Fuck yeah, love you Valve.
Love your contributions to Linux more though.
Ew. That’s a corporation. Stop.
If a corporation does something good, it’s OK to say, “Hey, good job. I love that!”
If a corporation does something legitimately shitty, it’s definitely OK to criticize them mercilessly too (I do it all the time, would recommend).
What’s not OK is trying to tell people what they can or can’t praise/criticize.
Valvle is the only only one supporting Linux!. The rest are greedy fucks.
The key is being consistent and transparent. We got gut punched by the Steam Machine price, but it was an expected and transparent outcome. XBOX and Sony are so volatile that it’s making Steam look like a saint. From laying people off, to constant price increases, to the disc situation. Both these companies need to chill tf out.
Add to this MS buying up all of these game studios to do nothing with them and then kill them because they’re so inept.
Funny to see articles like this after the wave of steam machine bad press. If you visit console based subreddits there are so many bagging in Steam.
Meanwhile you’ll never own a PlayStation disc again after next year. Great contribution to the industry Sony!
Treating your customers decently can lead to profits in the long run. What an insight. They should teach that at business schools.
Best I can do is create shareholder value by making our product shittier and more expensive. Take it or leave it kid
Online subscription is a joke at this point
Who would have thought that eh?
I have a theory.
The “casual” or “mainstream” crowd, the one that used to buy CoD, FIFA, Madden, Sims and such yearly like clockwork, has transitioned to phone apps, or sports betting/fantasy.
Their attention has been robbed from consoles.
Meanwhile, “games as art” gamers that treat them more like movies are less affected, especially with the state of smartphone app stores. That segment continues to grow on PC, and maybe even consoles, but the attrition of the first group masks that for the console crowd.
I’d postit that another factor is Steam’s rising market share coming at the expense of other PC gaming storefronts. For market purposes, it effectively is PC gaming now.
Its clear that PC is the future console. I’ve been buying in GOG primarily, and Steam only when it is not available there and has no chance of ever being there. Even your Android TV can play light games with GameNative installed
In case anyone’s not clear as to why: Sony has announced that they’ll stop producing discs and that they can take your content at any time for any reason.
Historically, Steam has promised they will never do that and will offer DRM-free (clarification: they’ll remove the Steam DRM) downloads.
Also, all of them have jacked prices up. Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam have raised hardware prices around 35-40%. However, Steam runs on PCs they don’t sell, as well as Macs, and they have a Linux distribution they provide for free called Steam OS.
Valve has not jacked up prices: Their game prices have been consistently among the cheapest and the only reason their hardware is expensive now is because part manufacturers are mostly price gouging (lying about AI being the cause of ALL the increased costs, which isn’t true, just like it wasn’t entirely true with the bitcoin mining craze).
It’s also worth pointing out that Valve has made massive contributions to Linux gaming (and Linux in general), which enables people to game on potato-spec machines and compared to other gaming platforms, they are far better than almost all of them except for GOG.
Well, if the Steam Deck hasn’t gone up in price where you’re at, you might wanna buy a couple. Keep them sealed, you can sell them for a profit later. Most places, they’ve gone up quite a bit.
Steam has promised they will never do that
Can you give us a credible source? I want it to be true, but I don’t want my only source to be hearsay.
I have never seen anyone back that claim up, despite it being a very popular one to make. People like to pretend they own their steam games but until that gets enforced by law; you don’t.
Even if Valve promised DRM-free downloads if they go belly upn there’s no chance in hell they’ll ever actually do that
DRM is up to publishers, not Steam. Valve doesn’t enforce or require it, and it’s unlikely publishers would lift DRM from their games because Valve asked.
Steam does have a DRM mechanism - it’s optional and easy to circumvent, but it’s there
Gosh I wonder if it is to do with the fact that I can (and do) run steam on a €250 second hand pc running mint
More importantly, the entire software (shops, operating system) and hardware are not a locked down platform and controlled by a single company. And the Steam prices (one word: sales) and rights (refund policy, games never get rewoked) are the best among the industry.
Mint is cool, but have you tried Bazzite? I just switched a while back and it’s been a pretty solid gaming experience.
The only issue is that Trump can cut you off from your steam library if his regime targets you with arbitrary sanctions.
Imagine if the vast majority of the world does not live in america haha
People use steam outside of the USA
Exactly my point my friend.
Valve corporation is an American company. America has used visa and mastercard to target ICC judges who also live outside the US. If the government wants they can try and strongarm Valve to do their bidding
for some time yes … but when valva looses the world, and is left just with the us market … they will change elegance real fast.
The federal government can prevent an American firm from serving a foreign customer.
Sure. And we can simply download our games off off steam or any other web page and continue playing while that company decides to move off of that country to a normal country. There are solutions to everything.
I agree there are workarounds. But it would be a massive heartbreak to lose the game collection that took years to build.
yep, anything digital is not yours.
I have a few issues with Steam. #1 all purchased games are tied to the account. There’s some that supposedly you can extract it from Steam and play it offline. However it’s not quite clear to me how to go about finding that out and how to do it for each game. There should be an icon and game sub menu option in the library for any game capable of extraction for offline play and more so play with out launching Steam.
#2 Support sucks. It’s automated as hell far as I’ve experienced. Nobody human to speak with.
#3 it’s a Monopoly.
#4 Privacy issues. Mainly, no access to full friends list chat logs. Surely Steam has full access. Why withhold it?
all purchased games are tied to the account
This isn’t exactly hidden detail. I do wish you could sell/transfer a game license though.
However it’s not quite clear to me how to go about finding that out and how to do it for each game.
Nothing special. Install the game. When you’re offline, play it. Of course things like multiplayer won’t work, or games that require you to be online like an MMO, but that’s about it. The online and offline experience are identical.
#2 Support sucks. It’s automated as hell far as I’ve experienced. Nobody human to speak with.
What do you need support for that isn’t documented, out of curiosity? I’ve been on Steam for 20 years and have never needed to contact support.
it’s a Monopoly.
It’s the biggest, but it’s not a monopoly.
Privacy issues. Mainly, no access to full friends list chat logs. Surely Steam has full access. Why withhold it?
Why would you assume that Steam has access? Chats are auto-deleted after 14 days per Steam policy. This has been the case for at least 5 years now.
There are DRM-free games on Steam, but they really ought to advertise on the store page which ones those are, because we can currently only find out by experimentation and community wikis.
You’ll get a human in a couple of days if the automated portions couldn’t resolve your issue in full.
It’s not a monopoly.
My guess is that they’re actively purging chat logs at the same rate that they disappear off of your system. They’re storing data for over 130M active users every month, and I’m sure they’d be happy to be rid of a lot of the least useful of it.
What else would purchases be tied to??? This criticism doesn’t make any sense. Support has been great for me and no, it’s certainly not a monopoly: There are dozens of game stores online. Just because Valve created the best one doesn’t mean it’s a monopoly, it means that all the other ones are shit (except for GOG, they’re awesome and even better in some ways).
The first point is explained if you read
There’s no “extraction”, you literally just navigate to the game folder (or click “game files” in the properties window for the game), and click the .exe file.
Make a shortcut to it if you want.
If it’s a game without DRM (yes, those are on Steam too), you don’t need to have Steam open to play it.
