Mr biggest problem with tags is that it’s user curated and you can recommend an unlimited number of them.

Just because a game has a few funny moments, doesn’t mean it gets the comedy tag. Just because it has a brief driving sequence doesn’t mean it gets the racing tag. Just because there’s some reading involved doesn’t mean you get the visual novel tag.

It’s getting to the point I feel like there’s a conspiracy where there’s teams of people intentionally sabotaging the tag system and teams trying to counter it, all so they can control views and sales. It’s really noticeable when a publisher stops marketing and moves to another release.

Non-drm steam games can actually just be copied around like you would copy the installer

As a player, I feel like discovery is great. I found literally dozens of interesting games just by scrolling down the main page.

I don’t know how it’s for devs, but it’s probably all but impossible to get traction if you’re just throwing your game in there, Fests being a compromised solution to an impossible problem

I simply do not understand the sentiment that not being a total bastard is something celebrated and not expected or required.

And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?

Steam’s “most favored nation” contracts with devs explicitly prohibit this

Should the second be punished in some way because of that?

It’s not a punishment. It’s a correction, required to maintain a healthy market.

Your lemonade stand would be more like if there was a stand on every block: By virtue of the scale of their business they could afford to undercut any competition that tried to start up. If they did that they could be slapped on the wrist for being anti-competitive.

Is Valve/Steam anti-competitive? IDK. It’s a monopoly, though, so you have to watch it extra carefully to ensure it doesn’t abuse its position as a market leader.

I simply do not understand the sentiment that not being a total bastard is something celebrated and not expected or required.

And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?

I only buy games on Steam, GOG and ItchIO. The main reason I don’t give a cent to stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic Games anymore is their services and terms are horrible. I’m all in for supporting competition when it’s good competition.

Should the second be punished in some way because of that?

It’s not a punishment. It’s a correction, required to maintain a healthy market.

Your lemonade stand would be more like if there was a stand on every block: By virtue of the scale of their business they could afford to undercut any competition that tried to start up. If they did that they could be slapped on the wrist for being anti-competitive.

Is Valve/Steam anti-competitive? IDK. It’s a monopoly, though, so you have to watch it extra carefully to ensure it doesn’t abuse its position as a market leader.

I would buy from GOG too, if they provided Linux support in form of an official launcher. And if available also official Linux builds. Back in the days GOG did that, but they stopped doing it. And before someone comes after me, I know there are alternative launchers on Linux. But I don’t want to give GOG money for work others doing it for free. I don’t want support a company who only cares about Windows.

It would likely result in endless corporate backstabbing, exclusive deals, contracts fights, and patent trolling

Which would likely result in horrid quality of life for the end user. Having to maintain countless accounts and subscriptions to have even fractional access to games.

It would likely also fuck over the studios and indie developers who would be shoved aside or relentlessly bought up in a ever growing attempt to grow.

More competition does not always mean things are better for the consumer. You can see the exact same thing played out with the recent rise and now slow descent to streaming services. As we went from one good one that turned into a horrible one as the sharehold is demanded it, then more rows and then things only became worse.

When you start operating at the sort of scale that the internet does, true, the whole competition thing being better for the consumer rarely works out.

You more frequently just end up with a bunch of greedy companies endlessly trying to one-up each other f****** over everyone in their attempts resulting in no one-winning, not the company, not the developers creators or middlemen nor and definitely not least the consumer.

True competition benefiting the consumer also requires there to be a connection to the consumer in a reason to actually service them. The companies need to be fighting for the consumer and not just each other. But that is all capitalism is turned into. The consumer is no longer the end goal. They’re just fighting each other to stomp them out so that all that’s left is themselves.

It’s been shown time and time again for decades now at at sufficient size competition just by itself does not help. The only thing that is repeatedly shown to be helpful is private companies with a good person at their home. Not trying to be a greedy f***.

And it’s showing time and time again. Every time that person retires the company sold their holders. Found public offerings made things just get worse.

The problem is not monopolies are bad. It’s not. The competition is good. It’s at public companies are a problem in the law forcing companies to do everything in their power to please. The shareholders is killing everything.

So we’re acknowledging it’s a monopoly? Cool. Defense is still an acknowledgement. I’ve had the weirdest goddamn arguments with people insisting they’d never shop anywhere else, and if games aren’t on there it’s their own fault they’re doomed… but how dare anyone use the m-word! Obviously that can only mean one seller with absolute control, like how Standard Oil owned all 85% of the market.

I simply do not understand the sentiment that not being a total bastard is something celebrated and not expected or required.

And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?

They started supporting and cooperating with heroic launcher.

Thus heroic is the defacto official GOG launcher on linux.

Steam kinda killed gaming piracy for many. Hope they won’t go the Netflix way in the future.

I only buy games on Steam, GOG and ItchIO. The main reason I don’t give a cent to stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic Games anymore is their services and terms are horrible. I’m all in for supporting competition when it’s good competition.

I’m curious what you mean by this.

Netflix only went the way it did because they were liscensing shows and movies from other publishers/studios who could have, and finally did, take their shit back and start their own subscription service.

It’s not just Netflix that sucks now; it’s the whole of legit streaming video services becoming what cable was that got Netflix popular to begin with.

This is unlikely to happen with Steam, given that competitors are already trying to do what they can similarly and it has yet to actually do anything.

“Not being a total bastard” is a weird way to describe overhauling the gaming on linux experience at no additional cost to the end user, among many other incredibly pro consumer choices they’ve pushed in the last twenty odd years.