PC Gaming

I once playtested their MMO, I believe it was called "New World". It sucked balls. Didn't realize they were also trying to get going with game distribution.

While this is funny, it is not true: Valve has contributed tremendously to the Linux environment (Mesa above all, and Proton) and based their own console on top of it, making it possible to play almost every game you own, both from their store and from elsewhere.

People at Valve have been cooking every day. Never sitting idle.

This without considering the countless features Steam already sports: friends, achievements, cloud saves, a curated front page.

Its called "not having shareholders to maximise profits for". Everything turns to shit once they go public.

In the great us downfall of 2026, valve might just be the only big company left standing.

You're not the only one.

Whilst I do have a small collection of games in Steam, my collection of games in GoG is about 30x larger, because I prefer buying from GoG when I have the chance.

As the old saying goes "Possession is 9/10 of the Law" - when the installer of a game is in your hands (kept in storage media under your control) such as with games in physical media or offline installers downloaded from GoG, even if they wanted to take it away from you, they would have to take you to Court for it, whilst if the installer of a game is in somebody else's hands (in Steam's servers or in GoG's servers if you only ever use their launcher and don't download offline installers) they can take it way from you (even what happenned was that they just mistakenly locked you out of your account) and now it's your problem and you have to throw yourself at their mercy to get what's supposedly your stuff back and if that fails take them to Court (which for most people costs more than the games are worth).

It's hilarious that people think "Steam is great" because they don't often lock people out of their game collections or remove games from people's collections and when they do and people throw themselves at their mercy to get it reversed they're generally understanding, when Steam themselves were the ones who created a system where they have all the power and you have none, it's just that so far they've not purposefully abused it and are generally nice when their own mistakes cause problems which one wouldn't have in a different system - they're comparativelly better than most other stores because those other stores are so shit (except GoG, IMHO), but they're still worse than good old physical media when it comes to consumer rights.

Absolutelly, use Steam when it's worth it for you, just do it with your eyes wide open, aware that you're chosing to be at their mercy because the system they designed for digital game sales makes sure all customers are at their mercy, so they're definitelly not your buddies, just (so far) nowhere as abusive as most faceless companies out there.

PS: Back to the post of the OP, amongst all the digital stores with "it's not really yours" systems, with all the power over gamers than entails, Steam are by far the ones that least abuse it (I think they never did on purpose, though some people have been locked out of their accounts and couldn't recover access to them) so comparativelly are way above the rest, especially Amazon as demonstrated by their practices when it comes to digital books.

MBAs walk into this arena thinking they've got their quarterly agile reports synergized outside the box to the max.

Somehow none of them have learned the concept of long term customers

Gaben and Steam: does nothing, wins

The loyalty thing is what kept me.

I was wary of another gaming platform, there were so many and they all seemed the same, I never liked one over the other - they were just means to an end.

A few years back I really wanted to play RDR2 with my friends. It was expensive and I never pre-order, but as soon as it came out on (a small) sale I bought it for all 4 of us.

It was a lot of money for me, but I really wanted the story to play with everyone.

All was well at first, until we had each completed the tutorial and met up in open world. That's when we learned that the game was based on GTA and the devs do not care about hackers.

We had one fucking with us for over an hour, teleporting us into the air and dropping us, setting us randomly on fire, spawning space ships and so on.

I begged in voice for them to just leave us be, to no avail.

We are all older, we rarely have time to play together. I was crushed.

I was an hour over the return time on Steam, one of the other friends took a bit longer exploring and was even more than that.

I contacted steam anyway and tried to get a refund, and they granted it for all of us.

Later I learned this was a thing in RDR2 and there was now the ability to create private lobbies, but I just can't make myself try it and give Rockstar any money.

Steam however, won a lifelong fan. They didn't have to honour the refund, and they don't have to provide personal support that offers more than just the canned responses, but they do.

I hope Gabe lives forever, or finds another like him to carry the torch after he's gone.

They came out of the gate with anti consumer bullshit in the form of exclusivity deals. Trust was shattered before they even got going.

Gaben should sue Epic Games for monopolistic business practices - Epic keep making bad decisions that leave gamers with no good choice but Steam

#3 is the key I think. Valve's business model is figuring out what their customers want and then providing it to them. Amazon's model is to capture enough market share so they can start the enshitification process.