Dusk: Unpopular opinion: I'd rather pay Valve 30% and put up with their de facto monopoly than help Epic work towards their own (very obviously desired) monopoly
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But Steam doesn’t have a monopoly. There’s Epic and GOG and whatever Origin’s called now and probably others. They’re all free to exist, Valve doesn’t do anything to stifle competition, and even lets other companies sell games that start their launcher from Steam.
The only thing you have to lose by using a different system is that it’s probably not as good.
All they’ve done is produce a really fucking exemplary product and it’s become really popular because it’s honestly just good. The second it stops being good or Valve stop being awesome there’s plenty of alternative ways to buy games that I’m sure will be there to replace it.
But for now.. it’s pretty good.
The position makes a monopoly so I would say they are but they remain the good guys because they don't engage in anti-competitive practices, you can have a monopoly wven if you don't abuse it.
Monopolies aren't based on the mere existence of competition. It's based on power and market share. Eg, Chrome has a monopoly. Firefox, Safari, and a few niche browsers exist. But Chrome is the utter vast majority of the market and has pretty much all the power on dictating web standards as a result.
Microsoft had competitors when they got sued for their IE + Windows monopoly. But they had an utterly massive amount of the market share and used that to push their own browser.
Steam is a boggy garbage client and the company was solely responsible for the 50 to 60 USD price hike on the PC market.
Valve can get fucked. Hopefully the class action makes them rethink their choices and they sell to Microsoft.
Yeah, no.
And Valve is perhaps the best PC store since they have continually pushed PC gaming forward, for example:
Not to mention their Linux support, awesome customer support, free dev keys, and Steam Link app. What did other stores do?
So no, I don't think Valve is bad in any way. Quite the opposite, they're the best behaved games store on PC.
GOG Galaxy is actually amazing in what it accomplishes, GOG just don't have the resources to make it frictionless.
Gamepass is probably the main competition for Steam at this point. Publishers have been busting to make games run on the cloud, it's the ultimate DRM, the ultimate goal of the erosion of ownership.
There will be a time where there is a push towards partial-cloud gaming and then fully cloud gaming, and it will be hard for PC gaming to compete in the mainstream when you buy an Xbox dongle for $50 and game as soon as you plug it in. That's the real threat to Valve.
GOG just don't have the resources to make it frictionless
They had enough budget to make Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, I think they can handle making a decent desktop client. They just don't prioritize it.
But yeah, subscription and cloud gaming is where the industry wants to go, and I sincerely hope they don't succeed.
GOG loses money for CDPR
Then they're either not meeting the needs of potential customers or not finding new customers.
For me personally, I would buy more from them if they supported Linux with GOG Galaxy. I would but a lot more from them if GOG Galaxy had a good experience on Steam Deck. I can't speak for anyone else, but that's my price, and apparently it's the most upvoted feature request for GOG Galaxy.
I didn't have a Steam account until they made a Linux client (they released in 2012, I made my Steam account in 2013). I bought a few Linux native games here and there, and when they launched Proton in 2018, I bought a lot more games. Before that, I mostly bought games directly from indie devs (Minecraft, Factorio, etc), or tried my luck buying Windows games and running them through WINE (e.g. Starcraft 2).
That's my price. If they want me as a customer, they need first class Linux support. That's why Steam gets my money, and GOG could win my business by offering DRM-free games on top. But to me, a Linux desktop client is more important than DRM-free, so that's why Steam gets my money.
Just want to say that as a VR enthusiast, the Index is nowhere near the top of the list of VR headsets.
I guess that depends on your priorities. It has a competitive resolution and frame rate, is a bit heavy, has fantastic controllers, and has Linux compatibility. It's also expensive and is best to pair with high end hardware.
So if you're looking for Linux support (like me), it's pretty much your only option, unless you're willing to buy used or accept a lot of compromises. If you're looking for cheap, lightweight, or compatible with lower end hardware, it's not going to score well.
But on the whole, outside of pricing, it does a good job in almost every category. If money is no object, the Index is one of the best.
The Valve Index is the least popular VR option and doesn't rank near the top of VR headsets. Still being beat out by entry level Oculus.
The Steam controller was poorly made flop and has been discontinued. The vast majority of reviews put the controller well below the Xbox controller, which was already PC compatible.
Steam Deck is very expensive and has a very poor battery life. Making the handheld cable tethered. It also went against its open promise by including locked down proprietary software.
Steams customer support ranks the third worst of all top level game stores. Just above Ubisoft and Blizzard.
You mention their Linux support yet the majority of games are yet to be supported and plenty of game will never be supported due to their nature or inclusion of anti-cheat. The only thing Valve has done was release the Steam Client to Linux.
Steam popularized gambling for children and continue to be one of 2 PC companies that continue to do so.
Oculus
Valve's goal isn't to sell a lot of headsets, but to show what's possible with high quality VR and encourage more VR games and headsets. Valve's ultimate goal here is to sell more VR games.
Oculus wants to sell a lot of headsets so they can push some kind of SM interaction and profit from having lots of ads. The priority there is adoption, not quality or compatibility.
Steam Controller was poorly made
No, it was well made, it just wasn't popular. And again, it wasn't their goal to sell a ton of them.
The goal was to design a flexible controller to build out their controller API and give an option for a decent desktop mouse replacement for a PC "console" format (i.e. Steam Machine). I think they succeeded at that, but the market wasn't interested, probably because Steam Machines didn't go anywhere. It was never intended to replace existing controllers, but to complement them.
Steam Deck is very expensive
It's $400, which is really competitive. Direct competitors like the AYANEO cost ~$1k twice as much, or even more. The Switch cost $300 at launch (OLED is $350, even today) and wasn't even competitive with current console hardware at launch, while the Steam Deck is competitive with both price and hardware.
And it's not cable tethered. I get a few hours of battery life as long as I'm not playing the most heavy games. Most of what I play are older AAA games and newer indie titles, and I get 3-5 hours of battery life, which is longer than my play sessions anyway. If I switch to a modern AAA titles, it's like 1-2 hours, which is still enough for most play sessions.
Their goal, again, isn't to sell a ton and corner the PC handheld market, it's to make PC handhelds popular so there's more demand, thus more competition, and thus more game sales. They also want to show what's possible with a Linux-based PC, so there's a credible alternative to Microsoft (and most games seem to be playable, check out ProtonDB for a larger picture than just Steam's official stamp; look at Proton DB medals, 77% are Gold or Platinum, which usually refers to "playable" and "verified" accordingly).
Steam's customer support
You claim it's worse, but you don't give examples of services that are better. Here are some examples of worse customer service:
And Steam's policy is 14 days and <2 hours playtime (so the same or better than above), yet there are countless examples of refunds being issued being both the time and playtime limit, provided you don't abuse it.
I'm not going to go through other examples because I believe I've proven my point, so now it's your turn: give specific examples of other stores having better customer service than Steam.
Refunds are your only metric for customers service? Get fucked.
No, they're just one example, and perhaps the most clearly documented one, and IMO the most important one (i.e. the one that most users will need to use).
If you want to discuss another metric, then please do so.
The only thing Valve has done was release the Steam Client to Linux.
countless improvements Valve engineers have made to the the Mesa OpenGL and Vulkan drivers as well as to the kernel graphics driver components. Not just to the AMD graphics drivers for benefiting the Steam Deck's hardware but also to Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan and then other common infrastructure. But in this area of the Linux graphics driver support, Valve's contributions and those of their partners have been incredibly beneficial to the Linux desktop ecosystem even outside gaming.
Solely responsible? Lol
When did we start blaming one private company for inflation? Games should cost $100 or more right now if they were increasing linearly over time.
You want Microsoft to own everything? What?
You forgot /s
Valve does not mandate any prices.