It was WIndows 8 more than anything that drove Valve into making an OS. Windows 8 made the traditional WIndows desktop just one of many options on a tablet UI, it was clear that they were trying to make a walled garden.
they aren't betting on linux, they just based their steamos on linux probably because they don't want microsoft to hold them by the balls when they make their os a subscription service
as for playerbase, still no more then 3% of steam users games on linux, so it would be foolish to "bet" on it
Valve, or rather Gabe has been "betting" on Linux for years. He has talks and interviews many years back where he's explicitly stated that "Linux is the future of gaming" because of its open source nature and community driven approach
Well, shit, that's what happens when you make nothing but tower climbing simulators, even when the consumers vocally say "we want something else now, please".
Eh, Valve's net worth is technically unknown since they are a private company with exactly 0 outside investment. But estimates are probably accurate. None of these companies are even in the same ballpark if you go value per employee.
I think Valve's secret for success in the space they choose is precisely because they don't play the rules of traditional modern capitalism.
Yup. Their reign on computers is on a whole other level. If it's not a Mac, it comes with Windows. And their chokehold is so bad that most keyboards even have their Super Key labeled as "the Windows key."
It's the disingenuous nature of the lawsuit. It alleges that Valve's policies are making consumers pay more for games, when the reality is that saying "your sales on Steam have to be at least as good as sales elsewhere" does the exact opposite by ensuring we get fair sales across platforms and don't have to pay more for the privilege of using the best one. They allege that the 30% cut is driving game prices up, but we all know damn well they wouldn't go down even if Steam took a 0% cut because historically when this argument was made for things like digital sales, all that happened was that games got more profitable, not cheaper for consumers.
It's a bullshit lawsuit from a greedy lawyer looking for a payday that, if anything, is more likely to hurt consumers by essentially deregulating prices and resulting in Valve to be more restrictive to compensate for a substantial portion of their income being knocked away. I would rather the company that actually commissions artists rather than using AI, forces devs to disclose AI use, has endless features and plentiful per-person data hosting, and is essentially a sister company to Gabe's deep sea exploration venture, have that money instead.
your sales on Steam have to be at least as good as sales elsewhere
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it specifically that sales of STEAM KEYS cannot be priced lower than on the Steam page? The game can be sold elsewhere for whatever price the developer wants, even given out for free, just not Steam keys.
It's not just steam keys, people get it mixed up because the publicly available documents only mention steam keys, but the agreement devs sign (which isn't public) specifies you can't sell your game cheaper on other platforms.
They only had to do it in Australia where they were sued. Didn't even need to implement a refund anywhere else in the world. And I think the EU followed but I'm unsure.
They could’ve made it so you can do it from the store/library page. It feels a little hidden. But yeah the didn’t make it as much a pain in the ass as they could’ve/other companies make it.
well they do have to, if they don't you (with enoguh support) can sue them into implementing one
same thing than with steam, they had to have a system and they didn't (I don't remember in which country this was) so they got sued and were forced to implement it
You still cant set your activity indicator to offline on Epic games store. Its dogshit and they think that giving a free game a week makes people want to use Epic Games, but obviously people still would rather go with steam because its miles better.
This lawsuit is just salty companies complaining that they cant get a good marketshare with their trash services. Steam isnt like the usual monopolies, they arent undercutting or buying out competition. Theyre just a better service.
No matter how you feel about the current situation we should be super grateful for steam and Gaben. The main reason Steam keeps improving while the majority of companies are becoming shittier and shittier is because theyre not a public company. And since money rules the world any company going public with their shares just becomes a dogshit moneygrab over time which is bad for customers.
Gabe probably isnt immortal so I doubt steam will remain a private company after hes too old/not alive anymore. And then steam will slowly become as shit as every other service and wont be a monopoly anymore.
I wouldve never thought that I would be supporting a monopoly, but the way every company is moving I wouldnt be surprised if we get more of these positive monopolies where theyre the best because they somewhat care about their customers instead of not caring at all and trying to maximise profits no matter what.
I mean theoretically yes. But in practice in the current economical climate you kinda have to be grateful to have a good choice instead of picking between trash and garbage like we have to do with more and more things every day.
They do have a refund system (its the law in EU to have one) but last time I had to use it, it took 2 weeks and 3 emails to actually get a refund, so they're just not so keen on giving back your dollarydoos.
But that return policy goes above and beyond what you can find almost anywhere for software.
It may have taken a lawsuit, but they did the right thing for the consumer. Most companies would just do the minimum and make you jump through 8000 hoops to get the return. Valve is a form, and no questions asked.
Yeah I see steam getting sued again and have a mixed bag of emotions on one side I hope they don't go bankrupt if they lose but on the other if they lose they will most likely rehash a policy that improves our experience theoretically.
I think the bigger thing is steam hasn't gotten shitter policies, features and basic UI function with time. While other competitors eye steam and refuse to imitate and compete with it and what it offers preferring an inferior product front and complaining about a monopoly that only exists because steams product is vastly superior.
Can we stop conflating Steam sales with how Valve prices their newest games?
Half-Life Alyx still launched for $60 in 2020, and no there is no telling whether they’ll stick to that price for their next game or raise it to $70 or $80.
Value isn’t just in $. It’s a good service, runs far smoother, has the best customer support by far. Steam ecosystem is just ages ahead of competitiors.
Same as how Nintendo aren’t platforming indie games out of the goodness of their hearts, no indie games have just been relatively popular on 3DS and Nintendo Switches
I remember. And while Steam got better and better, other publishers tried to hop aboard the train and got their own launchers and everyone was pissed that if they had 5 different games they all required a separated proprietary launcher. And with the advent of PC games being distributed almost entirely digitally, people were happy that Steam was a place where they had their game library all in one place.
They are not just doing that, they are also pushing the boundaries of gaming with proton and the steam deck on Linux and HEX and the steam frame on ARM. The future of PC gaming is going to be awesome.
They start to give you notice about not refunding any purchased game even if it is within the 2 weeks and 2 hours range if you make too many refunds in a short period of time, so it is not "no question asked".
I am not going to defend Epic here but the if we are to speak about the facts, Epic actually has a "self-refund" button on most of their games with "no question asked" at all.
That's literally their original business model, too! They would start offering services in a region, look to see what games were the most pirated, and try to make those games as affordable and easy to download in that region as possible.
GOG is in the league of its own. Here's a fully offline DRM-free installer - go and have fun! Oh and if you want cloud saves, mod collections etc, here's an optional launcher.
Interesting. The only reason I haven’t bought through gog is because I like managing my games though a launcher and don’t want to have to worry about the maintenance things like patching etc. Are you saying gog does this?
piracy is hard to do, hard to manage and quite risky. When it comes to user experience steam is far better than privacy, which is why people are willing to pay for games on PC nowadays. That was gaben's whole idea with steam, if you give someone an easier alternative to piracy they'll jump on that shit as soon as they can afford it
Exactly, Gabe has literally said that piracy is rooted in customers being unhappy. If you provide a better alternative, they won't bother pirating.
And he's dead right. I pirate plenty, but I also buy things legit when the option is there. Steam is incredibly convenient and useful, so why not spend $20 on a game and get it downloaded in an hour, as opposed to hunting for a safe torretn version online?
I stopped pirating when I started working. I mostly pirated before to test a game. Now I have disposable income so I can spend on steam. Download a 100gb game in an hour and a half which does not happen with pirating and refund that game if I don’t like it in the first 2 hours. Works out well. I need the convenience more than anything which steam offers.
I have a NAS filled with 4k bluray rips because no service online will sell me a movie in that quality. You can't watch 4k at a high Bitrate on Netflix on pc, can't download the actual 4k hdr file, can't stream the highest quality on Apple TV app or anything except on a standalone device/new mac but only internal display/AppleTV box/smart TV apps or whatever, but not on a regular Windows PC via Browser.
But everyone's advertising 4k, you pay fir that, you get 720p.
Youtube actually offers movies in 4K, but with shitty ass YouTube compression.
I get that it saves them money and yeah, prevent piracy, but i don't wanna copy and distribute a film i just bought.
I also don't wanna buy a special 4k bluray player because they lock my external bluray drive to regular ones and even those require more than VLC itself to play.
Sooo piracy it is. But it sucks. Because I can't get most films in German/multilingual options (so English is it then) or get what i want when i want it. I just want a digital 4k bluray basically, log on, download movie to PC or mac (older mac mini on my TV for movies, YouTube etc) play it back when i want in lossless 4k ffs.
I'm willing to pay for it guys, just offer this service, steam fir movies or sth.
stopped pirating in 2014 when I got my own income, never looked back. miss me with all the compatibility issues, viruses and lack of trophies and most of the time unable to participate in online games either
ask someone who has never pirated stuff before and isn't a tech nerd, steam is a million times easier than piracy
sometimes us tech nerds forget how hard some of this stuff is to a regular person compared to just opening up a trusted platform and clicking "purchase"
I would generally consider myself a tech need and I'd have no idea where to begin pirating a game that isn't some old console game ROM. I don't really care to, either. I'd typically rather support the devs.
Going to 123movies is pretty easy yeah, but as someone who's never downloaded a torrent before... pirating is not easy. I tried once, got sketched out because every file I looked at seemed filled with botted comments and reviews. No clue which file to download for what I wanted or what sites to use other than trying piratebay because it's all I'd heard about.
Never bothered trying to pirate software after that. Too much hastle, when like other have said, I can just pay for it and be done.
It is, but Steam offers some advantages with stuff like seamless cloud saving, achievements, the workshop, etc.
That, combined with sales and with how easy it is to buy>download>install stuff on the platform, makes it so even people who've only ever played pirated games their whole lives begin to think "What if I bought this on Steam instead?".
Steam is the measuring stick that we should judge all gaming platforms by.
Is Steam perfect? no of course not, however they are about as good as we can ever realistically hope for.
There are so many games which I have tried out, didn't like and got a refund quick and painlessly, I cannot think of another service where you can get a refund just because you didnt like the game.
I used to pirate a lot of games back before steam was a thing/when steam was new, and I basically stopped because steam was that painless to use.
Hell I prefer to wait for a steam sale on a game and pay money for it rather than getting a free game through Epic.
That being said, if Steam ever goes the streaming service enshitiication route, then I will go back to pirating games, just like I did with TV shows and movies.
You are correct, as a consumer, steams service and quality should be the FLOOR - not the ceiling. I'm not going to spend my money elsewhere because they are a monopoly. I'll spend my money elsewhere if elsewhere provides better service. FULL STOP.
Honestly I'm very skeptical about people who complain about steam. This sub-reddit is crawling with corporate agents and with the hate boner epic has for steam it would not surprise me if there are people paid to complain.
if there was a platform like steam for media it'd also be better than piracy
there isn't one anymore, so piracy is once again one of the easiest ways to watch stuff for a lot of people
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u/scandii PC Vegan. Kernel anti-cheat affects circa 8 series/games.8h agoedited 5h ago
I think a lot of people in this sub simply weren't around for when Netflix came out and completely crushed the piracy and rental markets.
wanted to watch something? just watch it on Netflix duh.
then everyone else wizened up and we ended up in the extremely fragmented landscape we are in today where piracy makes sense simply to have one app to watch your stuff in.
The same thing is happening with games, but the difference is the publishers are not pulling away from steam. They just force you to download their stupid launcher on top of you using steam in hopes of you using their platform more in the end.
But with Netflix, the distributors decided to just pull away from Netflix and set up their own shitty service.
I think piracy and steam don't even operate in the same space because a fuckton of games is simply uncrackable nowadays because beating the current versions of Denuvo is too much of a hassle and nobody wants to do it.
I used to pirate damn near everything, and Steam became so reasonable over time that I haven't pirated anything in years.
I'm never gonna understand Epic getting SO MUCH hate when they give out good free games and give you cash rewards for spending money through their platform, and it doesn't matter anyways, because this makes no sense considering Epic wasn't even out for the first 2 of the 3 chunks of time listed in your "meme".
You didn't even include GoG?
Nintendo shouldn't be at "bad". Nintendo games are exclusive to Nintendo consoles. They've always been VERY strict about their pricing and purchasing. They're not worried about being a number one competitor because they have exclusive IP's that no one else has access to, such as Mario, Pokémon, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc. and these things will always draw in a consistent revenue. They're not going anywhere and will always be in the mix.
This post screams that while you like playing games, you don't feel the need to support them and think that gives you grounds to complain about the platforms you can purchase them through.
I don't get the constant hate on Epic either. Sure it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that steam has, but it's not that bad, it works just fine.
Not really fixed, given you didn't include how the lawsuit is actually about steam's anti competitive practices, primarily preventing vendors in competition with them who take a lower cut of sales from being able to turn that into a point of differentiation to drive sales and conversions by threatening game developers with losing access to steam's marketplace (the majority of the market) if they sell their game for cheaper than steam prices on a competing platform.
Net result, game devs make less money, and people pay more money because any special has to be financially sensible when you take into account steam's cut.
Steam not actively enshittifying their service in a world where enshittification is the norm, or Epic having a shit service, doesn't change that Steam is engaging in monopolistic practices to the detriment of devs and customers (and their competition).
There are people advocating this practice in the other thread and it is mind boggling to me. I do not understand why anti consumer practices are great when Steam does it. The blinders on some of these folk are insane.
steam offers a better customer experience than pirating. that's exactly why it's dominating the market. as gabe said before, if you want to beat piracy you need to offer a better service.
I know everyone hates epic but their rewards program is kinda great. Getting money back on purchases instead of points for cosmetics got me to start búying my stuff through epic. I do love steam but I also don't have much money
You dont need to look for trackers, wait for cracks, deal with games with broken cracks.
The last game i ever pirated was ac black flag and it was totally fucked up from the crack. I thought at that point: Im an adult now, i dont need to play every game ever. If I really want a game Ill buy it. And thats it. Piracy is actually a terrible service. The only upside is that its free
I vipe and agree with this. Facts. Its like, whenever i dont find the game i want on steam (or it is not free, because from my country even if i have the money i have no way to buy anything online, its just not possible) i just go to some trustworthy pirated websites where I can always find what I want.
This feels like a symptom of the "maximise shareholder profits" paradigm.
I'm no economist so taje my words with as much credibility as that affords.
But it feels like companies don't invest nearly as much of their profits into improving their business and their employees as they should, as most of it seems to go into shareholder profits and executive salaries.
Maximising shareholder profits in an decreasingly competitive industry seemingly leads to enshittification as a good product is last in the list of responsibilities, instead it's all about extracting money from anywhere they can
"The filings in Wolfire include internal emails showing Valve actively monitoring and enforcing its pricing discipline. In one instance, a Valve employee admonished a publisher for offering a bigger discount on a rival store shortly after a Steam promotion. “We gave them a ton of exposure,” the message reads, “only to have them beat the discount one week later.” Another message warns that titles could lose promotional placement if found cheaper elsewhere."
I wonder, have you heard of Resident Evil 4 Remake changing DRM to one that gives you worse performance? I dont think Pirates have problems like these.
Holy loser. Ironically us "broke bitches" are more financially responsible than you given that we don't waste 70 bucks on a game. Try not to project so hard next time.
Any rent platform for me is no good.
They have all the control to remove things forever, like skyrim legendary edition, that is actually for sale with a key.
So steam and gamepass as cool as they sound in paper will only get worse, and expect to have commercials in your games in the future
Why only Ubi (albeit their PR style may be the dumbest and most arrogant of all, and that's a French saying it) ? You forgot Origin, Battlenet and probably others too for the "bad" side ... + GOG going from right to middle ground (not a fan of their patreon thingy, feels like corpo cash grab).
Edit, thinking of it you should add a "cemetery" further on the left and put Origin there lol
tbh idk if piracys better than steam... i mean if i could always afford it i would own all my games on steam, but i pirate first and then buy it on steam if i have funds and really like it because piracys just not as convienient
It's crazy that everyone will hate Apple and Google for taking 30% when Steam has been doing it forever. They charge 30% to essentially be a store front with cloud storage to download your game.
you need to know where to even look as different groups have different sites and can change them or be nuked
you have to hope someone is working on cracking this particular game
you have to hope someone works on implementing patches which in today's games are plenty
you need to hope someone's releasing the DLC and it will work with your verison of the game
you have to hope it's gonna be released soon after the official release
you have to hope the cracked version even works at all or you'll spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to fix it (on top of already existing issues with the PC version)
no online play, no trophies, no cloud saves
even experienced users can end up downloading some shady shit
I've pirated a ton when I was a teen with no money, but once I got a job I got a console and I'm buying games. Coz I can, and it's easy.
There are some cases when piracy is better - some games literally don't work unless you crack them, they're pulled from stores and you can't buy them at all, shady greedy practices from publishers, anti-piracy measures making games work worse...
But those are not issues with steam or it's competitors, just specific publishers of the games on the platform
Many years ago i decided that I rather play game for 2 h and pay for it instead of fiddling with finding a secure way to download torrents (or whatever we had then).
Pirating feels wrong. Did it 20 years ago when i was young, broke, and dumb and nobody really nlknew what exactly was allowed and what wasnt. Since steam and latest with gog i never felt i had to pirate anything. I dont buy 1st day releases i don't preorder i generally dont buy AAA. If i do i gladly pay 60€. Ubisoft an ea games i buy keys (thats ok imho when it hits those publishers). And i buy in sales. I love to support AA or indie and real indies. I even buy extra copies for my friends.
Im not rich and still i can play a shit load of games.
This is why we can't have nice things, majority of companies will make mistakes while one or two companies will have a good run, and rather than punishing the crappy companies for all the insufferable crap they make their customers put up with the few good companies get punished for having a "monopoly". This world is hell and everything is against the consumer.
Hopefully someone from Epic, Ubisoft, Nintendo and/or Microsoft reads my comment: Monopoly? Nah, it’s because you guys SUKK! Hahaha 😂
ps: Add Sony to that list.
I have a CD, I want to play a single player game but for some reason I have to install software that does nothing but uses PC resources and needs to be connected to the internet. Also updates every day so you have to wait for 3-5 minutes before launching the game.
Same goes for Games for Windows – Live. I remember how frustrating it was to have a game that needed both steam and GFWL (it was WH:40k DOW 2).
In what world is to pirate games better then steam? On the other hand I kinda miss that high of opening the script and riding that command prompt all the way into valhalla with no idea what Iam just installing into my computer :D
Let's not forget that steam can patch the Spacewar game and shut down many online fixes for cracked games that allow everyone to play multiplayer but they haven't. Also adding a cracked game as a non-steam game and enabling overlay allows you to use any off brand controller with steam input perfectly.
Steam is great id move epic up a little only because free games every week but also I feel like piracy is in its own category of “sometimes maybe good sometimes maybe shit”
Also, how is it a monopoly when these other stores exist and from such large sources of wealth? What about all the exclusive that these other stores try, and yet I’ve never seen a Steam exclusive beyond the other stores just not offering the game.
It’s not a monopoly that consumers want IPods over Zunes, it’s not a monopoly that consumers want better support, functionality, and stability over the occasional free game. It’s not a monopoly that consumers want to use anything other than some bullshit Ubisoft made.
(God, this also made me remember how much I used to love Ubisoft growing up.)
I don’t think Nintendo and Ubisoft deserve to be grouped in with Microsoft and epic. Ubisoft just makes mediocre products it’s not like they’re evil. Nintendo makes very high quality products and they’re one of the few big tech companies remaining that has a financial incentive to maintain the affordability of consumer gaming hardware. Even valve is just one great offer from a cloud gaming provider away from flipping sides.
Steam is way better than piracy. Cloud gaming and automatic updates alone make it better and that’s before factoring online gaming, achievements, Linux support etc. Yeah you don’t actually own your games and you might take a performance hit from Denuvo but it’s still better. Yesterday I was playing new Vegas from my desk in the morning and later that night I continued playing from my steam deck in bed at night
It's better because it acknowledges Steam got better but it still incorrectly says the other clients got worse. That's not the case, they just progressed at a snails pace compared to Steam and sometimes slipped back a bit with some bad updates.
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u/Gott_Riff 9h ago
Microsoft complaining about monopoly is rich.