Proton is open source. Anyone can pull it together and integrate it. Gog have been doing DRM free games for a while, they’ll be quite keen to fill this niche. Epic probably won’t care. If none do, someone will want to.
Valve is a private company whereas GOG belongs to CDProject - a publicly traded company. GOG might want to fill the void but they’re more likely to do dumb, shortsighted decisions in contrast to Valve.
Maybe, but DRM free content isn’t exactly shareholder value…
It’s better shepherded than Epic. They probably don’t fill the space because Steam do it better, but you invest more if the return is higher.
The case I’m referring to is in the future if Steam badly enshittified.
Gog have been doing DRM free games for a while
As far as I know GOG also sells drm content and Steam also sells drm-free content. So what’s the point
they’ll be quite keen to fill this niche
I also don’t remember them doing anything for Linux apart from releasing a broken port then badmouthing people who complained that the game they bought is broken.
Isint Steam a form of DRM? You effectively cant play your games if you dont have an account I thought
No, you can for the games that don’t have drm, just launch the executable. Steam itself doesn’t require any drm. Even the games that use Steam services can be drm-free. Here’s the list of some drm-free Steam games
Gabe is helping, sure, but he isn’t holding up gaming. People were gaming on Linux before Proton even existed, myself included. Also, even if Valve went away completely, Proton is open-source and there are people like GloriousEggroll who work on Proton entirely as a community member. Proton will live on, specifically because it is open-source. All the progress made on Proton won’t suddenly disappear, all the games that were previously playable on Proton will still be playable on Proton.
It’s a somewhat reasonable fear but it’s not a realistic fear. Proton isn’t going anywhere.
Additionally, if Steam would start to morph into what is posted here, it would simply be integrated into Heroic and / or lutris just as Epic is right now. There would be no need to actually launch steam anymore but just use it as a background service to pipe your games into something else.
Obviously his death will trigger a worldwide AR Easter egg hunt, where the Steam user worthy enough to find the three keys first will become the new Gaben and Master Of Steam.
Valve is a whole company of people like Gaben.
Valve is a unique company with no traditional hierarchy. In business school, I read a very interesting Harvard Business Review article on the subject. Unfortunately it’s locked behind a paywall, but this is Google AI’s summary of the article which I confirm to be true from what I remember:
According to a Harvard Business Review article from 2013, Valve, the gaming company that created Half Life and Portal, has a unique organizational structure that includes a flat management system called “Flatland”. This structure eliminates traditional hierarchies and bosses, allowing employees to choose their own projects and have autonomy. Other features of Valve’s structure include:
- Self-allocated time: Employees have complete control over how they allocate their time
- No managers: There is no managerial oversight
- Fluid structure: Desks have wheels so employees can easily move between teams, or “cabals”
- Peer-based performance reviews: Employees evaluate each other’s performance and stack rank them
- Hiring: Valve has a unique hiring process that supports recruiting people with a variety of skills
PeopleMakeGames has a two part series on Valve that’s pretty interesting. The second part (here) dives into the structure of the company. It does have a bit of an angle, fwiw, so if you’d prefer something more objective, it might not be a great watch. Personally I think the issues they bring up are valid, but figured I’d mention it.
Kinda sounds like how worker cooperatives work tbh, but with Gabe still technically being the owner.
I remember reading a news piece a while back about how the founder of a food company made sure to transfer ownership to the employees before leaving. While we’re talking about worst-case scenarios, let’s also hope for the best and hope that Gabe has a similar plan.
A little unsure about the “peer based performance review”, sounds like bullying might somehow have to be kept in check. Otherwise this sounds awesome.
Fun fact: Former employees of Valve have said that is actually a huge problem in the organization and that its organizational structure seems to encourage bullying and high-school style “cliquishness” by design.
Realistically, it’s only a matter of time until Steam becomes as enshittificated as any other services. There is profit to be made from Steam selling advertising space and customer data. They can either choose to capitalize on the profits that are in front of them, or allow another company to and take that capital from them. For a business it’s not a matter of what’s right and wrong anymore but consume or be consumed. If Steam isn’t willing to do that someone else will be willing to play the long game and do it. Then it’ll be only a matter of time until Steam gets acquired by another company and then it’s game over.
What many posters in this thread fail to realize is that there is a very good reason why steam hasn’t been hit by the enshittification that otherwise permeates human existence in 2024.
Of course, Gaben as their CEO has the last say in it. And he’s just a good guy. But wait, aren’t there other companies that have good guys as their CEO and yet the enshittification persists?
The profound reason is that Valve is not a publicly traded company. They have no obligation to any investors to make number go up. They are a private company, they can do whatever the fuck they want. If they stay flat and keep paying their employees, that’s totally fine, and there is 0 pressure on them to change anything. THAT‘s why Valve seems like such a different company compared to everything else that’s out there.
Of course it’s still a choice to go public or not, and they have made the right call (for us consumers).
Based take imo. I think many posters fail realize the insane amount of money steam makes Valve. Rough estimates are that Steam sold 400 million games last year. Average cost for a game is ~$15.5. Steam has a platform fee of 30%. That means that, roughly, Steam made Valve ~1.86 billion dollars just through the sell of games. Not considering microtransactions or hardware sells. Reportedly, Valve made 1 billion dollars just off cases from CS2 crate openings. Let’s just give Valve the benefit of the doubt and assume they made $5 billion dollars last year.
Impressive, but honestly not that impressive when you consider that Xbox brought in 18 billion and PlayStation brought in 30 billion last year. However, if you factor in that Xbox has a head count of ~$20,100 and Sony has one of ~12,700. While Valve has a head count of about ~400. We see that Xbox and Sony are bringing in about $900K and $2.4M per head respectively. Valve is bring in 12.5M per head. Plus Xbox and PlayStation have multiple studios and campuses. While I believe Valve only has the 1 or 2 campuses and they are their only studio.
My point being that, Valve has a ton of liquid cash for investment and growth opportunities. I’d wager Valve brought in more than 5 Billion last year, but with them being a private company, it’s hard to pin down what exactly they could’ve made.
there is a very good reason why steam hasn’t been hit by the enshittification that otherwise permeates human existence in 2024.
Come again? Steam is enshitifed af. from forcing CS:GO players to move to CS:2 to adding DRM left and right, they do it all. They even release remasters of old games that are essentially always broken one or another.