Ah good point, totally forgot the early times, I was too young back then I guess. Okay then the impact of Steam is kind of mixed then. From practical experience it is more up to the game developers to enforce or not enforce it and often in practice especially indie games are DRM free or it is easy to circumvent. Steam at least does not install some surveillance rootkit on your system. And I'd claim that it plays about the same role in the indie game ecosystem as Bandcamp plays for music and GitHub plays for open source software, at least that is my impression.

And contra Bandcamp is of course, they recently sold out i.e. got bought by some larger fish with totally different but music legal stuff related business and Bandcamp lost a lot of employees. But at least for now I don't see drastic enshittification ot Bandcamp yet.

I guess ultimately there is no perfect saint company, they are entities that must generate profit, and only sometimes it really means making customers happy, but more often than not it doesn't - that's just capitalism, how it works everywhere.

Nope. That's Johnson & Johnson. Different company.

I believe you mean Johnson & Johnson, which is a different company.

No idea about the morals of SC Johnson, I hadn't heard of them till now, but have used a product or 2.

Private equity is salivating over the idea of ~~running his carefully built brand into the ground~~maximizing value extraction from steam.

The current meta here is that things like brand loyalty and reputation are not really worth preserving, and are only as good as whatever short-term gains you can squeeze out of them.

Let's hope musket doesn't buy it.

Yup. Everyone has to buy something. The point is to direct people to do that at places that are LES evil rather than giving in and saying "nothing matters I guess I'll just do whatever." Defeatism is collaboration.

One way to fight the corporations is to stop worshipping at the altar of blind consumerism, and embrace the concept of "Reuse, Repair, Recycle."

Stop buying stuff you dont need. Keep using what you have, sell/buy used items, repair things, and if it cant be fixed or repurposed, then recycle it.

Repairing things is a big one. Often repairs are remarkably easy. My wife has been ready to replace numerous appliances over the years, and I figured it was worth taking a shot at fixing it, if I can save a few hundred bucks, and successfully extended the life by years.

Very satisfying, and it forces your wife to rethink her conclusion that you are an incompetent dolt.

In the prosecution of its purposes, the Slave Power has obtained the control of both the great political parties. Their recent nominations were made to serve its interests, to secure its supremacy, and especially to promote the extension of Slavery.

....

I hear the old political saw, that "we must take the least of two evils." My friend from Ohio [Mr. Giddings] has already riddled this excuse, so that I might well leave it untouched; but I cannot forbear a brief observation. It is admitted, then, that Cass and Taylor both are evils. For myself, if two evils are presented to me, I will take neither. There are occasions of political difference, I admit, when it may become expedient to vote for a candidate who does not completely represent our sentiments. There are matters legitimately within the range of expediency and compromise. The Tariff and the Currency are of this character. If a candidate differs from me on these more or less, I may yet vote for him. But the question before the country is of another character. This will not admit of compromise. It is not within the domain of expediency. To be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. It is not merely expedient for us to defend Freedom, when assailed, but our duty so to do, unreservedly, and careless of consequences.

-Abolitionist Charles Sumner, encouraging a third party vote in the 1848 election

Voting for lesser evil just slows down the evil, it doesn't reverse it. It's still going in the wrong direction.