i’m pretty confused why people here understandably hate DRM, monopolies, and billionares, but are fine with steam and Gaben
If I buy something, decide I don’t want it anymore, I can refund it within 2 hours of playtime or 24 hours of purchase (I might have the exact numbers wrong, but whatever). I’ve only ever used this a couple of times, but this is a reasonable expectation if you think of a video game as a product that you purchase much like any other product. I’ve never had problems with refunds, ever.
One time I bought a game on nintendo switch, and discovered that I couldn’t play it because it required joycons and I didn’t have any of those. I attempted to refund the game, but nintendo won’t let you refund a game if you’ve downloaded it.
I still buy games on steam. My switch though, I gave that away.
Companies still fear piracy so DRM isn’t going anywhere, and companies are still reluctant to release games on PC.
Hate of monopolies is one I have when a company uses their position to make products worse than it was before like Sony and Nintendo moving to charging for multiplayer. And it’s a monopoly on a platform they don’t control. There’s no regulatory body preventing launchers from popping up like broadband expansion being blocked by government lobbying like traditional monopolies.
When steam shifts in bad direction I’ll complain too. For now I haven’t found reason to complain about Steam. I like the product Steam offers simple as that. I don’t care about the personalities of the CEO or how much money it makes. It’s not some checkmark of X is Y so must hate.
There’s no regulatory body preventing launchers from popping up like broadband expansion being blocked by government lobbying like traditional monopolies
Sorry I can’t figure out this sentence. What did you mean by launchers here
Even huge companies like Google have encountered roadblocks trying to expand broadband services because of regulations.
PC launchers though is one that can be started even by you on Windows or Linux with the difficulty being getting customers as opposed to whether you are even allowed to make a launcher in the first place.
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I sent them an angry email when I bought my first house. I had purchased a physical copy of a game because I was waiting for my Internet to get turned on. I wasn’t able to play because it required an internet connection to complete the registration. I was so mad. I told them I would never buy another thing from Valve. That turned out to be the lie of the century. I was super wrong and Valve has been a company you can be proud of for decades. I often think about what a jackass I was for sending that email.
I don’t think you were a jackass. You purchased a physical copy and thus shouldn’t need an internet connection to start your game (unless it’s multiplayer only). It’s crazy how easy it is for people to get used to new normals when it comes to things like this.
Yup. Valve rocks, but they’re not perfect. When I buy a game from Nintendo, I expect it to just work without updates, and they do. I don’t understand why other companies get a pass.
This is why I don’t but games on release anymore (except Nintendo first party), and why I’m largely okay with PC being digital only. Reward the behavior you want to see.
Valve has been a company you can be proud of for decades.
So proud of a company whos ceo built a billion dollar fleet of mega yachts abducting kids into gambling.
I love how you spam the same copy pasted stupidity everywhere steam is mentioned without knowing what abducted means.
Especially since the most expensive ones are - an experimental fishing vessel designed as a test platform for better eco-stewardship in the fishing industry, a mobile hospital that travels to places that can’t afford hospitals, or are experiencing a major catastrophe that has left their medical facilities overwhelmed, one of the most advanced scientific vessels when it was built, and more plans for boats with purposes like these.
Yes, there are luxury ones, but, as far as billionaire’s production of super yachts go, Gabe is still the least worst billionaire I personally know of.
Even the launch version of HL1 was a great game but gosh, were Valve a crappy company back then. HL1 shipped with a bunch of trailers, so far, so good. But update patches contained mandatory new trailers. That was dialup era and downloading the updates cost much more money because of those stupid trailers. Then came Steam and made it worse. Imagine the pushback to ads in Windows 10 but add to the annoyance the fact that the annoyances also cost money. Broadband was still just getting started. My family certainly couldn’t afford it and they could even less so afford me being online on dialup all the time. So my more wealthy friend passed me CDs with the last non-Steam updates, mods like Counter Strike. Me having been a dumb kid would have ruined my family’s livelihood otherwise.
So are we just going to get an article from every other line in the hl2 documentary?
No, we stop at the second
News are slow. The milkman has to do work.
I like that even without real competition on the market, they keep on improving and innovating the platform.
It’s a company that want’s to make money but they way they do it, giving the customers the best most experience possible, wishes me for other companies would take notice of. And i don’t only distribution platforms.
That’s the difference between a private company and a publicly-traded one.
even without real competition on the market,
Which is the effect of
giving the customers the best most experience possible
I mean, if even Steam would have stopped 5 years ago with adding and innovating and just maintaining everything to work smoot, they still would be better than any other platform. Just sit and count money.
Look at epic, I happily claim every week the game they give away, but where is the motivation to even consider them over steam. They had all this time and money to just copy things steam did right or add new things themselves .
Almost nothing happens.
The competition might not be real right now, but they’re smart enough to know it’ll eventually catch up if they don’t stay one step ahead.
Yeah I am old enough to remember it being just a launcher (ala Ubisoft or EA games) for Half life 2 and a way to counter-strike with no mods. TBH I thought it was gonna fail hard and then after a decade of success, even I was stuck on steam. Also to add originally they only sold valve games as literally no third party was willing to give them a cent and they were short on IP.
Guess nobody remembers when Steam first started out and had enough bugs and compatibility issues that they spurred a lot of hatred evinced by the pump icon shoving into and out of a user’s butt. Can’t seem to find a graphic of it anywhere these days but it was funny back then
Yeah seriously, Steam was universally hated at the time. Anyone else remember this gif?
(Sorry for the imgur link BTW, but Voyager uses the default Android upload dialog and it’s AWFUL. Half the time the picture I want to upload isn’t there, even if I directly navigate to the folder it’s in.)
I remember Green Steam on dialup. The steam loading bar frolicking across the screen, left AND sometimes right. No “offline” mode. And, of course, being the only way to play Half Life 2.
I remember hating the idea, during the age when games came in boxes. Now i support Steam with the tremendous support they’ve given the Linux platform. Most games i have are games on Steam, but i do have a bunch on GoG, as well as Itch.io. Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket, but have to admit the Steam basket is humongous.
I remember hating the idea, during the age when games came in boxes. Most games i have are games on Steam
If they are yours can you send me a copy as proof that they are actually yours?
You know it’s also illegal to send a copy of a physical game right?
I know you’re just trying to prove a point about physical disks, but if you actually wanted to borrow a copy of someone’s game, Steam will let you do it
You can easily zip up a steam game and send it yes. And if the game developer did not implement any drm, You can play it as well. It would be piracy tho… so i support that ;)
I still have a bulk of those CD’s (not the boxes anymore). I keep them in a binder with the CD holder sleeves. Same for my drivers, and operating systems. I have disks of going back to NT, 95b, and 98. I only started in to PC’ in 1998/9. I wish i had my original Voodoo3 driver disk. I remember buying that card in my way back from school one afternoon. I was so excited to install it.
I was skeptical of Steam when it launched as well. It has proven to be a good service.
Beware bit rot.
Granted most of those are going to be archived anyway but I wouldn’t count on them being useable indefinately.
Good news is that disc rot doesn’t happen as quickly for stamped CDs as it does in CD-Rs.
But that’s just a happy little accident. Gabe is too much of a good guy, so he actually built a good distribution platform that also pushes for improvements for the whole ecosystem (like the Linux thing).
When he’s gone, capitalism dictates that enshitification must ensue in order to squeeze out every single cent of short term profit, and we’ll be screwed.
Depends on what happens to the company. Maybe he has children that can inherit his company shares and maybe they don’t want it to change.
Maybe they set up a trust or something that can take ownership.
I really hope valve never gets sold.
GOG is pretty good but they have zero Linux support that I’m aware of. Had to return a game I bought off there last year. Bought it through Steam and it worked seamlessly.
GOG actually has a relatively good selection of Linux games.
Relatively is the key word. I haven’t had a serious issue with anything running on Proton and the way Steam implements it. I’ve had one issue out of one trying to play a game on GOG. Don’t get me wrong, I think GOG is great though.
it’s time to learn how to install umu and use it in heroic then, my GoG games run with proton through heroic, no problem.
Some of their games have Linux support but also it seems very much that they do not care about going out of their way for Linux so it gets forgotten about for most titles
I feel like proton is going to bandage it all together. Most indows games that don’t have kernel level anti cheat are going to work using a proton layer.
In GOG’s defense, they don’t have the resources that Steam does but it’s still pretty annoying. I have no plans to personally seriously use Windows ever again for personal use but Linux desktop usage is low and not something I’d expect a company that’s GOGs size to spend much time on yet. Steam can and does. I respect that a lot.
Companies can choose to be a part of the solution, or a part of the problem. And i can choose to spend my money on the solution. I would love some redundancy on the linux gaming store front tho, just valve seams a bit fragile. And afaik gog or anyone else can also use proton or???
Reminder that at $9.5 billion in net worth, Gabe Newell would be part of the ultra wealthy class that would be eaten first whenever we get organized enough to overthrow the wealthy.