The skins and loot boxes is the only negative thing I ever see brought up about steam, and it is a completely voluntary system that applies to a few of their own games. In fact, I keep forgetting they even have them unless someone brings it up and despite being a terrible thing people apparently love them and would be mad if they went away.

So I’ll forgive them for one stupid thing they do and appreciate the other 99% of things they do.

OpenAI started as a non-profit and pivoted to being for profit whether the paperwork has kept up or not.

Pretty sure that was the plan all along though.

points to all of human history

Maybe this will be one of the exceptions. At least I hope so.

I used to be the same.

I have changed to prioritizing GOG though since I try to limit purchases from US companies and I despise how Steam knowingly profits from making children addicted to gambling.

None of that is what defines a monopoly.

There’s only one store that matters. They have unthreatened supermajority marketshare. Customers go there by default - sometimes exclusively. Developers can sell there, or they’re basically fucked.

What you’re concerned about are anti-competitive practices. But some businesses don’t need those, to lack any relevant competition. It can just happen. They didn’t do anything wrong. They’re still monopolies.

You always could, but they don’t get to take credit for that

Weird. I can fibd no source on it. However I seem to distinctly remember that GOG announced to help heroic implement more cloud features.

I mean that although the good shows got removed by the other competitors and streaming got downhill with that, they increased prices, put ads, removed account sharing and their only focus is profit.

Edit: also they removed shows by themselves to countries that the particular shows were not that popular just to save money. That started before the rise of other streaming platforms.

There are millions of successful companies and businesses on this planet and a lot (historically almost all) are taken over by the children or protégés. I‘d argue that nepo babies who got pampered up until adulthood (like probably Gabe‘s kids) have a worse track record of leading a business, that’s probably the examples you’ve been thinking of.

Exclusives are a bastard child of oligopoly, where the distribution platform has more power than the publisher.

Before Steam physical games were NEVER sold only in ToysR, they were sold in all shops.

That would be amaze balls, but hard to see happening in reality.

How cool would it be if Steam split* into a non-profit, giving rebates back to developers for platform fees collected in excess of costs (including generous salaries for their employees, of course) with directives to make the platform as good for gamers and developers as possible?

One can dream.

• I’m assuming a split because game development and sales don’t really mesh with a non-profit in the same way. Hard to make competitive multiplayer-only live-service games (let alone The International for DOTA 2) and loot crates your business model that way, at any rate.

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

It’s simple really. If you don’t give positive feedback, you’ve lost the major lever that can be used to get what you want.

Using negative feedback is a useful tool but it’ll never achieve the same outcomes if used by itself.

How to explain Steam’s success on PC for console players: “Think of it like the X1 vs PS4 era. Steam is the PS4 and every competitor was the Xbox One”

That does not mean it never happened, we just can’t find the source. I had this with my own statements in the past too, sometimes it was true sometimes I was wrong. Therefore I cannot trust everyone in the internet. What I can imagine is, that GOG worked on the GOG API (the programming interface for other tools) to add access to the Cloud features in example. It might came out of a request from the Heroic Launcher project. So in a sense GOG would cooperate. But this is just speculation on my part here.

Still the Heroic Launcher is a separate project doing all the work on their own.

This is directly from the comment I replied to:

I would buy from GOG too, if they provided Linux support in form of an official launcher

No need for an official launcher when you can just use Steam as a launcher.

You make it sound like drm didn’t exist before steam or like steam isn’t a form of drm itself. Old drm was more basic and far less nefarious, like entering a cd key or codes in your manual. This later escalated to online activated cd keys. At the very least, these forms of drm didn’t run all the time like steam did- I remember steam getting huge pushback (from myself included) because it ran like absolute dogshit. Later forms of drm got worse with checks in the discs that collected data on your pc (securom, anyone?). Steam did a lot of good things but it did not erase drm- it merely created another form of it (I.e. You no longer own your games, you are buying licenses they can revoke at any time)

i think personally Steam’s/Valve’s dominance is really good here’s why:

• Improving Linux gaming,improving Wine and DXVK for gaming,so you dont rely on Microsoft for your OS.
• Great client(i like the: inbuilt Chromium based browser,Community features)
• Not so awful and maybe simple DRM methods(eg, needing the Steam client doesnt tank the performance that much,compared to something like denuvo which i think makes modding impossible,needs consistent internet connection,and tanks the game’s fps alot )
• I can buy with cash giftcard to buy games(I wish GOG had that)
• Workshop for modding on supported games.(ik some games have workshop and dont let you mod everything)
• Makes/has good games(Half-life 2 is the best game i ever played)

but the bad things:

• Steam Client is still 32 bit and Steam doesnt target ARM(E,G. For like M1+ macs,those need rosetta )
• third party clients arent a option
• You dont own anything you buy on Steam.
• Having the Steam client open at all times(ik not all games have this, but i assume CEF based Steam will lower the performance like slightly)
• TF2 neglect
• lootboxes/battle pass in some games(i am aware Valve was the first company to have a battle pass and fortnite popularized it)
  alright thats what i think of the Good and bad of Valve/Steam

Edit: Fixed Paragraph break.

i kinda agree:
but its still possible to pirate some Steam games without the Steam Client,
and some still require it.

Steam does more than launch games, you realize this, right? They want gog to have a launcher on Linux that will manage their library for them, not just launch their game.

Hold on, IT DOES?