It’s great how this has helped them make many more games after that.
Yes, but can you imagine how much more shitty PC gaming would be without Steam?
Let’s see…
- “No takesies-backsies” refund policy.
- User “reviews” are hidden and only used to serve you better ads.
- Supported platforms are Windows and Windows.
- “Join our Discord to discuss game.”
- Controller input rebinding is nonexistent; disabled people don’t matter.
- Controllers are supported… except when doing anything before the game is actually launched.
- Download strange DLLs from websites to install mods.
- Alt-tab between your game and YouTube to read guides.
And little Timmy said gaming would be better without a Steam monopowly.
Fair points. Controllers work in big picture mode, but I get what you’re saying. But on the other hand, the Steamdeck and Proton have done a lot for making Linux gaming more accessible.
Oh, I was criticizing other stores.
The offerings of Origin, UPlay, EGS, and Battle.net pale in comparison to what Steam makes available to customers. And out of those, the only one that isn’t a heaping dumpster fire is Battle.net–which actually put effort into its UX and design.
Oh, i complete misread your comment. Sorry! I see that now. Steam and GOG are the only stores I have, I don’t play a lot of new games.
- Upside: No drm in some games (tho its opt out)
This is the case in steam already. There are lots of (mainly Indy) games that will start fine without steam.
Yeah, some games have drm it depends
We have to thanks Vivendi group (a shitty conglomerate from my country who killed a lot of good products) who have forced Gabe to move to online sale as Valve couldn’t adapt the bad reseller contract they had with this Vivendi (who tried later to kill their business via lawsuit).
If you didn’t see it yet, have a look on the 20 years documentary of HL2. Really interesting.
Vivendi got so close to killing Valve and HL2, it is scary. Gabe had balls of steel and championed on.
I’d say less shitty and just more fragmented.
Indie games releasing on tiny little sites out there across the web, like how independent authors release on small publishers websites.
Linux (as a gaming platform) would be fucking toast, though. You could hope for some of the efforts from the Raspberrypi and emulation community on that front, but not AAA.
