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ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@beehaw.org avatar

The article in no way describes any actions taken by Valve that leads me to believe there is any impending enshittification. They simply have made decisions, a lot of which they have stuck with for many years.

Enshittification has to do with bait and switch, effectively. It’s luring customers into a false sense of loyalty and then abusing that to their financial gain (see: Reddit and Spez from 2023).

The article basically says “there are some decisions by Valve I like, and some I don’t.” That in no way provides any path toward some bomb going off. Perhaps time will prove the author right, of course, because any company can easily decide to screw over their customers, but the article is click-bait and completely speculative as to what may happen.

And due to all of the above, I think the bomb is about to go off where elephants will fly out of my refrigerator and steal my soda.

ninjan ,

I don’t know why the article doesn’t bring up Valve being the company to bring loot boxes and that business model to gaming as the prime example. Valve earns extreme money from the skins market and gambling in CSGO / CS2 since they sell the keys and take a cut of trades as well. They’re far more concerned with money than actually caring for the people involved. Gambling ruins lives and Valve is the gambling company that faces by far the least vitriol in that horrendous crowd.

Faydaikin ,
@Faydaikin@beehaw.org avatar

Probably because Valve doesn’t make games anymore. Not on any serious level anyway.

Most of their games are old as hell, and most of them where in the “proof of concept” relm. They only really made games to push the technology they were working with.

It’d be a poor argument to bring up their old catalog of games from 20 years ago as something that made them a worse company today.

Auzy , (edited )

Lemmy has gotten to the point everything is getting classed as enshittification or whatever

It’s actually getting crappy being here

Like the whole section about macos. Apple constantly screws developers, and somehow, the author has seemed to blame Valve lol. There’s a lot of reason lots of people don’t develop for Mac, and they’re mostly valid rather than political

Or GitHub. In the real world, developers don’t have any issues. Only in Lemmy, where people are even focusing on stupid things, so a barely visible unobtrusive sentence on a table mentions copilot lol

Sho ,

It’s like people are posting that BS content to bring the mood down here on purpose.

muhyb ,

Apparently people at beehaw don’t have downvote button, kinda explains this situation. The very same article on lemmy.ml is at -56 votes (at least that’s what seems to me).

graff ,

Lemmy has gotten to the point everything is getting classed as enahittification or whatever

You could say that the discourse around enshittification has become enshittified

pythonoob ,

Lol at the last section of the article. Valve is actually bad guys! Just trust me!

Valve won’t stay that way forever—the company is not immune to the pressures of capitalism, and there are already examples of anti-consumer behavior.

Eventually, the bomb will go off, and the full ‘enshittification’ of Steam will commence.

onlinepersona , (edited )

You forgot the Mac

Lol, fuck Mac. If Apple cared about gaming, they wouldn’t have created Metal and collaborated on Vulkan. Fuck them. Valve went with Linux because they can change it to fit their needs. Can’t do that with Apple.
Microsoft is only supported by Valve because it has large marketshare and can’t be ignored, but it’s clear that Valve is doing everything possible to get away from them: see Steam Deck.

In general, I agree with Steam wielding too much power and if they abused it, I’d be out. I have my gaming hours and can live without gaming no problem. They wouldn’t get any more money from me as soon as they enshittified.

What would get me away from steam is an opensource gaming store with games that have no DRM and are predominantly opensource. Or another gaming store that worked on Linux and allowed playing games with my other linux buddies.
Get us that and I’m out.

Anti Commercial AI thingyCC BY-NC-SA 4.0

flora_explora ,

I 100% agree

Someonelol ,
@Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Have you considered gog? They may not be betting heavily on Linux or have as a big of a selection but their games are DRM free. You can even install gog Galaxy, a game manager similar to Steam.

onlinepersona ,

Doesn’t seem like GOG galaxy is for linux

GOG GALAXY 2.0 Open Beta is available for Windows and Mac. Please download the installer on your PC.

That’s a disappointment, but Heroic Launcher is. I’ll give it a shot and see if there are new games on there for me. The name “Good Old Games” gave me the impression it was for stuff like boomer shooters or side-scrollers and stuff.

Anti Commercial AI thingyCC BY-NC-SA 4.0

lightstream ,

Heroic works really well. I’ve just installed it myself recently, motivated mostly by a desire to finally play the free games I got off Epic. I’ve only installed two EGS games so far - Civ 6 and Guardians of the Galaxy - but they’re working perfectly, running via proton.

The experience is so good I was actually inspired to buy my first game outside of steam in years, namely Wartales which I just bought yesterday on GOG. Installation is a breeze, it runs under proton, and as far as I can tell it is running perfectly.

I sort of prefer Heroic to Steam in fact, because it starts almost immediately - no waiting around for 30 seconds while it tries to connect to the Steam network etc

onlinepersona ,

Add it to configuration.nix 👼 Thanks for the review.

Anti Commercial AI thingyCC BY-NC-SA 4.0

wahming , (edited )

This is why beehaw needs downvotes. Crappy submissions like this article that don’t make any sense

Edit: OP has been spamming his nonsense across multiple communities, and has hundreds of downvotes on each of them. Except here on beehaw…

exanime ,

Thank you… I was reading and thinking “this makes no sense… Does the author know what a monopoly actually is??”

Templa ,

No, Beehaw doesn’t need downvotes.

derbis ,

I think it’s fair to acknowledge that everything is a trade-off, and without downvotes, we have to accept the downsides.

Railcar8095 ,

Might be due to my instance, but I see downvotes. Not nearly enough as it should have after reading the article though.

BreakDecks ,

fwiw, OP wrote the article himself and then spammed it to lots of different instances. Definitely worth blocking this spammer.

Vodulas ,

Just weird aside, but the meme they use as an example implies that you have to pay to add friends on steam, and that is just a weird example to use.

gnuplusmatt ,

TLDR - Steam is shit because it’s still 32bit?

Xatolos ,
@Xatolos@reddthat.com avatar

More like it’s because it doesn’t support Mac as much as they want them to.

MachineFab812 ,

More like, if the Steam app ever goes 64bit, watch out. A non-shittified app like so should never require 4gb+ of RAM or anything more complicated than a 32bit instruction set.

not correcting you on the contents of the article or anything, just that 32bit is nothing close to a mark against the Steam app.

Zangoose ,

Isn’t supporting 32-bit apps on a 64-bit OS a security concern though? I thought that’s why some linux distros were disabling 32-bit repositories by default on their 64-bit versions

jarfil ,

Not by itself.

Distros are shutting down system 32bit repos, because they require effort to be maintained: people who patch possible security holes, and people who test and package them. As most people have switched to 64bit systems, developers are no longer maintaining 32bit versions, no longer patching them, and barely anybody cares to check or run them, so any possible security flaws can slip through.

This is all irrelevant if you run stuff in a VM, or a container: so it has a security flaw? Cool, let it get… nothing, it’s contained.

Games running in a contained Wine, or in a OS container, can have all the security flaws they want, who cares. Games also rarely get security patches, or any kind of patches at all, so running them contained should be standard practice anyway.

MachineFab812 , (edited )

32-bit apps use a sub-set of the same instructions that still exist on current 64-bit systems. Running 64-bit alone does nothing to eliminate any flaws, real or imagined, from the 32-bit side of things.

As @jarfil@beehaw.org has stated, 32 bit repos are being de-listed because no one can be bothered to maintain them(on a professional, full-time basis), and that lack of code/functional review could allow flaws to slip through. Meanwhile, a lot of those same 32-bit repos continue to exist(as community-maintained versions - my preferrence anyways) and can be accessed by interested users from most distros. They aren’t blocked, just de-listed and unsupported by those distro maintainers.

Zangoose ,

Thanks for the explanation! I didn’t realize it was mostly a maintenance limitation, I thought maybe 32-bit instructions could be an extra attack vector on a physical CPU instruction level or something like that.

muhyb ,

Hahaha, this article mainly sucks.

stardust ,

This reads like an epic ad that expects people to buy from epic for just existing. Like arguing people should buy from the new Walmart that opened up in their town because it’s competition.

Kostyeah ,

What a garbage article lol. The only two arguments I can pick out are 1. Old steam games haven’t been updated to work on macOS and 2. Some games require 3rd party launchers. I think the author was just angry that his mac dropped support for a 20 year old game.

Zworf ,

Well the third-party launchers is extremely annoying, I have to say. Buying a game on Steam and then it forcing you to install yet another launcher (I have like 8 on my gaming PC now) really pisses me off.

I tend to buy on GOG now if I have the choice because they don’t stand for that kind of shit nor DRM either.

I also really love the overview of GOG of the games you have in different launchers. Before that it happened to me multiple times that I bought a game on sale without realising I had already bought it on another platform years ago on another sale. Oops.

Ethics, features that are actually great for me instead of stuff that’s just great for them. Love it. Reminds me a lot of a company that used to be like that. It was called Valve I think.

PotatoesFall ,

Agreed, shitty read. The 30% cut is crazy high though, and IMO the best point the article has. Steam DOES have a monopoly and that’s inherently bad

Kid_Thunder ,

A 30% cut for steam games sold on steam and a 0% cut for steam keys sold by the publisher wherever they want with the caveat that they must give steam users the same sales at around the same time. They get their games hosted on Steam's industry best CDN, a page with support for images and videos, an API with features users like, workshop API for mod hosting and delivery, and other SteamWorks API stuff for stuff like multiplayer, patch management without charging a fee for it, forum hosting to hit the highlights. Pretty much all of that drives engagement and is mostly turn-key though you do have to programmatically interact with their API when it makes sense.

Steam provides a lot of benefit for a 30% cut of what is sold on their store front and a lot more benefit for getting all of the above for a 0% cut if they sell steam keys outside of steam.

dubyakay ,

Don’t forget steam hosting ranking ladders as well!

stardust ,

And even then the same sales around the same time seems very lax with games often going on sale for pre-orders for a steam key that Steam games never get at launch. Most my Steam games are purchased from other storefronts than steam with more frequent sales and faster price drops.

PotatoesFall ,

I’m not saying Steam is the worst thing out there right now. I’m saying monopoly is inherently bad, and 30% is a crazy high cut even including the features you mentioned.

Nath ,
@Nath@aussie.zone avatar

It isn’t a monopoly though. Even ignoring the Blizzards, Epics and GOGs of the web, any developer can host their game on their own Web site and market it completely independently of Steam and keep 100% of their takings.

The monopoly on storefront argument holds water in mobile land where side-loading a game is not possible/easy. In the world of computers though, I don’t think the same standard applies.

PotatoesFall ,

That’s still a monopoly. The article says it too, if you don’t put your game on steam, your sales suffer. It’s similar to how spotify has a monopoly on the music streaming market.

AndrasKrigare ,

A monopoly with checks notes 30% market share. It has a plurality, but not a majority.

theverge.com/…/music-streaming-services-market-sh…

ShepherdPie ,

How are either of those a monopoly? A monopoly generally means you only have one option and that option is taking advantage of their outrageous market share by jacking up prices.

Where I live the only broadband internet is Comcast which is why I pay 2-3x more for my service than comparable services in areas where they don’t have a monopoly (or areas with sane regulations).

Saying that you’ll not earn as much money if you don’t put your game on steam doesn’t mean steam has a monopoly, it just means you’re not getting as much reach as you could. Being popular doesn’t equate to being a monopoly.

pythonoob ,

Citing this article is probably a bad idea.

stardust ,

Citing this article that is upset about lack of Apple support but is silent on lack of Linux support from other launchers while probably using an iPhone that locks out everything compared to Android is funny.

Appoxo ,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

If you market your game better it can “survive” outside of steam as well. I didn’t hear about Ready or Not having funding issues. They didn’t even announce a Steam release when they started their funding campaign.
It may result in less sales because users have to download and update the game manually. Can’t deny that assumption but it’s not a mandatory thing to publish on steam…

stardust ,

Monopoly on a platform that they don’t own? That being Microsoft? Then seeing how epic isn’t even profitable on the launcher side and is a loss leader while their launcher is barebones it raises the question of what cut is actually realistic that allows a company to have a feature rich launcher and branch out into stuff like Linux, VR, and Steam Deck.

Current state feels more like Walmart expanding into new territory and trying to lure people with low prices, but isn’t sustainable with the main goal just being expansion.

Cethin ,

You don’t need to own the OS to have a monopoly. What a weird thing to say. You don’t need to own the United States to have a monopoly in it. That’s an equivalent statement.

Your point about Epic not being able to compete means they have a monopoly. Steam is great, but part of that is because they essentially have infinite money to spend improving things to make sure no one else catches up.

stardust ,

Epic hasn’t given me a reason to buy from them. Fanatical, humble bundle, gmg, etc I find better if the only selling point is price with them having more consistent sales, bundles, and choice of platform.

Epic has done more to make me not consider them an option with their foray into the market being removing Metro Exodus near launch and taking monopolistic approaches to taking the approach of denying games from being sold on other platforms. Not just steam but GOG too with exceptions only being given to owners of the platform.

Appoxo , (edited )
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Agreed.
Them withholding a game makes me not consider them in the future. I’d rather pirate it if they were to keep withholding it.

But I “allow” them to withhold 1st party games (or studios they aquire like Psyonix) from 3rd party stores. Same goes for Valve, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard and Microsoft.
They did the work and sure are entitled to keep it. It may not be in the interested of the consumer to have the need to install yet another launcher but it’s fine.
Them buying up 3rd party releases are what I have issues with

diannetea ,

Epic isn’t able to compete because their launcher is missing major simple features like reviews.

I don’t want multiple extra steps when I’m interested in a game. Steam has a big market share because they are giving people what they want in a launcher. That’s it.

Epic can put in the effort if they want but it’s already been like 2 years and as far as i can tell hasn’t really been updated with anything new, I use it for the free games sometimes but otherwise not really. That would only change if they make the launcher more attractive.

Cethin ,

I know they’re missing features. Steam didn’t always have all the features they have now either. We take that for granted now, but that wasn’t always the case. Steam has their market position because they were one of the first to market, and they invested their profits into making their product better. A newcomer is now met by consumers with the expectation that they’ll be equally as good, and when they inevitably aren’t they don’t use it. That’s how a monopoly works.

I agree it sucks, and that Steam is a nice piece of software, and the Valve has done good work supporting Linux. That doesn’t change whether or not they hold a monopolistic position in the market though. The barrier for new entries into the market is too high because Steam is good. It’s nothing against Steam, but it is a monopoly and that isn’t good for consumers —which includes game developers, not just end users.

stardust ,

That steam didn’t have features is like comparing steam from decades ago. I don’t feel like that is even a valid defense anymore when new smartphone companies are expected to come with a feature filled OS as opposed to pre smartphone expectations. Same for any other products be it televisions, monitors, etc.

Barriers can be brought up, but if someone is introducing the equivalent of a dumb phone to the market to compete against a smartphone and expecting to make money for just existing and only bothering to try to corner the market with removing products then no wonder things are playing out the way they are.

Cethin ,

That’s why all new smartphone companies use Android. It comes packaged feature rich. It is a good comparison.

stardust , (edited )

And Epic is a billion dollar company making stuff like unreal engine yet can’t scrap together a launcher that doesn’t feel like it is from decades ago. Or chooses not too. Can’t even put in Linux support despite community efforts like heroic launcher.

You can’t put out a shit product and then cry about why people aren’t buying it. It doesn’t work for any market. Can try to coerce people with monopolistic practices of trying to deny product availability, but that’ll only get you so far.

If anything if your argument is that it is hard then that just seems to bring to question of maybe a low cut actually isn’t realistic if a company wants to make a feature rich launcher and platform if even a billion dollar company is finding it hard to accomplish. But, it seems to me epic is only choosing or only knows the approach of trying to buy their way in and not want to “waste” resources improving anything else and banking on consumers not being able to resist not buying a product epic paid to only be available on their launcher.

Cethin ,

You keep making good points. Unreal Engine has been around since 1998. They’ve had a long time developing the engine and it makes it hard for other engines to compete. There are a few, but not many. They’ve invested a lot of money into making their engine the premium option and making sure consumers avoid alternatives that aren’t as feature rich.

You can’t put out a shit product and then cry about why people aren’t buying it. It doesn’t work for any market. Can try to coerce people with monopolistic practices of trying to deny product availability, but that’ll only get you so far.

You clearly can coerce people with monopolistic practices. You’re defending Valve over Epic, which Epic has a much smaller market share. You can call it anti-consumer if you want, but monopolistic? Yeah right. When one store is the default, devs have to sacrafice to not be a part of it. Again, I agree it sucks, but it’s a monopoly by Valve, not Epic.

If anything if your argument is that it is hard then that just seems to bring to question of maybe a low cut actually isn’t realistic if a company wants to make a feature rich launcher and platform if even a billion dollar company is finding it hard to accomplish.

There are two consumers here. There’s consumers who purchase games, and consumers who utilize the product to sell their games. Epic gives a smaller cut to entice devs, because otherwise they have no reason to participate because all the game purchases happen through Steam.

It all sucks for the consumer, which is why monopolies are bad. We shouldn’t be defending some company who’s making tons of profit just because we are simping for their product. Steam is undoubtedly superior, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t monopolistic.

stardust , (edited )

Point is that the alternative isn’t even trying to be a legitimate option. It’s like wanting better streaming options for videos and blockbuster popping up and removing videos from being available on other steaming options.

There’s nothing that can be done when other companies don’t even bother with the new competitor being a billion dollar publicly traded company taking a monopolistic strategy. They aren’t even trying except throw money around to remove options. For there to be competion that is good for consumers the competion has to actually try, but they think just talking about cuts that don’t matter to consumers and taking a monopolistic approach to games is going to bring people who actually spend money.

All these cuts talks are useless when the company hasn’t even proven to have an sustainable actual business model with it not turning a profit. And given trends of other businesses that promise low prices then raise them is one of the least reliable ones. I’m not sure why you are simping for epic and defending them when my point is they aren’t even a good option worth defending like you are. It’s like defending a Walmart that showed up in a town despite all their strategies being more red flags.

I get pushing for gog or itch. But some company just existing doesn’t merit defending if they aren’t bringing value. The defense of them hasn’t been earned. Their end goal seems more suspicious to me. An option just popping up doesn’t entitle it to being defended if they haven’t earned it.

Cethin ,

Another good point about video. Go try to stream Battlestar Galactica right now. It’s one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever made, and it’s impossible to stream reasonably. There actually is competition in that space, yet stuff like that still happens due to licensing deals. It used to be available on Netflix when that was the only streaming option, but it left a long time ago.

There’s nothing that can be done when other companies don’t even bother with the new competitor being a billion dollar publicly traded company taking a monopolistic strategy. They aren’t even trying except throw money around to remove options. For there to be competion that is good for consumers the competion has to actually try, but they think just talking about cuts that don’t matter to consumers and taking a monopolistic approach to games is going to bring people who actually spend money.

There is something that can be done. We have a government for a reason. It has laws in place to handle when monopolies appear. That shouldn’t matter if you like them or not. Monopolies are bad. For example, look at GPU prices. They are as high as they are because Nvidia can set them that high. They could be better than they are currently too, but there’s no reason to do that when they’re in the front. They’d rather sit on it until they need to advance to stay a step ahead. It’s bad for consumers, even if you like Nvidia for some reason.

Don’t simp for a corporation.

Appoxo ,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Epic could compete. But I believe they did their approach too forcefully.

I personally refuse to use EGS because I don’t like how they approached the market by starting this exclusive war on PC. I wished they kept that to consoles only. If they did a co-release on both Steam and EGS but offer a consistent 10€ discount compared to Steam I’d be more open to it instead.

This in addition to Tencent (and by that extent the chinese gov) have a ~40% of shares of the company. That’s a considerable amount of foothold. And I vote with my wallet by not giving them more of my data.
I have to mention though, that I have an EpicGames account and have played Fortnight as well as use and play UE-games and tried out the UE-engine. But I have the option in life to not give them more.

exanime ,

Steam DOES have a monopoly and that’s inherently bad

Being popular does not make steam a monopoly… My son plays 80% steam games but has Epic launcher installed and plays rocket League regularly

There is nothing in Steam preventing or even making it hard for you to run PC games in any other way

PotatoesFall ,

having a market share like that is a form of monopoly. It’s obviously different from absolute monopoly, but they wield too much power as is.

And to be fair, running games on linux without steam is definitely more tricky than without.

exanime ,

But I always assumed that, unless you are blocking competition, it’s not legally a monopoly and harder to penalize (not that they actually penalize monopolies much in north America)

Other than making a good product and easier to run games on Linux, there is nothing preventing anyone to install other launchers or games on their own or game makers from selling through other launchers or independently, etc

jarfil ,

There are two requirements to be considered a monopoly, or fall under antitrust laws:

  1. Have a large market share
  2. Be able to force competing products out of the market

Steam meets point 1, it doesn’t meet point 2. On the other hand, things like the Apple App Store, don’t meet point 1, but meet point 2, which makes them more likely to fall under antitrust. Windows meets both points, which is why the US sued Microsoft for not letting people choose their browser.

Onihikage ,
@Onihikage@beehaw.org avatar

Yeah, we only have to look at the FTC’s lawsuit against Amazon to see what they consider an antitrust problem:

[…] Amazon violates the law not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging. By stifling competition on price, product selection, quality, and by preventing its current or future rivals from attracting a critical mass of shoppers and sellers, Amazon ensures that no current or future rival can threaten its dominance.

That isn’t what we see from Valve - in fact it’s the opposite, as Valve’s strategy with Steam is simply to provide the best service and be the gold standard. The competition is almost always compared unfavorably to Steam, because gamers know how it feels to use a mature platform that isn’t trying to abuse them.

Valve has even taken some steps that wind up increasing competition in adjacent markets, such as operating systems (Proton has contributed significantly to Linux popularity) and even handheld game devices (Steam Deck set off an arms race when electronics manufacturers realized Nintendo is asleep at the wheel). Steam is as pro-consumer as it gets, with the exception of GOG and possibly itch.

Appoxo , (edited )
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Not like any other app store does take 30% except for some high volume games/publishers.
Apple does the same. Hell they seem to have custom rules for each of the app devs (according to Linus and Luke from LTT: I believe this clip contains most of it. They recently talked about it again. Essentially they developed the app payment like Netflix. Apple said “No, that’s against our rules” and refused the submission of the update. Meanwhile Netflix supposedly still had the same communication for a long time.)

Same goes with Google and probably a number of other external stores.
Amazon seems to take up to 20% depending on the item (Source: sell.amazon.com/pricing.

At least Steam does provide a forum, community features and the update framework and infrastructure.
Personally I would be happy to take the offering over maybe needing to host and maintain the tech stack myself. Now mind you, maybe some other dev would rather do it themself and maybe wish to opt-out of the ecosystem. That is totally valid.

(Warning/Disclaimer: I only heard about that. I do not have first hand experience!) Apple for example takes a percentage for processing a payment and offers an invoicing system. Some may like that. Others could maybe negotiate a better deal with another provider and maybe even offer tools that integrate better with their existing accounting and ERP software.

Grimpen ,

Can’t you use Proton on Mac? I’d think that would solve most compatibility problems.

nickwitha_k ,

That or Rosetta, the built-in, hardware-accelerated x86_64 compatibility layer.

Railcar8095 ,

The problem is that proton needs to translate direct X to Vulcan, but Apple doesn’t allow Vulcan, it has to be their own thing, Metal.

So it’s a lot of work for valve and fully dependent on apple not screwing them.

fartington , (edited )

deleted_by_author

    •
    Nath ,
    @Nath@aussie.zone avatar

    The author has a MacBook and has discovered that the new Apple Silicon is terrible for games. Particularly 32-bit games. It turns out Valve hasn’t re-made these 10-20 year old games to compensate for Apple’s hardware compatibility changes.

    Somehow, that’s Valve’s fault and a sign that they’re going down the drain.

    dandi8 ,

    Steam is a ticking time bomb but mostly for the reason that you don't own the games you purchase there and you can't back them up (mostly) so when Steam decides to ban your account or just closes down, you lose all of your games forever.

    More people should push for DRM-free games with offline installers, like GOG and Itch offer.

    averyminya ,

    Idk, there’s a backup system that I’ve put on a hard drive with a very easy to find GitHub steam drm remover. Haven’t had any issues playing my games without a steam account – sans online services for some, but most of the time I’m on trips or without Internet anyway. That said, if the idea is that in some 5-10-20 years this will happen, I feel like a lot of the online services won’t be around… For as much as I love Helldivers 2, I don’t really expect it to be around in 7 years. Online games from 2013 aren’t all around either, and those that are aren’t super populated.

    On the other hand, a lot of these online services do rely on Steam, so if it went down a lot of them would need the same unofficial online servers.

    I’d be more concerned if Steam were to have extreme DRM, but it’s so laughable that it’s literally worth paying for the game just to have the streaming/per game notes/cloud saves and for current games to not have to deal with updates and online services. But a Steam Library of mostly single player games? Anyone who is concerned can get a $50HDD and install/backup their games with Steam to and then apply the patch. Of the issues Steam has, I think this particular one is low on the list. And per the articles issue, I would actually blame the OS more than the storefront. I used to game on Mac’s from 2007-2013 and let me tell you, Steam was a freaking triumph. All the Mac game stores were truly short lived, had poor support while they were alive and had things like license activations per machine, so good luck past 5 computers (talk about 15 years). Back then Aspyer ports were really great too, always something to look forward to.

    Back then Steams issue was that it didn’t have refunds, Tuesday Maintenance, and sometimes it would just be buggy for a bit when trying to open (on OSX – never really had an issue on Windows). Since then they’ve only made it more service oriented, doing things they absolutely should, but didn’t have to, like refunds applying to everyone after the AUS lawsuit instead of just that region. Looking at Apple for this one.

    I would implore the author of this article to go back in time, get their games on the macgames store and other similar storefronts for OSX and I would wonder how they fare today.

    I have my accounts. I have no access to those games because licenses were activated too many times or because they no longer support the current OS. So I’m effectively limited to a previous version of OSX which cannot download the app because I need a new version of the OSX store. I don’t have the right terms but it was hours of hassle to find out that my OSX copy of Borderlands, Assassins Creed II and Brotherhood, and a couple others are just gone. To add insult to injury, I had to log into the account every year to keep my “platinum points” that you got for buying on that storefront, to use for discounts etc. I didn’t log in so byebye incentive!

    My point? I had about 250 SteamPlay games that I bought and used on OSX as a Mac gamer, which seamlessly downloaded on PC when I switched to Windows for my desktop computer. None of this is to say that Steam doesn’t or can’t have shortcomings, but rather that it is a substantially better service than than pretty much every alternative right now, save for GOG probably.

    Grimpen ,

    On the topic of games with an online component, wouldn’t it be great if they could run indefinitely?

    www.stopkillinggames.com

    t3rmit3 ,

    Valve won’t stay that way forever—the company is not immune to the pressures of capitalism

    I’m glad that the author recognized the actual root cause of their argument, which is that Capitalism is bad and ruins everything, but why blame Steam for essentially just existing in a Capitalist world? They didn’t choose that, and they’re certainly doing a hell of a lot more than almost any other company their size that I can think of to resist shitty Capitalist practices.

    It really feels like this author is just saying, “they’re resisting anti-consumer enshittification practices now, so the only place to go is down, ergo ‘timebomb’!”.

    “Every person who isn’t a murderer is just a murder away from becoming a murderer. Timebomb!”

    BarbecueCowboy ,

    “Every person who isn’t a murderer is just a murder away from becoming a murderer. Timebomb!”

    Never thought about it that way, welp, might as well get it over with.

    corbin OP ,

    The issue is Steam and Valve being held up as the ‘one good company’, when there are plenty of examples to the contrary. Valve does many of the same practices as Epic, EA, etc., but there’s a double standard with Valve because it’s the default experience. The inevitable decline of Steam is going to be much worse after people spent a decade giving it a free pass on lesser issues.

    t3rmit3 ,

    The inevitable decline of Steam is going to be much worse after people spent a decade giving it a free pass on lesser issues.

    What specifically are you envisioning? If this is just a general kind of, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” supposition, I don’t think that really holds any water; it’s just a platitude. If anything, Steam being so ubiquitous could more easily make it’s eventual decline a catalyst for legislation to give software license ownership stronger consumer protections. The idea that we should either condemn it now or stop using it, before its decline, makes no sense to me. Is GOG better? Sure. Can it fully replace Steam? No. Is Steam better than Epic, Origin, UPlay? Absolutely. I’m just not sure what the real point of all this condemnation is when they’re by far trying, by and large, to treat consumers well. It’s just blaming Valve for not being totally and eternally immune to the effects of Capitalism.

    the ‘one good company’

    No one claims this. The only thing remotely close to that which people claim is that Valve is uniquely positioned to be one of the best digital games distribution platforms due to its private ownership insulating it against shareholder demands (which is by far the largest driver of enshittification), which is also true for GOG, but obviously Valve is still beating them out in capacity and capability currently.

    there are plenty of examples to the contrary

    Of course, it’s a company. But it’s still a billion times better than most of its competitors.

    pixeltree ,
    @pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    A sane and reasonable take? On the internet?

    it’s more likely than you think

    Mohaim ,

    It’ll be fine until they go public (though maybe a few billion is enough for gaben and they won’t, but I’m not banking on it), then it’ll be an inevitable decline like all the others.

    jarfil ,

    Whatever Gaben thinks, he won’t live forever. The moment leadership changes, we’ll see how money thirsty the new bosses are.

    JohnEdwa ,

    The difference between Valve and almost every other company that suffers from “capitalism” is that Valve is a private company, they don’t have shareholders, investors and an outsider asshole CEO demanding enshittification in the name of exponential growth.

    ShepherdPie ,

    “Every person who isn’t a murderer is just a murder away from becoming a murderer. Timebomb!”

    I get your point, but this metaphor would be more applicable if historically every human on earth murdered someone during their lifetime. I think Steam/Valve will remain the same as long as their current leadership is in place. 999 times out of 1000, once the original founders are gone, any company begins the enshittification process, whether it’s a major business like Valve or a local chain of grocery stores.

    t3rmit3 ,

    Sure, and when that happens we should (and many will) abandon the platform. But since, as you seem to be implying, all businesses under Capitalism will eventually enshittify, there’s no point abandoning it beforehand, because any alternative you move to will also eventually do so.

    ShepherdPie ,

    I didn’t say anything about abandoning it, just that it’s bound to happen eventually like with any other business unlike people and murder.

    jarfil ,

    The difference between a person and a corporation… is that once a corporation goes public, it’s like having a person whose only goal in life is to get as much money as possible, no matter how. Those people usually end up in jail; corporations, not so much.

    On the other hand, something like 2/3 of businesses “fail”, or close, during the first 10 years, never going public. The ones surviving… are the ones that probably should be in “jail” 🤷

    philpo ,

    Steam is a major problem for a lot of reasons,but basically none of the reasons the author gave are the main problem - It sounds more like a whining of a Mac/Apple user. Once again…

    There are hundreds of more important problems with Steam.

    YMS ,
    @YMS@kbin.social avatar

    Would you mind to name five of those hundreds of problems?

    blindsight ,

    Not parent poster, but I’m going to see if I can come up with some.

    0: If you get banned from Steam, you lose hundreds or thousands of games.

    0.1: You can’t use credit card chargeback protection since you will get your account banned.

    0.5: If you’re blocked by VAC anti-cheat, you’re locked out of all your games that use VAC.

    1: Steam requiring other storefronts to sell at the same gross price instead of the same price net fees. This means nobody can compete with their 30% cut… On the other hand, they take 0% for activating games sold elsewhere, which kinda balances it. Still, this is probably the biggest barrier that’s maintaining their 30% cut.

    2: Discoverability since they stopped curating the games list. (Maybe? Not sure if this is a problem, tbh.)

    3: Normalizing the concept of games requiring a launcher to run/DRM.

    4: Offline play functionality is inconsistent, so sometimes it breaks when people are traveling with no Internet access.

    5: Porn games can be seen easily my minors/people who find it offensive.

    6: Region-locked censorship, like gore in Germany.

    7: Some people would say region-adjusted pricing, but I disagree. Still, might be a valid reason for some.

    (Numbering is wonky because I thought of actual real problems later.)

    I think I did pretty well! It’s hard to find things to fault. It’s a pretty great platform.

    lud ,

    0.1: You can’t use credit card chargeback protection since you will get your account banned.

    This or similar actions are very common. Getting chargebacks can be very bad for a businesse even if they haven’t done anything wrong. It’s also a common type of fraud and the easiest way of reducing that is presumably to never dispute chargebacks and just ban the account and/or credit card.

    0.5: If you’re blocked by VAC anti-cheat, you’re locked out of all your games that use VAC.

    That’s kinda the point of VAC and you are only locked out of online play. The good and bad thing about VAC is that it’s conservative in handing out bans, so false positives are relatively rare. It does of course reduce it effectiveness against cheating.

    5: Porn games can be seen easily my minors/people who find it offensive.

    Adult content is a setting which I believe is disabled by default.

    Unrelated but I really like their new version of “steam family”.

    mox , (edited )

    I have my criticisms of Steam, but I see no sign of it marching toward some kind of big anti-customer explosion as suggested in this article. Unlike most others, it’s run by a privately owned company, so it doesn’t have investors pressuring toward enshittification. We can see the result by looking back at the past decade or so: Steam has been operating more or less the same.

    Meanwhile, the author offers for contrast Epic Games, a major source of platform exclusives and surveillance software (file-snooping store app, client-side anti-cheat, Epic Online Services “telemetry”), all of which are very much anti-customer.

    AFAIK, only one of the other stores listed is actually better for customers in any significant way: GOG. (For the record, I mostly like GOG.) But it was mentioned so briefly that it feels like the author only did so in hopes of influencing GOG fans.

    Overall, this post looks a lot like astroturfing. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be sponsored by Epic or Microsoft.

    Edit: I forgot something that has changed in the past decade:

    Valve has spent the past five years investing in open platforms: At first by funding key parts (often the most difficult ones) of the open-source software stack that now makes gaming great on linux, and more recently by developing remarkably good and fairly open PC hardware for mobile gaming. No vendor lock-in. No subscription fees. No artificially crippled features. This has already freed many gamers from Microsoft’s stranglehold, and more of us are reaping the benefits every day.

    This is the polar opposite of what the author would have us fear.

    Corgana ,
    @Corgana@startrek.website avatar

    Well said, private companies are incentivized to make their customers happy. Corporations are incentivized to make their shareholders happy. Sometimes those goals align, but they are not the same.

    TwilightVulpine ,

    I get the risks of putting all eggs in one basket, but whenever people argue for competition using Epic as an example, a company that is demonstrably more anti-competitive and anti-consumer, it shows that they just think of the matter of theoretical ideals of evenness as opposed to benefits to the customers. I don't see any good coming from Epic having as much or more marketshare than Steam.

    Unlike GOG which only offers DRM-free games, a substantial advantage compared to any other store.

    stardust ,

    Makes me think of a Walmart opening up in a town and people arguing that the residents should buy from there because it’s competition. Company just existing doesn’t make it good.

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