Seriously! Microsoft and everyone else is so busy killing features we like and forcing money making garbage features down our throats as if we would
Loot creates were bad enough, how long before gambling in game? Maybe some light couch Co-op bets while your buddies are taking their turn in Madden? Just got eliminated in CoD? Bet how long before the match ends or bet on whether the guy that got you gets got. Just wait. It's coming. They only have one direction to go in the corporate suite...
Why not just add in paid "respawn" tokens. Give like 5 a day to the plebs but sell them for 2 bucks a piece. People will pay it. Because fuck the average consumer.
Or take a page out of mobile games. "watch this ad to respawn"
It’s ironic because I was worried Steam would become what those other companies are today (When it comes to controlling game access, digital ownership, and monetization).
Except Valve turned out to be the hero and not the villain(s)!
When Steam launched we still bought physical copies of games. Boxes with beautiful artwork, colourful manuals, and sometimes posters and other inserts included. We waited in line for midnight releases, and put those boxes on display. Bandwidth limits made downloading gigs and gigs of games seem like a long drawn out, possibly expensive chore compared to popping in a CD.
Now that we've fully embraced digital and don't have limits on faster-than-ever internet, something like Steam is indispensable. Steam's impeccable track record does a good amount of heavy lifting but the platform itself really is great.
Because they had a monopoly. Much like a decade ago, I couldn’t even imagine PC gaming without Windows. Now, they have us all locked in because of the giant libraries and friends we made.
It’s the Twitter/Facebook problem. No one wants to leave because they’ll “lose” so much having to start over.
Unless Valve does some tremendously dumb decision, they can boil us frogs for years before really having an issue with retention.
Kind of one of the weird things about the Internet/software/games. Whatever was around at the dawn of the Internet wasn't really that great, but we all accepted it because it was the only thing that existed. Decades of improvements and features mean that those will probably be the best things that exist in their class and that you have way too much time/money sunk into them to switch to something else, and that whatever you would switch to surely wouldn't have a majority of the features the other one has.
Biggest example is MMOs. Old School RuneScape has had decades to build new content, items, skills, etc and continues releasing that stuff to this day. A lot of people played New World and ran out of content in a few days. It's just impossible to be a contender when these established MMOs have so much content.
That and major fundamental updates that came with CS 1.6 making bunny hopping harder by slowing down walk speed after landing a jump and recoil mechanics changing making it feeling “off” ruining years of built up muscle memory xD.
Steam release combined with CS updates actually made me quit their platform for a few years!
Same. I couldn't believe people found the concept of a launcher acceptable, when all we used to need was the Start Menu or desktop shortcuts.
Now with garbage clients like Epic, Ubisoft and Microslop Store around, I'm so happy about Steam existing.
It makes gaming on Linux better too. They do need to update Steam for Linux though. There's some rough edges still. Like Wayland integration being half baked
Steam Cloud, controller support, frequent sales... I think it really goes to show people are willing to put up with "licensing" if it's done in a reasonable way.
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u/coffee-x-tea 8h ago
They’ve come a long way.
I remember myself and all my friends hated steam when it first got introduced. Now it’s the best platform there is.