That's true, I kinda missed that part in the article. I agree that if it's simply a matter of forcing Steam to comply with Vietnam's regulations just like its competitors, then there's nothing wrong with that. Perhaps that is why there's been no official statement on either side, and hopefully they're in the process of working it out.

A common reason cited by g*mers for only using Steam is that they "want to have all their games in one place".

I really don't think that sentiment is all that common. People like to use Steam because it's a good service, and always innovating new ways to be a good service. There's no reason for family sharing to exist, or for it to have recently been overhauled in such a way that it's even smoother and more pleasant to use. They just did it because it makes a better consumer experience. There's no reason for Proton to exist, or for Valve to push into linux gaming at all. Linux was such an insignificant, tiny market. But Valve is making it a significant market single-handedly and that's fucking awesome.

Of course Valve, just like any other company in a capitalist society, only wants money. But Valve, unlike most companies in a capitalist society, is guided by the principle that people will fork over their money if the service is good. And they're goddamn right.

If Epic made a good service, or if Ubisoft made a good service, or if EA made a good service, or if Rockstar made a good service, or if Blizzard made a good service, or if anyone else made a good service, they'd have no problems getting people to use their service and Steam. The problem is that any time somebody other than Valve makes a game store, the only selling point for it is "you can't play this game if you don't download our store." Nobody ever tries actually making something good.

That's just a service issue, though. Steam can import CD keys from games that were bought outside of their ecosystem, I don't know why a competing service couldn't do the same with purchased Steam games (other than contracts with publishers etc.). I've at some point used most of the game stores that exist and I'll be honest they all kinda suck. They don't even give me the impression that they're trying to be serious competition.

These companies don't want to just sell games to you. They want you to interact with their apps and live in their ecosystem and I have zero interest to learn to use a shittier Steam where I have no games

If they just sold you no-frills installers like GOG does (with an optional Steam-like ecosystem I never use) I wouldn't mind, but of course they don't want to do that

I know a lot of people who refuse to use Epic because something something Tencent bad!

I've also heard people defending steam because Proton works well

True, and VPNs exist. It's more of an access thing. Lots of people don't have hte technical knowledge and skills to do these things.

A lot of Internet cafes in Vietnam already use pirated games. But cracked multiplayer games usually cannot play with legit players.

I did only hear from one guy when I asked about this, so I'm not sure what the full extent of the situation is, but aforementioned singular Vietnamese developer called the provided explanation a "very wild theory" and that the quote seemed to just be speculation from a random guy, "...and as of today, people can access Steam normally."

A friend of mine gave me their GOG copy of Baldur’s Gate the other day on a thumb drive and it just works. There was nothing else to it. They are the best store front by far.