Not on games per se but almost on mods. Yes, there are other platforms, but the majory and newest are on Workshop. And they make it hard to download them, if you don’t own the game on Steam (and Valve has it in their terms that they own the mods hosted on Workshop).

So one could argue that they use the indirect peer-pressure approach to market dominance, similiar to Google on Android.

I wouldn’t complain if they just had a “Download” button on their web version. But they don’t, you have to use the finicky steamcmd intended for server administration.

It literally could have been a 2 minute video. Not sure why they dragged it out for 10 minutes saying the same thing over and over.

Not on games per se but almost on mods. Yes, there are other platforms, but the majory and newest are on Workshop. And they make it hard to download them, if you don’t own the game on Steam (and Valve has it in their terms that they own the mods hosted on Workshop).

So one could argue that they use the indirect peer-pressure approach to market dominance, similiar to Google on Android.

I wouldn’t complain if they just had a “Download” button on their web version. But they don’t, you have to use the finicky steamcmd intended for server administration.

Link to youtube video. Tracking removed.

Steam will get the social media warrior upvote brigade on their side every time, despite being a single point of failure that at any moment can change it’s operations to restrict anything and everything they wish unless you pay up.

Already we can’t transfer ownership once we die. We can’t port out our licenses to anywhere else. We can’t even reinstall a game without an internet connection afaik. If I could port my entire library to GOG I would.

There’s no good competitors because the money isn’t there to build one. Developers don’t want to maintain yet another platform and gamers don’t want another application to manage all their shit. Would take tens of billions of dollars today to get in there on top of having near feature parity.

I’ve been worried for a long time about what will happen when GabeN dies and someone else takes the reins. The only reason why the platform isn’t royal shit is because it’s his company and no grubby MBAs have managed to take it public. That can change on a whim.

Potential enshittifications:

• Subscriptions. MBAs love them!

• Advertisements. Think on-launch forced ads that play in steam before launching a game unless you pony up perhaps $15/mo in platform fees to bypass it. Maybe they’ll start with a much lower insignificant price to make it whatever for users to add a credit card and allow autobilling… for later price increases.

• Download fees. Watch this quick 2 minute advertisement to begin the download for free right after!.. or just $5 per download / $30/mo for unlimited ad free downloads for your whole family (up to 5 people on the same ip! geolocation restrictions apply. Max 1TB per account per month)

They literally never went a millimeter out of their way to negatively impact another competing storefront.

Valve’s success can be almost summed up as “does nothing, wins” because the competition to steam has been piss poor.

Steam will get the social media warrior upvote brigade on their side every time, despite being a single point of failure that at any moment can change it’s operations to restrict anything and everything they wish unless you pay up.

Already we can’t transfer ownership once we die. We can’t port out our licenses to anywhere else. We can’t even reinstall a game without an internet connection afaik. If I could port my entire library to GOG I would.

There’s no good competitors because the money isn’t there to build one. Developers don’t want to maintain yet another platform and gamers don’t want another application to manage all their shit. Would take tens of billions of dollars today to get in there on top of having near feature parity.

I’ve been worried for a long time about what will happen when GabeN dies and someone else takes the reins. The only reason why the platform isn’t royal shit is because it’s his company and no grubby MBAs have managed to take it public. That can change on a whim.

Potential enshittifications:

• Subscriptions. MBAs love them!

• Advertisements. Think on-launch forced ads that play in steam before launching a game unless you pony up perhaps $15/mo in platform fees to bypass it. Maybe they’ll start with a much lower insignificant price to make it whatever for users to add a credit card and allow autobilling… for later price increases.

• Download fees. Watch this quick 2 minute advertisement to begin the download for free right after!.. or just $5 per download / $30/mo for unlimited ad free downloads for your whole family (up to 5 people on the same ip! geolocation restrictions apply. Max 1TB per account per month)

Competition like GOG or itch isn’t “piss poor”, they offer exactly the features their customers expect.

Steam will get the social media warrior upvote brigade on their side every time, despite being a single point of failure that at any moment can change it’s operations to restrict anything and everything they wish unless you pay up.

Already we can’t transfer ownership once we die. We can’t port out our licenses to anywhere else. We can’t even reinstall a game without an internet connection afaik. If I could port my entire library to GOG I would.

There’s no good competitors because the money isn’t there to build one. Developers don’t want to maintain yet another platform and gamers don’t want another application to manage all their shit. Would take tens of billions of dollars today to get in there on top of having near feature parity.

I’ve been worried for a long time about what will happen when GabeN dies and someone else takes the reins. The only reason why the platform isn’t royal shit is because it’s his company and no grubby MBAs have managed to take it public. That can change on a whim.

Potential enshittifications:

• Subscriptions. MBAs love them!

• Advertisements. Think on-launch forced ads that play in steam before launching a game unless you pony up perhaps $15/mo in platform fees to bypass it. Maybe they’ll start with a much lower insignificant price to make it whatever for users to add a credit card and allow autobilling… for later price increases.

• Download fees. Watch this quick 2 minute advertisement to begin the download for free right after!.. or just $5 per download / $30/mo for unlimited ad free downloads for your whole family (up to 5 people on the same ip! geolocation restrictions apply. Max 1TB per account per month)

Given how anti capitalist Lenny is purported to be I’m surprised how vehemently valve gets defended. There’s no good billionaire

People like you can’t seem to differentiate wanting solid criticisms of Valve and Steam rather than just theory crafting all the worst things that can happen with them. The Steam hysteria makes no sense when its a storefront on open software platforms and the ones that are on closed software platforms aren’t doing what people are gearing Valve would do whenever Gabe dies or if Valve went public

At least put effort into explaining why Steam will become this terribly blood sucking store on PC where people can download from numerous options as compared to platforms like Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, iOS where you don’t have freedom to install anything you want. As a developer you can’t just distribute software and have them installable.

If people that wanted to make people concerned about Steam put more effort into their arguments, maybe people on Lemmy would give their concerns more credence. It’s surprising that on Lemmy, people who seem to value art and expression so much are so bad at expressing why people should be concerned about what they are concern about

Link to youtube video. Tracking removed.

I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened.

Steam is 100% a monopoly, they just happen to be a benevolent monopoly… but like all, that can change.

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I do a fair bit of modding, and actually almost never interact with steam workshop. Nexus mods, thunderstore and r2modman, or something game specific like Everest (Celeste) or Lumafly mod manager (Hollow Knight). Not to mention modding like ReShade or OptiScaler, or custom proton versions with extra features.

I tend to associate Steam Workshop with very simple mods, like skin swaps, or mods with dedicated game support, like Rivals of Aether characters. Most of the more serious game modifications are hosted elsewhere, at least in my experience, and I usually forget to even bother checking what steam has available.

That said, I agree that an easier download button for using those mods on other platforms would be a good feature.

Given how anti capitalist Lenny is purported to be I’m surprised how vehemently valve gets defended. There’s no good billionaire

Competition like GOG or itch isn’t “piss poor”, they offer exactly the features their customers expect.