The only competition is GOG and they will never succeed with DRM free for the big AAA. Epic succeeding is the worst case scenario

That’s hard to do when Steam has all but cornered the market. Say what you will about Epic’s ineptitude, but even investing billions, the publisher of the biggest game ever can’t break into the market. Now imagine how hard it’d be for a smaller player.

He wont though

So tencent or a saudi prince buys them and it will be fine guyyyyssss haha

Nothing ever bad happens under private ownership either right?

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

And FIFA

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.

Same with Aseprite. You can buy it from their store or Steam. If you’re cool enough you can compile it yourself and get the full program for free.

You can just add it to Steam as a non-Steam game and launch it from there

100% this. He’s definitely keeping a bunch of bad stuff at bay.

This does not address the issue I brought up in my reply. Besides the brought up point, it would not solve all other issues I would have. I know the functionality to add non-Steam games since I am on Steam over 12 years ago.

Steam is the very, very rare case of a major company that is both not beholden to shareholders, and has a pretty good guy at the helm.

Epic can’t break into the market because of their own shitty launcher, not because of anything Steam has done to lock down the competition.

Now imagine how hard it’d be for a smaller player.

Not very hard, if they were willing to create a decent launcher and engage in sustainable business practices (and regional pricing).

Na. Even privatly traded companies can enshittify when it gets inherited to people not sharing the same vision as the one that made the company successful.

If you want to prevent enshittification more long term, convert it to a non-profit cooperative, with a work ethic that promotes providing the best service over short term profit.

And if his yacht sinks, we’re boned.

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

I sincerely doubt that even if another launcher did everything Steam does, it would rival it without huge amounts of money being thrown around. People already use Steam.

And that’s assuming they get to this point, ignoring that Steam had decades to get there. It used to be ass.

Not every company can pull it off, but I’m certain if Epic had invested in their launchers it could have worked.
A few years in and their launcher has stagnated completely

I don’t think you can create new tags can you ? At least I have not seen a place to do that.

But I do also think that there could be more specific tags.
And yeah, being able to AND / OR would be hella good.

However, I would not describe it as a dumpster fire, it’s pretty good all things considered.