Steam is a proprietary app store shipping DRM and proprietary software. I can’t say I’m eager to use it
If we are being fair, they are still reasonably fair to users. Open source gaming is not a reality.
They don’t force you to use Steam, but still work on Proton as Open Source. They don’t lock down their hardware.
What I’m trying to say is, while Valve is not perfect, it’s much better than any big tech alternative.
Open Source gaming is pretty much there with proton we have a BSD-3-clause (Open Source) software.
Let us see if we can have a free software gaming platform in the future.
What libre games are you playing then? Sure, there are a few gems, but not too many.
Without both Valve and Nvidia, gaming on Linux would still be in its infancy today.
We’re living in an amazing timeline right now, where Linux gets excellent support from the largest PC gaming store and from all the main graphics manufacturers, without having to suck any Microsoft dick for it.
The fact some people still act entitled about it is blowing my mind. Gaming on desktop Linux is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the general PC population. Any support is a miracle let alone first class support.
It can also go away just like that if any of those companies’ goals change.
And we’re complaining about passive DRM and copy protection? For something that’s a luxury product to begin with and very much a first world problem? Wow.
Right now Valve is somewhat fair with its users, but since your games are tied to your steam account which could be deactivated at any time, you don’t really own any of the games. But since they hold a monopoly, they are the only way to play some games legally. Best way I see to avoid them is to use GOG, or play some of the open source games. Though generally, the open source games understandably have very small scopes.
