Anyway, what are useful features of Steam:
- their dedication to getting Windows games running on Linux (to see off the existential threat Microsoft poses to them, but nonetheless greatly appreciated)
- community forums / screenshots / artwork / guides etc. for every product. Very useful if the game vendor doesn't have its own, and most game vendors don't
- that Steam Sales encourage vendors to offer games at much more reasonable prices (e.g. a few pounds/dollars/etc.) for what is effectively a license, revocable at any time, not a real purchase. £60? Ha ha fuck off, I'm waiting for the sale when it's £5
- also, as far as I've seen, every game distributed can still be downloaded today. People may complain that publishers update a title e.g. to remove licensed music 10 years later... but you can still download the old version with some trickery. And I've never seen Steam actively remove downloads for existing customers, I've only seen games removed from the store so no future customers
- pirates have found that most games, if their only DRM is Steamworks, are incredibly easy to crack. I am very glad Steam has convinced most publishers to use that alone and nothing worse, and I curse publishers who insist on their own DRM, their own launcher, etc. If Valve goes tits-up, I have a lot of confidence most of peoples libraries will still be playable with a little bit of cracking.
There are other useful features, even if Valve is getting rich and fat off selling gambling and day-trading to teenagers.
Fundamentally Valve has built up a lot of trust with the gaming community, and other than microtransactions and gambling, I think it's very fair to say they've been a net good for both the PC gaming community; as well as the ecosystem.
Proton is a great example.
It took them 10 years to make Linux a competetive gaming platform.
They invested in VR early and still do a lot for this niche market.
They brought back hanfheld PC from being niche chinese devices to being mainstrean and maintain support for Steam Deck for 5 years.
As game developer I do find 30% cut abysmal, but it's not any worse than consoles and I dont like Epic as a gamer for being awfully anti-consumer. I certainly dont want PC game market to be controlled by chinese Tencent subsidiaries.
Valve rightly get a lot of flak for the gambling and high % cut, but you do get a functional useful service in return at least, that doesn't appear to be actively trying to screw you over
FTFY. Steam forums are a cesspoll most often than not. No, we do not want a easy accessible place where people can spew their crap on the internet. It's either moderated and useful or it shouldn't exists.
To pick a random game's forum: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1623940/discussions/ we find:
- bug reports, feedback to the devs, etc.
- asking for help in the game
- story discussion
- requests for games like this one
- concern troll (locked)
- begging for the game to be released on GOG
Seems above board to me. I've also seen plenty of trolling, incivility and unreasonable expectations from manchildren, but they tend to get locked.
...and the hardware ecosystem, too. I just got my Steam controller last week, and it's wonderful. It's so good I'm playing Civ with it. Civ! On a gamepad!
They completely rewrote their UI? Do you not remember the old library? The old downloads page? The old big picture mode? You may be suffering from selective memory
If any big company want a good steam alternative we would have it.
Every alternative launcher, uplay/ubisoft connect, origin/ea app, epic games, gog started with a store platform and stopped. Its like the marketing team just looked at the store but not at the rest of the steam features.
Everything you don’t like, you can avoid.
I'll happily pay to have a game on Steam vs getting it for free on Epic. Steam has been a good experience for me the past 2+ decades :)
It would be under a 'most-favoured nation' type deal, after an initial launch period (exclusive distribution for 1 year, say) if my distribution service pays the same per-view amount then I can stream/distribute your media regardless of your deals. If a producer/creator makes a work available they are required to allow it on other registered channels (no setup cost beyond actual price of downloading the content).
Essentially make rights holders honour the idea that they'd make works S available if only people would pay.
Refuse to make a work available and you'd get a warning, then it enters the public domain. The copyright deal is "things enter the pubic domain after a limited monopoly to allow recompense", enforce it. So, if eg Netflix/Sony/BBC/etc stop offering their back catalogue then the works enter the public domain.
Unfortunately literally everything is wrong with EGS specifically.
Their stance on intentionally not having user reviews because consumers shouldn't have power to react to publisher or developers decisions.
Their giving away games for free and then revoking licenses then removing them from accounts even though it was purely their own fault. They were most successful company ever back then and could certainly eat that loss.
Their shitty account system that certainly got hacked multiple times because it's the only gaming platform where someone constantly trying to access my accounts even though I'm Linux and cybersecurity nerd with random 32-char passwords. They also dont have straightforward way to change account region without trying to deal with their shitty support.
Tim Sweeney decided to make a platform to fuck over gamers and we gamers returned favour.
Bonus points, this is the text from the post.
> How out of touch can you be as a company, this is embarrassing
Rocket league used to have a Linux build, then epic decided to kill that off entirely.
I recently bought the steam frame. It's years past when I would have wanted this VR headset the most, but half the reason I bought it was to support Valve's R&D with Linux desktop support, arm JIT translation, etc.
People bitch and moan about "voting with your wallet", then you have a company that tons of people continually vote with their wallet for, then people complain about others defending the one company that doesn't seem to want to screw their userbase over.
Sure Steam has some blind spots for the very sweaty semi-pro gamer. I don't care about virtual stickers and little treats. I care that all my games run on my Linux desktop after years of devs not giving a shit and other companies being openly hostile.
Valves competitors suck. Their VR competitor is Meta which in a just world would not exist as an organization. Their gaming marketplace competitor is Epic, which produces the character-slop extraction shooter and a launcher that gets more annoying to use every time I open it.
The other "competitors" if you can even call them that, are microsoft who has basically deleted a dozen game studios in the last year via moneyball, and other game companies like EA and Ubisoft who routinely delete purchased games and tell the users to go suck it.
Valve is basically the only company out there who is resisting the constant urge to make everything shitty to increase investor profits. They stay private and everyone loves what they do with that power. I'm sure a ton of fail-son PE bros are dying for the chance to buy out valve and turn everything it's ever done to absolute dogshit. We'd be getting half-life 3, 4, 5, 6, mobile, etc and they'd all be shit.
Why bother defending them about this specific issue though?
Either Epic is right, and this pushes Valve to improve Steam performance.
Or Epic is wrong, and then who cares? People will continue to not use the Epic store and continue to use Steam.
It just feels more "defensive" then "defending" if that framing makes sense.
People are fans of Steam (of Valve, actually) because Steam has been a boon for the gaming world and for Linux gaming in particular, in a way others (like Epic) haven't. I subscribe to this opinion. I'm just so glad gaming on Linux is mostly seamless now, I simply don't care anymore for which OS a game was built (within reason... but then again, Windows games are not guaranteed to always run on Windows either!).
BTW Gaben is my friend and I identify as Dr Gordon Freeman.
/s
Parasocial relationships are a byproduct of the technology you (I assume) and I have and continue to create & roll-out to society, increasing physical distance from actual humans as well as increasing "in the head, only" identity, or identities, that culture carries with itself more and more.