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Steam keeps on winning
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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This isn’t really that hot of a take. Steam does keep winning and it’s because of convenience for consumers. Valve also is probably the best of those companies when it comes to not violating rights. I really hope when Gaben passes the torch for valve ownership that it’s someone with his vision and priorities
As a Linux user, nothing else comes even close. I can read on ProtonDB if I can expect a Windows game to just work, and more often than not, it does.
GOG is also a great concept, and somewhat Linux friendly, but it doesn't have the Steam "click and play" convenience.
Epic Game Store however, has been decidedly Linux hostile for some reason??? As I see it, Steam and GOG are for gamers, Epic Game Store is for business. It would be a dark day for gamers, if Epic ever became dominant.
The contributions Valve has made to Linux really, really can't be understated.
It's been 20 years of the joke "It's finally the year of the Linux Desktop" and Valve took the desktop for a miss and made 2023 "the year of the Linux Portable PC Gaming Handheld."
Epic is Linux adverse mainly because of its Chinese investors. They don't want to open source their spyware.
Why would they have to open source anything? Just because it’s running on Linux doesn’t mean it’s OSS or even F(L)OSS. Steam isn’t open source either.
Not to mention that open source software can and sometimes does contain spyware.
That seems allot more like a one-off, a one time thing.
Also, anyone can view the source code for the open source product.
Nobody with two brain cells says foss can't have spy/malware. What's true is only that in important projects, it is very likely it will raise flags very soon. For example, see your link
That makes literally zero sense. If anything Chinese investors would want the open source operating system to be the most popular since the US is becoming more hostile and banning them from stuff more and more. Its why they’re investing in RISC-V development and the US is considering being hostile towards it for “national security reasons”
I would think China would be eager to get out of western (USA) dominated Operating Systems.
I know Russia has attempted it as couple of times, but with very little success.
Steam and GoG are not just free services for gamers either. At their core they are businesses, and they invest significantly to try and make people spend more/get addicted to their services.
I hate this whole idea that some companies are your friend. That just shows their marketing and branding is working on people and blinding people.
It's not a matter of them being your friend or not, it's a matter of them respecting their customers, and giving their customers what they want, generating a win-win.
These days most corporations are very happy with the win-lose scenarios, as it maximizes their profits.
Publicly traded companies, which we've all learned to hate and not take as our friends, are in no way comparable to Steam which is privately owned. Gabe Newell is in no way forced by shareholders to push for increased profits, the company has no interest in pushing for enshittification unlike VC funded startups.
Thank goodness Gabe will live forever and Steam will always be a private company then!
Oh... Shit.
This is exactly what I mean. It's like people just have no concept of the future. Point me to any private company that's been around a long time and is still not shit.
Valve is also a privately held company, unlike most (all?) of the other big players. Therefore they don't have the ever present drive and threat of "the line must always go up" to contend with. Valve can do whatever the fuck they feel like, however the fuck they feel like, and as long as they're bringing in enough revenue to keep the lights on and keep Gabe Newell in Acapulco shirts and Cheetos, or whatever his jam is, there's nothing anybody can do about it.
They can gamble and release a VR headset or two, and if it's not a huge success, who cares? There are no shareholders breathing down their necks. They can support the Linux community and if it pisses of Microsoft, or whoever, so what? They want to wait 16+ years before getting around to releasing the sequel to their flagship franchise? There is no boardroom pushing them to slap it together and shove it out the door before Christmas, so they can just do that. Etc.
All true, but Gabe is old and the de facto leader. What happens when he goes? Do employees have stake in the company to make sure the way things work don't change? Will a new leader want to "shake things up" to be able to "claim ownership" over what is happening at the company? (This is something many many managers do, and it's bad management, but it's so so common)
There's still ripe opportunity for things to go south here.
Gabe is 61. Looking at the presidential candidates for the upcoming US election and it even looks young.
GOG is also good for consumers, too (in some ways, moreso than Steam, like DRM-free games with install files) but it doesn't get the same love. I understand why, Steam was already the market leader, has a way more polished product, and GOG really still focused on "what's in the name" of Good Old Games. Most of their catalogue seems to be focused on older titles, which definitely makes it seemingly more catered to an older, classic gaming audience.
I love the idea of gog but they need to invest in their own store. They need to make a client that's worth a damn, or make the website work better, or both. I routinely forget that gog exists, if I had a client on my computer with a store that worked I would probably give them more money. Getting old games from gog working on Linux is usually fine but new releases are often a shit show. Lack of steam deck support really kills my willingness to buy from them. I will never enjoy downloading X amounts of 4gb files to run a game, just use a better protocol like BitTorrent or something. I don't think it's fair to consumers that the best gog clients are 3rd party, unsupported and receive zero funding from CPR for making gog a usable platform.
I don't like monopolies, but it's hard to argue that any other service offers the same value to the end user.
Well yeah, because gog is selling games ethically... That's great, I think it's good that they exist, and if I want a specific game I'll often go to them first
But that's kind of the limit... They don't have much power, they advocate against drm and all, but I don't see them fighting in the courts or the media the way the EFF always leads the charge.
That's fine - they're a store, and like a local shop, I'd rather give them my business than a chain
Steam gets so much praise because they're Walmart, but instead of destroying the local economy, they go out of their way to add value to it and lower the barriers of entry for everyone. They're a monopoly that goes out of their way to improve the industry they dominate, including by improving competition
I’ve said this before but as soon as Valve becomes a public company, immediately start protesting and sailing.
They were the company who had people who recognized that they already did all of their ideas and their best bet was to get out of the way for the next generation of developers. The other studios are apparently run by narcissists who still think they are at the top of their game. The world could learn a big lesson from Valve.
It's not narcissism. It is a rational decision with major upside if you can pull off building your own storefront and launcher. If you can stop paying steam 30 percent of every sale, and have direct access to the user for data collection and targeted advertising, you try to execute. There is a ton of upside for Epic, EA, or Ubisoft to go direct to consumer and not have a middle man (and possibly be the middle man for others).
I’m referring to the young Gen X and elderly Millennials who still run the industry and still think that everything should be full of micro transactions, huge bugs, and DLC with no content. I’m referring to the people who are scared of Baldurs Gate III and claim that nobody can reach that standard. They are still thinking of games as they were 15 years ago but the world has moved on.
As a Gen-Xer I can say with some level of confidence that my gen was all about Shareware and cheering developers on when years later they would release the source code to their games (Doom, etc.). And the games you bought were all complete, no DLC.
I can't tell you how many years I used the RAR compression format before finally paying for a license for it.
Early gaming/computing was a lot more socialistic than it was capitalistic.
Also Gen X. I seriously never paid for a single piece of software. Then it started to come with your computer. Then you got it for free or through a work account.
In the end I only pay for games.
So much contradiction and ageism in this comment. Older people are the problem thinking of games they were 15 years ago, but also aggressively pushing micro transactions that a pretty new for non mobile games in the past 10 years.
That’s literally my argument. That’s literally what I’m saying. This is not a boomer problem, it’s a problem with those that came after. The world is ready to move on but the industry insiders aren’t.
Older millennials got in and reinvented the world. Time to let the zoomers do the same.
See also CD Project Rekt saying that they don’t want to be bought up because they are about to become big again.
What are you talking about. Millennials are just now turning 40 years old. Gen X is the age of the major CEO's and leaders in the industry. How do millenials "get out of the way" when they finally are hitting mid career where they have a say?
I specifically said younger gen x and older millennials. When the millennials got in, they had great new ideas that changed the world. Now they are out of touch and holding back the industry. Just look at Bethesda and EA s examples of this.
All I’m really trying to say is that when you run out of ideas, get out of the way of those who still have them.
So your years of relevance are supposed to be 22 to 35 years old.... What do people do with the last 30 years of their work like before they retire? I don't think you understand how careers work. And ideas don't just magically stop after you turn 30.
These questions are irrelevant. The gaming industry is stagnant and that is because those in charge are it if ideas. Can we drop the whataboutism and move on with life?
BTW I speak as someone of roughly 30 years of experience working in tech. I now work at a university have student teams. I recognize the future when I see it. Everyone is a pretty much a dinosaur compared to Gen Z and Alpha.
Returning to my actual point: Valve is a great example of a company that put out its ideas then made way for new ones.