I shall seize one of his yachts (probably metaphorically) and sail under the Jolly Roger when enshittification comes for Steam. Until then, it’s a pretty solid solution for buying PC games.
Steam Deck is also amazing, in that it’s as simple as a Switch to get playing but open enough through desktop mode to do so much more. As your customer, thanks for not treating me like a paste eating delinquent.
Something I’ve been worried about for some time. I mean, I hope his death isn’t soon, but we all know whoever steps in is most likely to royally fuck it up.
I actually have hope for the company after he is gone. All they have to do is keep steam going and they win. They just print money. There is no reason to go evil and sell the company and go public. They just win.
and he maintains a near monopoly because Steam is just a great platform for gamers, as Gabe has said:
Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.
and he’s right! i almost never pirate video games because of their price, i can wait for a sale, there’s a billion other games i can play in the meantime
when shit like Epic takes years to implement a shopping basket, and still have yet to recolour their payment page so it stops flashbanging gamers across the world, Steam doesn’t even need to try very hard to be the best. The biggest changes on Steam in the recent years are what - updating the UI aged ago? adding a points system so people can get silly profile decorations as an additional reward for buying a video game? Steam has created a platform so good all they need to do is sit back relax, and think of what other sprinkles colour to add to the cake pie?
Steam has competitors, but the difference is Steam is for gamers, and most of their competitors is for money
god help us all if that ever were to change, the second Steam enshittifies the internet will implode
Steam recently the added the ability to easily record gameplay footage. They are also updating the family sharing system (that feature alone would probably never come to other platforms). They also continue to improve gaming on Linux. I don’t remember how long it has been, but they massively updated the library with a lot of really useful features such as being able to select a friend and it’ll show what games you have in common so picking a game to play with a friend is a lot easier.
Further back we see the remote play together feature added to Steam; I was hesitant to use it for a long time but as long as you and the host have a decent internet connection it works pretty flawlessly.
Their custom control settings and community sharing of the different controller schemes is incredibly helpful with some games.
Their review system is pretty good and always helpful to me when exploring for new games I haven’t previously heard of. They have also seemed to try to keep the reviews more legit and less spammy/meme-y and more relevant to the actual game itself.
They also implement rules to keep game pages on the store less spammy, they had a big overhaul on the rules around thumbnails for games to keep text off of them because developers started overloading them with advertisements for other games.
They have also recently announced allowing for refunds on season passes when the developers take too long or never deliver on their promises they sold you on. This of course should have always been the case, but at leaat they’re coming around. I also don’t know if any of the other platforms make it as easy to get a refund as Steam does, but that’s been around for a while now.
I believe there has also been a lot of work developing server side cheat detection so maybe one day we won’t have to rely on client side anti-cheats so much. I also believe they recently made a change to their rules where if a game has a kernel/root level anti cheat that they have to flag that on the store page for the game.
Steam (Valve) actually seem to care about games and the industry in general and want to see the environment around gaming improve.
From my current view point Steam is an actual platform everyone else are just store fronts that provide no additional value to the consumer. So yeah, pricing is rarely the issue when it comes to piracy and Steam really shows how true that statement can be.
Additionally, most people don’t realize that Steam doesn’t force games to use DRM, that’s purely up to the developers.
Well you haven’t given any practical examples of how you think Steam is enshittified, so you’ve left people to draw their own conclusions and definitions.
Any examples? AFAIK they improved a lot, especially in Linux space which I am very grateful for. I wouldn’t be using Linux if it wasn’t for steam. Although there are still a lot of things to complain about but if it wasn’t better before then it isn’t enshiftification by definition.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a marketplace that isn’t enshitified in some way. Most are going to shove ads in your face which is shitty, but most people aren’t going to recognize it as a bad thing because they’re there to shop.
And you can’t say advertising because of course there’s going to be adverts up for games sold on the platform. I think most people would argue that if you go into a store, and then see a sign in that store, for something that is sold in the store, that’s not advertising, that’s just signage.
The goal of advertising is to try to convince you that you want a product or a service. But if you are already in the store you’ve already made the decision that you want that product or service, so by definition you can’t be advertised to at that point.
Video game industry will collapse in on itself when Gabe Newell dies, and enshittification creeps into Steam.
I shall seize one of his yachts (probably metaphorically) and sail under the Jolly Roger when enshittification comes for Steam. Until then, it’s a pretty solid solution for buying PC games.
Steam Deck is also amazing, in that it’s as simple as a Switch to get playing but open enough through desktop mode to do so much more. As your customer, thanks for not treating me like a paste eating delinquent.
Something I’ve been worried about for some time. I mean, I hope his death isn’t soon, but we all know whoever steps in is most likely to royally fuck it up.
I actually have hope for the company after he is gone. All they have to do is keep steam going and they win. They just print money. There is no reason to go evil and sell the company and go public. They just win.
provided the can safeguard themselves from parasites that might try creeping in and try to change things for worse
He just needs to make it an employee owned company. I believe it would make it a stable institution.
Because he maintains a near monopoly.
He doesn’t tho. He just offers such a good service to people that they don’t want to use anything else. That’s not a monopoly.
and he maintains a near monopoly because Steam is just a great platform for gamers, as Gabe has said:
and he’s right! i almost never pirate video games because of their price, i can wait for a sale, there’s a billion other games i can play in the meantime
when shit like Epic takes years to implement a shopping basket, and still have yet to recolour their payment page so it stops flashbanging gamers across the world, Steam doesn’t even need to try very hard to be the best. The biggest changes on Steam in the recent years are what - updating the UI aged ago? adding a points system so people can get silly profile decorations as an additional reward for buying a video game? Steam has created a platform so good all they need to do is sit back relax, and think of what other sprinkles colour to add to the
cakepie?Steam has competitors, but the difference is Steam is for gamers, and most of their competitors is for money
god help us all if that ever were to change, the second Steam enshittifies the internet will implode
Steam recently the added the ability to easily record gameplay footage. They are also updating the family sharing system (that feature alone would probably never come to other platforms). They also continue to improve gaming on Linux. I don’t remember how long it has been, but they massively updated the library with a lot of really useful features such as being able to select a friend and it’ll show what games you have in common so picking a game to play with a friend is a lot easier.
Further back we see the remote play together feature added to Steam; I was hesitant to use it for a long time but as long as you and the host have a decent internet connection it works pretty flawlessly.
Their custom control settings and community sharing of the different controller schemes is incredibly helpful with some games.
Their review system is pretty good and always helpful to me when exploring for new games I haven’t previously heard of. They have also seemed to try to keep the reviews more legit and less spammy/meme-y and more relevant to the actual game itself.
They also implement rules to keep game pages on the store less spammy, they had a big overhaul on the rules around thumbnails for games to keep text off of them because developers started overloading them with advertisements for other games.
They have also recently announced allowing for refunds on season passes when the developers take too long or never deliver on their promises they sold you on. This of course should have always been the case, but at leaat they’re coming around. I also don’t know if any of the other platforms make it as easy to get a refund as Steam does, but that’s been around for a while now.
I believe there has also been a lot of work developing server side cheat detection so maybe one day we won’t have to rely on client side anti-cheats so much. I also believe they recently made a change to their rules where if a game has a kernel/root level anti cheat that they have to flag that on the store page for the game.
Steam (Valve) actually seem to care about games and the industry in general and want to see the environment around gaming improve.
From my current view point Steam is an actual platform everyone else are just store fronts that provide no additional value to the consumer. So yeah, pricing is rarely the issue when it comes to piracy and Steam really shows how true that statement can be.
Additionally, most people don’t realize that Steam doesn’t force games to use DRM, that’s purely up to the developers.
Edit: fixed some typos.
Steam is already enshitified. Every other marketplace just sucks that much.
Nows a good time to articulate a defense. Because as far as their impact on gaming as a distributor, theyve enabled more than any other company by far
You view this as me saying it’s a bad platform. I don’t think it is. I love it and use it often. GoG is probably the only one that’s not enshitified.
You’ve still yet to actually say how steam is enshittified despite several comments asking. You reply but dodge the real question.
Yeah, I’m not interested in getting interrogated over my opinions today. Especially by someone literally named “AngryMob”.
Edit: after they said “its entertaining how sensitive you got about this.” I now feel justified in my hesitancy.
No it isn’t. I have yet to pay a single cent or subscription in more than a decade.
Are you trying to imply subscription fees are necessary for something to be called enshitified?
Well you haven’t given any practical examples of how you think Steam is enshittified, so you’ve left people to draw their own conclusions and definitions.
To me it just sounds like someone who’s trying to justify pirating indie games.
Any examples? AFAIK they improved a lot, especially in Linux space which I am very grateful for. I wouldn’t be using Linux if it wasn’t for steam. Although there are still a lot of things to complain about but if it wasn’t better before then it isn’t enshiftification by definition.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a marketplace that isn’t enshitified in some way. Most are going to shove ads in your face which is shitty, but most people aren’t going to recognize it as a bad thing because they’re there to shop.
Right so no actual examples then?
And you can’t say advertising because of course there’s going to be adverts up for games sold on the platform. I think most people would argue that if you go into a store, and then see a sign in that store, for something that is sold in the store, that’s not advertising, that’s just signage.
The goal of advertising is to try to convince you that you want a product or a service. But if you are already in the store you’ve already made the decision that you want that product or service, so by definition you can’t be advertised to at that point.
Removed by mod