This community when US tech is brought up

I’m quite fond of Fanatical. They are based in the UK and also sometimes sell DRM free books/audiobooks

Third party key market places are kinda iffy, and there have been numerous cases of the keys being offered on there having been bought with stolen credit cards, or otherwise generated in ways that aren't quite above board.

I remember one interview with an indy dev in which they said they prefer people pirating, because chargebacks from stolen cards are actively costing them money.

For people who feel they need the entertainment games provide, but can't afford current prices, I feel pirating games from conglomerates, and buying from smaller studios and indies is the most socially responsible way to do it, but I'm not your mum.

Edit: Huh, looks like greenmangaming gets their keys directly from the publishers. Didn't know that was a thing. Guess I was a bit quick on the trigger there, should have checked first. Sorry about that.

I don't believe gog will ever have a full library. They require all their games to be DRM free. Until corporate gaming changes GOG won't.

Huge plus that they aren't publicly traded and forced to chase profits above all. Plus their employees are far and wide the best paid in the industry, and they never do mass lay offs.

isthereanydeal.com

No grey market key sellers, only legit.

The name GamersGate sounds like it didn't any issues at all /s

Wait what exactly is the purpose of buying a steam key from a third party? And how is that profitable and not tos breaking?

You are still fucked then if Steam decides to take out a game you purchased. Again the whole "you're not buying a product but a license for the product" debacle. Other than not giving Steam any money, this doesn't change much? Could just pirate games instead.

Steam is still basically the only option

When cornered people finally admit that steam is a small monopoly

Looks like it was baked into the image template they used

I realised that those who censor themselves on the Internet, grew up on the Internet when YouTube started demonitising profanities and thus picked up the habit.

We are getting old.

I just reposted it from elsewhere, no need to read too much about it

[ removed from lemmy ]

You are even allowed to say fuck on the radio and TV in some countries (like The Netherlands)

Most important of all they compensate their employees like they are actual humans.

Costco can be cool all they want once the federal government of the USA tells them to fuck over Canadians they will. It's a very dangerous game to rely heavily on American companies in Canada right now. No matter how ethical they might be. The trade war has already begun and the USA will use any lever available when the time comes to annex.

On the other hand, Valve wishing to seek an alternative to Microsoft's poor decision^[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)#cite_note-cvg_newell_linux-2%3A~%3Atext=upon+the+release+of+Windows+8+in+2012] making has been a great boon to the Linux community. Valve was also there at the start of Vulkan^[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan#History]. But is "funny" that Gabe Newell started off as a Microsoft employee, in fact the one that led the team that ported Doom to Windows with Doom95 and in turn also helped launch Windows (95) as the gaming OS for decades to come.

As much as I distrust and hate corporations, Valve isn't in it for the shareholders, you can't buy Valve stocks and that means they at least have a bit more soul than a lot of other corporations - even though they are profit seeking.

What I don't like about them is how they sell you a service, not an actual game. You technically buy a lifelong lease on each game, never ownership. Your shit can be gone in minutes with nothing to prove for it, except for bank statements saying Valve took your money.

Which is why I'll always buy on GOG^[https://www.gog.com/en/about_gog] if possible. DRM free and European.

No business?

I work as a software developer for a small business and they do care about us and not just profits.

Recently we were all given a pay rise and a reduction in hours as they can afford to support that.

Sounds like a systemic issue...

*glances at capitalism" 👀

Depends if the business it publicly owned.

I think valve are mostly fair to consumers. The money they make from gamers is doing some good in the linux sphere.

I agree with this, but you have to admit that if all corps were like steam it would be a lot better.

I'm gonna add that the ceo is a bilionare who owns an entire fleet of mega yacths

https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php

The crates where fine in TF2 …. Before CSGO got made, but due to CSGO and other games it’s an issue.

But while you consider it gambling, most laws don’t. It’s currently only banned in NL and BE to open lootboxes on Steam and in NL we have legal online gambling for 18+, but Valve won’t gives you access to the lootboxes.

The point is that one laws need to be more clear about what is gambling and what isn’t without ruining anything that uses randomizers and/or loot and there needs to be a better way to validate people’s age without hurting their privacy.

GOG Galaxy isn't bad to use. It has cloud saves, and update checking - which is useful for some people. And games installed using the offline installers still show up in galaxy (and can be updated etc.) In fact, you can download the offline installers from the Galaxy app itself if you want to.

itch.io and gog

would switch tbh but it would need to have steam style proton integration first

@cupcakezealot wasn't Itch also American?

@Blaze

Heck, I just cut out the middleman and go straight to torrenting.

Wish I had thought to do this sooner. I would've saved a lot of money that really just ended up in the hands of landlords.

gabe is a very smart person, if he doesnt have a post death plan for steam i would be immensely surprised.

Honestly, I've been weaning myself off Steam for awhile now. It's great what they did to make PC gaming more accessible, but I also feel like Steam itself is an unnecessary dependency for most video games.

There should be protocols that games can implement to integrate with launchers and organize playing online.

That's my fear too , whoever gets their hand on valve will decide the future of pc gaming kinda , I just hope it won't get sold to ea , riot , tencent or whatever

Depends on who inherents his shares

Yep, if you want a reason why Valve are "less evil" than other companies, one big thing to point to is the huge investment they've made into the Linux ecosystem. Even though it's in their own interests (Microsoft locking out steam would cripple their income), we can see with Epic suing Google/Apple that there are other, shittier ways that they could have attempted the same thing. The investment they've made into Linux, Proton, KDE etc benefit everyone and can't be taken away on a whim.

Just buy future games from GOG. No need to delete Steam or already made purchases.

I'm still gonna use American stuff that's good if they keep DEI. brb checking up on Steam.

Edit: it's not looking good tbh I think I'll switch to GOG / physical media as much as feasible.

Presuming you can't get a game on GoG (which is European), check if the game is still from Europe.

Bit of a compromise, but this is for the people who can't give up on Steam.

Yeah, I haven't bought a game in years. Wish I could refund or resell most of the games I bought on Steam, but oh well. Live and learn.

Sailing the high seas has been a breath of fresh air. It's nice to have greater ownership over my software than the rubes who pay for theirs, lol. And it's cheaper!

Have you ever looked at memes on weed?

The man who delivered that line is now my generation's Walter Cronkite

Steam isn't perfect and I sure as shit won't be the one defending a corporation, and this isn't a good excuse at ALL, but if you've never gamed you wouldn't believe how much worse it is on the other side (GOG being the only exception).

TBH operating systems are like tools, and if windows isn’t too intrusive and neutered, it can be OK.

I use Windows for gaming/media, for performance reasons, and (CachyOS) Linux for GPU compute stuff, dev work, office, pretty much anything else.

You can just not buy the games that have stuff like Denuvo etc. If you keep buying them, of course they'll keep including the DRM etc.

Steam is the storefront, and they have plenty of games you can buy without that crap.

Why not just turn on offline mode on the steam deck? Its easier than blocking it from the internet...

Gaben is a billionaire, Valve isn't content with the amount of money they make, they just have good PR

I also wish more companies took the approach like steam and peddle heroine to kids and recovering addicts in order to make money.

I'm using Steam cause of the SteamDeck. If Gabe dies and they start fucking things up I'll install bazite and sail the Seven seas once again.

I dont think a single more based company has ever existed.

Hyperbole much? I like Steam as much as the next guy but lets not pretend the guy that owns 6 yachts is a good person just because he's better than the next worst. Steam DRMs the shit out of games sold on their platform and if you're an indie dev that wants to sell your game Steam is THE place to do it.

Steam made $10bn last year, they have about 100 employees (their parent company Valve has about 400). I used to be a bigger fan of GabeN but more recently really started considering him and looking into it and realized he's just another unethical billionaire. This video by Coffeezilla is a good jumping off point. regarding the intentional targeting of youth with addictive gambling mechanics in loot crates and circumventing gambling laws. It's all very purposeful and continues to this day.

Linux isn't a company.

Remember steam started the business model of not actually owning your games.

GOG exists, go use GOG. Steam is popular because they don't fuck over buyers, and they run a good business model, people are ok not "owning" things if the service is reasonably well put together.

Gabe has made billions by stealing profit from the workers that actually make games.

steam takes a 30% cut, which isn't all that high, especially when you consider that they develop things like proton at zero cost to anybody, including developers. You're also getting the single largest and most widely used publishing platform, period. It's really hard to beat something of that caliber, so it's definitely a tradeoff. There are also cases of devs making games that become so popular they pull in millions of dollars worth of revenue.

They host tons of malware and shovelware and outright scam games and even protect them from “”““review bombing””"

in defense of steam, if they specifically curated high quality games people like you would accuse them of gate keeping the platform. Scams are definitely a thing, malware, technically is. I've not seen malware ever in my personal experience, and i doubt most people have, and whenever it does happen, steam responds accordingly so i'm not sure its a fair statement.

They pushed “early access” into the mainstream.

there's nothing necessarily wrong with early access, i actually think it's a really productive way to provide tons of play testing and development potential for smaller dev teams. Does it also incentivize shovelware? Sure, but it's a platform you can make money on, that's not abnormal. And again, it's usually very well known when games are abandonware.

And because of people like you that would literally suck Gabes dick for the meme, they get away with it.

surprised you didn't mention gambling, that's probably the most significant argument against steam right now, they effectively run what can be considered an online casino.

Ok then fund linux gaming

While I think capitalism encourages unethical business practices, keep in mind that Valve actively supports the development and popularization of the kernel as well as other projects like Wine from their profits.

G*mers have been too Stockholmed by Steam's monopoly to recognise that everything they complain about with EA or Ubisoft all started with Valve.

i mean, out of all things a company can do that are bad, underage gambling is probably one of the better ones, and the argument in favor of it is that it's on games like csgo and cs2, where the age range is obviously higher than an actual child.

Realistically, i think you have to be kind of stupid to get caught in gambling, but it is also definitely predatory, and there's a reason it's a heavily regulated industry. There's definitely a better solution than we currently have, but it's not as bad as it could be either.

Valve, they make Steam. A popular gaming store that brought modern gaming to Linux

The one running an illegal online casino for minors.

talking about downvotes is a great way to get downvotes out of spite, which i'm sure you're not using to make yourself appear more legitimate

Not defending valve but are the forums even necessary?

I've been an avid player for 4 years (my son even more so) and I didn't even know they had forums

Can you people stop trying to browbeat others into supporting your agendas?

Not everyone has to agree with you on every online forum.

As a Linux gamer, steam has done so much to make it incredibly easy. They didn't have to make proton, but they did and it's great.

The few games they've made have pretty much all been incredible.

The family sharing means my wife has access to my whole account on her steam deck.

Sure, they take a big cut of sales, I've heard not a great place to work, and probably some other reasons to not like them. But the good far outweighs the cons. It's hard to hate them compared to other huge companies.

take 30% of every god damn games sold on the platform and you don’t own you games.

they also provide both proton completely for free, and the entire steam marketplace, as well as any other additional functionality, steam networking for ex, with that 30% cut.

It's a large cut, but you're not really going to find a better option. Sure you could release on GOG, i think like 12 people use GOG though.

Really we just to implement an open protocol that launchers and games can both support.

It's a testament to how much worse every other company is.

Boy are you gonna be surprised as hell when you find out what sort of percentage other publishers take, especially for physical releases!

Shockingly enough, infrastructure requires money to run!

Do I need any other excuse than liking it?

I reduce US stuff and buy more local, but I'm not dealing in absolutes here. Maybe some day I'll stop using steam but I'm going one step at a time.

I'm not using it since I'm not gaming, but I absolutely love how much they're doing for Linux. With Proton they broke windows' pseudo-monopoly on gaming and are now working on making Linux gaming mainstream with the steam deck.