclusive to Steam, like TF2.
Anything else I just download for free.
So many viruses.
One day, Valve will be under different ownership, and we will regret the time we fought for their monopoly.
That will be a shame for already purchased Steam libraries, but because the PC is an open platform and their “monopoly” is drastically overstated, it might just be the opportunity for GOG to rise up. Or maybe even Epic, if it actually bothers doing better. Valve can’t, and won’t ever be able to completely control where people buy PC games.
You know, as opposed to consoles like Playstation, which, if you don’t like how they are doing business, you just gotta deal with it.
I wouldn’t call it fighting for a monopoly. It’s just that for the last decade people have been doing exactly what everyone keeps saying to do, voting with their wallet. Steam isn’t a clear market leader because people wanted it to be, it’s one because every competitor has not put in the effort to compete but rather chosen to be shitty towards the customer rather than be beneficial to the customer.
Newell is only 61, and an avid gamer with a lot of demonstrable business intelligence. I wouldn’t worry too much.
Only? I mean people die in their 50s and 60s all the time. You never know. I just hope the one that takes over has the same morals as Gabe.
Nothing lasts forever.
Plus, we have enough games. Shut it down, play old games lol
Steams biggest competition isn’t another launcher, it’s piracy. Gabe is wise enough to know that, if the next guy to take over is a chode they’ll learn the hard way.
Absolutely. I have not pirated a single game since I got steam. Before that it was almost exclusively pirated games. no shops close by, and buying on mail order took FOREVER! and was very much hit or miss… And impossible to return.
I did buy most of the games that i enjoyed, and played a lot. Since i wanted the box on the shelf. but i still played the pirated version. since that was much easier then puling out the book and look at the 5th word on the 3rd paragraph on page 121 for the copy protection. :)
It’s not Steam’s fault if their competitors can’t make a good product. Steam is still the only one with Linux support.
“This product is worthless because it doesn’t cater to… Let me check my notes… Under 2% of the market and even less if we don’t count the Steam Deck!”
Ok buddy
Bruh, the Steam Deck is Linux.
Yes, but its only use (in the vast majority of cases) is playing games so it’s not comparable to Windows PCs (a versatile tool) which are 96% of the market and are comparable to Linux PCs. The people who buy a Steam Deck intentionally buy it to play PC games with a portable device and couldn’t care less what OS is on it, the people who run a Linux PC intentionally use Linux.
Although now that I say that, I wonder how many Deck owners are just Linux users who bought it out of OS loyalty and wouldn’t have shown any interest in the equivalent product (ROG Ally, Legion GO)… When wouldn’t make them much better than the Apple fanatics if we think about it…
I very specifically bought a steam deck because it can double as a Linux desktop. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
that the difference, instead of getting their ass fucked for what ever stupid decision microsoft do, they created their own market, that btw already run faster than the microsoft’s one while windows is getting worse day by day, linux is getting better, an they are doing it in the most pro-user way
more than macOS lol
“Already runs faster than the Microsoft one”
Yeah so that article you’re referencing doesn’t have any credibility when you actually understand how sampling works.
One computer setup, ignoring the games that don’t work at all, Windows offering marginally lower performance at peak but much higher fps stability… Let’s present it as a major win for Linux!
Do you know what my stats teacher would have told me if I had presented a study based on a sample of one? They would have told me “See you in this same class next year, you clearly didn’t understand anything I taught you so we’ll try again.”
Caution, though, this same principle applies to the disabled, and soldiers; both groups gaming companies have made many direct attempts to support even if it’s just for a positive public image.
The difference being that you choose the OS you’re using.
Uhoh. I didn’t think this would be how I learned about the US draft being reinstated.
Find me one soldier/veteran that would choose to have PTSD or their limbs mangled.
I really don’t understand this argument. Aren’t you basically pointing out that Steam is better because they cater to a demographic that most companies won’t consider because of the small market size?
No, I’m pointing out that it’s perfectly normal that other companies don’t see the point of spending money on it. Steam has 70% of the PC market which is 96% of the market and you think it’s a good idea to put energy into trying to capture some shares of less than 2% of the market where they have basically a 100% hold.
Don’t start a business.
I understand that it’s normal, but the argument still doesn’t make sense for the purposes of this discussion. For people who do use Linux, it is worthless since they can’t use it. I also can’t blame Linux users for not liking a company that has been hostile to them (i.e. removing Linux support from a game that had it.) You’re just reinforcing that Steam is a better option for them.
The problem is that the complaints aren’t “It might be a good product, I can’t try it because they don’t support my OS of choice and that’s understandable considering the small user base” which is perfectly reasonable, the complaints are “Epic sucks because they don’t support Linux and [insert a bunch of stuff that hasn’t been true for years or that also applies to Valve as a company]” which isn’t reasonable.
It’s not just that though. A lot of people have already pointed out that Epic appears to be actively hostile towards Linux by removing compatibility for games that had it before. People have also pointed out that turning on Linux compatibility for EAC is fairly trivial, but they refuse to do it. For some games, Linux users have to go through extra loops just to make it work. So when it looks like a company is treating a certain demographic as something that’s worth less than shit for no apparent reason, I’m not surprised that they’ll have a negative attitude towards that company.
And say what you want about Valve, but they have pushed Linux compatibility and it’s not surprising why Linux users have a more positive view of them over Epic. As I’ve already said, your argument reinforces this point.
You have a comforting and appealing way of getting your point across that totally leaves the listener/reader readily open to considering your opinion. Keep doing that.
Next CEO will literally just kill the program and pocket the money. Saying they need to focus on their core windows users, times are hard, “the economy”
There is nothing exclusive to steam with respect to Linux support. All of the things required for games to run on Linux which valve support are fully open source and even existed before valve got involved. They just threw money at the efforts and turbo charged it (which is great).
Yes, which makes it even more puzzling that the competitors don’t even try to capitalize on the success of Steam Deck and publish their own store on Flathub, utilizing the very same FOSS technologies to make the games run.
Because there’s no money in Linux. Valve can afford to target Linux for long term growth because they aren’t a public company that has to answer to investors every quarter. People mistake that for valve being pro-consumer, which they’re not.
You should have a chat with the CEOs of Red Hat, Canonical, etc. about that. They surely will value your opinion.
As a consumer, I don’t care about their motivation, I care about the results. Steam Deck is more comfortable to use than Windows handhelds.
Maybe they’re making more money behind the scenes from another corporation that perhaps pays for them not to do so? Exclusivity deals, etc. etc.?
Lol it is literally steam’s fault and they intended to be this way from the very beginning. They intentionally cornered the market with HL2. It’s incredible how people act like this just accidentally happened because valve made a supposedly good product.
Epic is worth 5 times as much as Valve and EGS is still fucking garbage years after it launched. If anything, Valve is the underdog here, yet Steam is objectively better than every other store. It’s not their fault if competing products are trash. Valve is not responsible for UbiSoft being incapable of making software that works as advertised, of for Epic refusing to support Linux.
You can’t solve this problem with money. People don’t want multiple game launchers. It’s like asking why Apple hasn’t cornered the desktop market when they’re one of the largest companies in the world.
Valve 100% knew what they were doing with HL2.
Apple could easily eat into MS’s pie by licensing macOS to OEMs.
You are sure an old head, you saw Half-Life 2 bound to Steam once and never forgave it. People don’t care that much about Half-Life 2 today, it’s not that which is keeping them there. Meanwhile today Epic not only makes their in-house games exclusive but games from other publishers as well.
The gaming market is much more fickle than general computing, one generation Sony might be on top, and the next one is Microsoft or Nintendo.
Sure people don’t want multiple game launchers, but a launcher that has their favorite game and does all that they need would be enough to get people to switch over. Epic got Fortnite and loads of players because of it. If their launcher did all that players wanted it to, maybe more people would make it their main platform. But Epic doesn’t care to add features to it. If I want to read guides, or listen to game soundtracks, or mod games, I can do that without leaving Steam. But other than exclusivity, you know, the thing that you denounce Valve for having done, there is nothing that Epic does better than Steam or any other store on the market.
Yet you still refer to it as such. 🤦♂️
I’m just glad GOG is surviving. It’s even closer to an ideal of DRM-free games you own. I try to buy from there whenever I can.
Gog is on life support last I checked, it wasn’t profitable and they had to cut headcount dramatically
I found out recently GOG was created by CD project, the same company behind CD Project Red which made The Witcher and CyberPunk. Was very glad to find out about that.
That was back in 21. Last year’s numbers posted in May 2023 have them making a profit.
source
It’s worth buying from them every chance you get. Even if they disappear you will own your games so long as you can store them, unlike every other store front, steam included.
Even closer? Implying that steam ever cared about digital ownership?
It’s absolutely weird and unhealthy to celebrate it.
This is it. Look at history and every major company in the past 200 years. Once the shift happens, it all goes to hell. And yet people are still shouting about some “Steam Victory” like wtf?
Meh, I think there are some private companies that manage to remain vigilant in their purpose even as leaders change.
In my opinion, most problems happen the second a company goes public. So I’m just hoping that Valve never chooses to go public and is thus never legally beholden to shareholder interests.
Nothing lasts forever, but occasionally things can hang on for awhile. Nintendo isn’t quite the beloved company they were a few decades ago, but they’ve been doing ok for the past ~130 years.
This genuinely doesn’t get talked about enough. Steam is a private company and Gabe Newell seems to be the de facto “head” of the company, despite its famously “flat” management structure. There is no guarantee a new leader will have the same values or lead the same way. There is ripe opportunity for Steam to become a steaming pile of shit. I don’t know about the exact ownership structure beyond Newell, but unless the employees are far more empowered through things like ownership stake in the company, new leadership could effectively destroy how things currently work at Valve to be replaced by any number of terrible business decisions.
Gabe is old as hell. It’s coming.
Agreed, further the behavior of valve has to be understood like that of bandcamp before it was sold, an anomaly in a capitalist system that is vastly underperforming and dysfunctional from the perspective of those with money and power. It isn’t, valve is doing great (so was bandcamp) but and I really want to stress this point for the naive gamers here who dont have a very well developed sense of the political realities of capitalism as an ideology (as opposed to some “natural order” of commerce or trade), it doesnt matter if valve is in its most profitable state right now. When it falls under the control of different rich business people it will immediately begin having its heart ripped out, rationality actually comes a lot less into the picture than you think if you believe in economics as a pure science rather than a belief system that uses more math and acronyms than most.
If there arent robust alternatives to valve then, it will be a big step back.
Dude, he’s 61. You guys are making it sound like he’s as old as a presidential candidate…
You don’t need to be old to die tomorrow.
True, but that’s unrelated to people pretending that he’s older than dirt 🤷
61 != 450,000,000
Yes its so damn bizarre. Every time talk about steam comes up, people start talking about how ancient Gabe is. What are they on? Lol
It’s probably teenagers talking. To them 61 IS nearing death.
Long live the King!
Gabe is only 61. But based on his size he will probably go from health issues from that sooner than old age will get a skinnier Gabs.
Hopefully they have some sort of transition plan for who will take over when Gabe retires. As long as they hand the reigns over to someone with similar ideas and not some business type they could be fine given they are privately owned.
Has there been any news at all on who the potential successors are?
Read somewhere that his son who has a similar philosophy was going to take over
First time hearing about this. Hope it works out.
Because nepotism usually works out amazingly and never goes badly. /s
I looked it up and apparently Gray Newell doesn’t work at Valve, so it’s actually unlikely that he’s going to be the successor.
So steam is a family owned company?
That’s because at a certain point things like this should just become services.
But that’s wildly against capitalists mindset so…
That’s one way to swat away all criticism about the premise of your comment…
Considering the fact that Steam is not a monopoly and alternate storefronts continue to exist (Microsoft will not stop selling games individually on their own store even if it’s just an afterthought to GamePass but it’s the same platform as GamePass), there will be alternatives to Steam if Valve turns anti-consumer. There is little actual loyalty among gamers. Just look at Blizzard: At one point their customer base was almost as die hard as Nintendo’s and it took only a couple of years to throw that away. (I noticed it when the audience actually booed at the Diablo Immortal reveal.)
I guess we’ll see how this shakes out in the coming years. God willing, not much will change.
It is technically a monopoly, you don’t need 100% market share to be considered one otherwise Google wouldn’t be considered a monopoly but it is.
In the Epic trial, Google made some of the same arguments as those used to defend Steam, like the presence of competing stores or the claim that it wins people over by the quality of the product.
Epic’s expert made these relevant points:
And we know who won in the antitrust case. Let’s see what happens in Wolfire et al v. Valve.
Wowww this is crazy misleading.
The difference is that Google’s software is forced onto OEMs without them having any real choice. That Google makes them sign contracts forbidding other default app stores. That Google has secret back room deals with some app developers and not others waiving the store fee, giving them an unfair advantage.
Valve does none of that. Can you point me to valve forcing, say, Dell or HP to pre-install Steam and no other game stores? Or them not taking a cut for some games?
Valve’s actions do not have to copy those of Google for it to engage in anti-competitive behavior. Focus on the Steam-specific arguments deemed reasonable enough for the judge to allow the trial to go through, like those on the MFN, high profit margin related to the 30% fee, user reviews manipulation, and so forth.
I said pointing to the Google antitrust case and equating them is misleading, not that it’s impossible for Valve to engage in any anti-competitive behaviour.
And the reason why I said that is because they’re completely different and not even in the same stratosphere in terms of shady ongoings. Nor are they doing the same thing. The Google case has zero bearing on this one.
As for the 30% cut, that’s been deemed fine. See the Apple case and the Google case. Even in Google’s case, where Google lost, it wasn’t down to pricing.
And Valve would have an easier time justifying it too. They could point to their service being much more bandwidth intensive, and including things like friend systems, a messenger, voice chat, streaming, cloud saves, Linux compatibility layers, compatibility for controllers that the OS doesn’t natively support, matchmaking APIs, Steam overlay, custom control options for when the game doesn’t officially support it, etc.
In an ideal world, if Gaben was a real saint, he would turn Steam into a foundation or steward-owned purpose organization before he retires, that can’t be sold.
Thank for the interesting read
Didn’t the Patagonia owner do something like that?
Yup. If you open the link they mention Patagonia. They also mention Signal, which I didn’t know was also like this.
Yep.
People fanboy over Steam endlessly without realizing that with time, it will turn to shit as well.
More competition is good, and maybe Epic is shit today but if their leadership changes then maybe it could actually significantly improve and surpass Steam.
But if it doesn’t exist, then if Steam turns to shit then you’re much more likely to just be stuck with shit.
deleted by creator
They actually have terms that cover that. You can’t sell or transfer accounts, and upon the death of the owner of each account, the account will be closed and licenses to games revoked. So yes, effectively, they will have accounts with a general “time limit” for existing, although they’re still coming up on the first time they might invoke that, at being a 20 year old service. The oldest people who have bought games on Steam are probably in their 50’s and so they may be facing it soon. As the user base ages, you might see more “end of life” account options. You know, so you can make sure all those anime porn games disappear and your grandkids won’t be dealing with that after you’re dead.
How does that work with the family share games option in the Steam client?
If they’re playing a shared game does it just disappear on them all of a sudden?
deleted by creator
Well, hold on. Why shouldnt we rely on pirates for preservation?
Valve is the only major PC game store that isnt public. Possibly the only PC store period, tho I dont know that for a fact for the smaller distributors. The private nature is why they currently operate as the best option for users, and the odds of the other stores going private is basically zero. So when valve shifts winds, they will be the end of an era.
Do you expect us to be able to request or rely on public companies to ever do better for game preservation and user to user trade than a private company does? You already arent pleased with valves stance, and there is no indication anyone will ever do better than them.
Who else would ever do better? Pirates are the best option.
deleted by creator
Ok, but thats still also not about steam. Steam is a store, but they dont make much product. Game devs do that.
Game devs are the ones no longer making physical copies of their games. We should be pushing for the producers of games to be offering these.
deleted by creator
Preservation is a joke. Sure, for super old games sold on cartridges it works. But for anything around… 1998 to 2010 or so? Forget it.
Even when you owned the original PC CDs with the box, the game updates are no longer available (Developer might not even exist anymore, site is shutdown). And if you get the wrong DRM like SecuROM you can’t start your game at all. Valid CD key or not (I tried it with Sacred 2, couldn’t get it to run due to the DRM servers being gone. Support from the shop I bought it years ago just gave me a Steam key afterwards, lol). And of course even if you get things to run, the online servers are no longer available, so that limits it to singleplayer games mostly.
Looking back at all the games I bought right now Steam is doing the best job when it comes to actually keep them running. GOG is a good second place. Hell, my PC doesn’t even have a DVD drive anymore, it’s simply not necessary.
Having played on PC for the last ~27 years I really don’t understand the nostalgia. PC gaming back then was a major hassle between physical media, manual game patching (version 1.01a to 1.01b to 1.02 to 1.1 to …) and shitty DRM that barely worked. We can only hope Steam isn’t going down the gutter, but for now they rake in tons of cash and it’s a privately held company so it should be fine.
deleted by creator
Well, physical media breaks, discs get scratched and you might no longer find the updates.
If you want to preserve your games nowadays your best option is buying from GOG and backing up your installers (it’s DRM free and with no launcher). But it’s a massive hassle compared to just using Steam and having auto updates. The GOG launcher that does updates for you exists, but it’s a bit meh.
Not totally true, it’s allowed to bequeath your account to someone through your will. At least for your Steam account. Of course you have to take care to do that before you die…
Valve isn’t going broke anytime soon, they get around a 30% cut of every game sold and on top of that they also get a cut from all the steam market transactions. Valve is a privately owned company, which means no shareholders who want constant growth for any price, so for a company worth around 7.7 billion USD in 2022 I’m really not afraid Steam will go away anytime soon.
And even if Steam has to shut down, Gaben at least made the promise to give you downloads for all your purchased games. You can decide how much that’s worth.
deleted by creator
Ah, it’s unfortunately not in the contract. They do it (See for example this answer where another family member got the account after their little brother died), but it looks like it’s not a guarantee.
As for the big red button at Valve, I can only find snippets of information. The only “official” one: https://imgur.com/4sa1Ln6 Most information is just from interviews or private messages, claiming there is an inner senior circle at Valve and they do have a contingency plan.
Btw, some sort of “optional Peer to Peer”, where volunteers host the platform P2P and everyone else can log in normally, does something like that exist?
To have a decentral platform for mods, against the near duopoly of Steam Workshop/Nexus.
I agree with all your points… but… IMHO some things keeping Steam honest are services like GoG and if course the High Seas, but more than that there’s the plethora of other entertainment options.
This isn’t housing, air, or water. A person can just not play if it’s too much hassle or too costly. If Steam or any given entertainment option isn’t worth using, people just won’t. There’s no shortage of things to do other than play games, much less use Steam for gaming.
I agree that we shouldn’t imagine Steam will never change, nor should we blindly worship or glorify Valve/GabeN. I just think that games and entertainment generally is an arena where market forces actually work to benefit the consumer.
Of course employment practices and company culture is a whole 'nother thing…
I agree with the sentiment that Steam will eventually have a shitification, but I remain optimistic because the PC platform is more open than mobile platforms.
GOG and Humble are existing, smaller stores. Microsoft had three stores they use to sell and install games. Half of the FAANG companies would love to get in on this space if an opportunity showed itself. If we get past high interest rates, I can see VCs getting in on this space.
It won’t be pretty and we can support smaller options now. But I don’t think it’ll be horrible.
Why is it so hard for companies to build a game launcher that doesn’t suck? Is it just a lowest bidder situation?
Steam sucked, really bad. For 8 years, maybe? Maybe more? It takes time to build something, but consumers demand everything immediately.
GIF from that period.
I wish I had a use for that.
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
deleted by creator
Yea no
People complain because the EGS launcher is shit and not getting better in any meaningful way. Plus all the anti consumer shit that they do.
EGS didn’t come out last year. Heck GOG galaxy is fairly decent and it’s not even required and they have a fraction of the budget. And guess what a lot of people like and support them.
… Because years later, steam got good.
Epic started out shit, and then used their fortnite money to impro… No, wait, sorry, they used their fortnite money to buy exclusivity of games people had already preordered from other stores.
Starting out shit and then slowly improving is one thing. Starting out shit and then kicking your customers in the teeth is completely different.
deleted by creator
No, not exclusivity. Pointedly spending large amounts of money to take already purchased games away from people.
Exclusivity isnt a new concept. Im still patiently waiting for the next horizon game to come to PC at all. Exclucivity isnt kicking your customers in the teeth.
Wagging your fortnite cash in peoples faces by showing them you can take away what they already paid for is the kick in the teeth.
And, more importantly, it showed me how they value me. They will spend extra money to directly inconvenience me in the hopes Im stupid enough to pay them for inconveniencing me. Bad launcher? Thats fine, blizzards launcher is dogshit and I played overwatch for years. Exclusivity again, fine. Ill wait if Im really going to be stubborn, and I wont if I really want the game.
But going out of their way to antagonize other users of the competition, as if Im supposed to find that cute and rebuy what I already purchased at a store I already chose? Zero respect for your customers means you will do the same or worse to me even if I am stupid enough to pay you, if you think antagonizing me again will wiggle out more of my money.
Fuck them forever, they cannot rebuild that trust. The only reason they havent done it again is because steam changed their tos. And they will do it to you as soon as they think theyve got a stable userbase
deleted by creator
Steam has been offering third-party titles since 2005 but still had no shopping cart as of 2008.
So 3 years? How long did that take epic? About the same time almost 2 decades later?
Origin is still bad and so is whatever Ubisoft’s launcher is called.
edit: for the record I didn’t say that steam was the best launcher, but I have found the launchers for world of warships and warthunder to be serviceable
Origin is now the “EA App” and Uplay is now “Ubisoft Connect”
They can’t even keep consistent branding.
It’s kind of funny. I feel that the rebranding was because those launchers sucked ( a common marketing tactic.) The thing is though, the EA App still sucks so it doesn’t do anything for its reputation.
Ea app is origin without linux compatibility
they change the names because they suck
IMO my favorite launcher to use out of all is probably Battle.net, even over Steam. This is probably mostly because Steam is terrible unresponsive and its startup is still kinda ass (I just tested the start and noticed its 3 fucking loading screens: Verifying installtion, Logging in and finally loading the page. All as separate windows).
well, I don’t think battle.net is the worst launcher
Yeah I agree. I don’t play Blizzard Activision games for other reasons, but the battle.net launcher was by far the best.
I don’t get why, when PC gamers spend thousands to get a quick, smooth machine, that they put up with the shitfest that is Valve. I mean, it’s 2023 why is the UI still a website? Why is it that I can’t stop the news from popping up? And it’s so damn unresponsive and laggy.
Wow. Ive never heard someone say something positive about battle net
I think it’s just priorities, those other companies weren’t interested in making a launcher, they were interested in tying their customers into their eco system.
Steam started out like that in appearance at least, nobody really wanted it and it was kind of forced on you if you wanted to play HL2 but since Valve seemed to understand the value in a platform like steam and actually work at making it good it became pretty good.
At this point it’s actually kind of hard to fully appreciate how much work has gone into steam. Not just the basic stuff like chat and forums and a store with a functioning search, or the banal stuff like inventories and trading cards and points I still don’t understand, but also the stuff most people don’t see like all the stuff for developers launching a game on steam and managing sales and keys and betas. Not to mention all the experiments they’ve done along the way to try and figure out what the best way forward is.
Steam is kind of a huge undertaking and unless a company is really invested in competing with it they’re simply not going to be able to.
Data, they were also interested in that sweet, sweet, data harvesting. Previously only Valve was grabbing all that via Steam.
If your goal was only to make a good launcher, it would be easy. If your goal is a lot of DRM shenanigans as if we were still in 1998, it’s really hard.
This article didn’t research the VR bits…Gabe has said multiple times, even recently, that they are working steadily on VR and it’s hardware. Their next headset even has a codename, Deckard.
Also, I don’t think most people realize Valve doesn’t have much of an internal structure. It more resembles a community of people working together because they want to.
If they fix the bullshit joystick switch on the goddamn index controllers I will throat every valve employee that made it happen.
Open up for gaben
Funded by the cash cow steam store, they just kinda do what they will in the mean time.
Oh god, I just realized… Imagine if they brought Portal back, but in VR like they did Half-Life.
We’d get so many videos of people falling over in their living room
Makes sense Santa would holiday somewhere sunny.
Pretty sure Gabe lives in New Zealand now. Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, he just got stuck there during COVID and then never left once restrictions were eased.
By the way, that sun is the ozone hole.
Yeah, there was some fuss recently about him getting ordered to attend as a witness at some trial in the US instead of video conferencing as is the norm since covid.
Let’s start a pool to predict how many years/months until Steam enshitifies. It WILL happen. It’s just a matter of when.
Hopefully not soon, but probably once Gabe is gone if i had to guess.
If steam goes public, might as well start packing the bug out bag because shit is going to go south real quick.
Probably but that doesn’t mean that I have to buy games on inferior platform now.
For what reason? They have no shareholders .
Gabe won’t live forever and usually someone new wants to put their vision up, and make their changes and feel special and then bam.
Mess.
So many missed opportunities for da profitz
Of course, but I’m not expecting that to happen until Gabe dies or retires. Until then I think Steam will be number 1.
Blizzard had a legit decent platform for a while there. Real fall from grace.
Isn’t… This what a monopoly is?
Why are we celebrating that?
deleted by creator
Valve has objectively done far more good in the gaming space than any other company so I would say yes, their achievements are worth celebrating even if it is monopolistic. They’ve proven to be trustworthy for the time being, unlike other companies.
It’s not a monopoly in the way that valve has does bad things to keep it that way, just that every other try has so far failed. Nothing has been close to as good as steam, and probably never will. GOG is good but they’re not directly competing in the same way.
Yup, gog and steam are my 2 preferred platforms. Same_but_different.gif
Remind me, which store is paying publishers for exclusivity?