- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- games@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- games@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.world
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One extremely important factor that this article neglects to address: Valve is a private company - it’s not publicly traded in Wall Street. That is the reason Steam has remained the best in the business; it’s not beholden to shareholders’ short-sighted meddling. It’s also the reason Steam is effectively immune to enshittification.
The unspoken part is that unless Gabe has a very strong plan involving some sort of employee co-op, when he retires or dies the company will likely get sold by the estate to private capital which is 100x worse than being a public company.
Maybe Gaben will go all Willy Wonka when the time comes
When Valve makes a change to Steam that you disagree with your choice is to give up using Steam, and your purchased games, or just accept it and continue. Steam is proprietary software: it gives unjust power over user’s computing. Even good people are not immune to the temptation to use power for themselves at the expense of others. While Valve have done a lot of good, indeed are the best, no one is perfect. I don’t understand why you think it has no potential to become a lot worse.
Nobody is talking about “no potential”. Just “a lot less potential than any other option out there”, and that’s currently the best we got
GOG doesn’t contribute to Proton AFAIK, and doesn’t offer amazing QOL stuff like Steam Input. But what you buy from them is yours forever, assuming you sensibly back it up yourself. So “best we got” is debatable depending on what you value.
I do hope to see more competition in the Linux gaming space. It’s not good long term to fully rely on Valve for everything.
The article makes some good points. Most people downvoting it probably just see a title that attacks their favourite game distribution platform, if there even is such a thing.
Personally, I treat Steam like a rental service, because that’s what it is. Meaning I exclusively “buy” games on Steam at deep 80-90% discounts. So, when the enshittification inevitably hits the fan, I can jump ship without feeling like I’m loosing too much.
I’ll just link this reply. They lost me when they said “The lock-in effect with Steam is so great that [Epic] giving games away for free is not putting a sizable dent in Valve’s dominance.”
