Video game industry will collapse in on itself when Gabe Newell dies, and enshittification creeps into Steam.
I shall seize one of his yachts (probably metaphorically) and sail under the Jolly Roger when enshittification comes for Steam. Until then, it’s a pretty solid solution for buying PC games.
Steam Deck is also amazing, in that it’s as simple as a Switch to get playing but open enough through desktop mode to do so much more. As your customer, thanks for not treating me like a paste eating delinquent.
What concerns me about the future of sailing is the sea monster known as denuvo, as there haven’t been a way to reliably hunt it down
there are three people on this ocean who can reliably hunt that beast.
- one is a transphobe
- the other is a trans
- and the other only cracks football games.
Something I’ve been worried about for some time. I mean, I hope his death isn’t soon, but we all know whoever steps in is most likely to royally fuck it up.
I actually have hope for the company after he is gone. All they have to do is keep steam going and they win. They just print money. There is no reason to go evil and sell the company and go public. They just win.
and he maintains a near monopoly because Steam is just a great platform for gamers, as Gabe has said:
Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.
and he’s right! i almost never pirate video games because of their price, i can wait for a sale, there’s a billion other games i can play in the meantime
when shit like Epic takes years to implement a shopping basket, and still have yet to recolour their payment page so it stops flashbanging gamers across the world, Steam doesn’t even need to try very hard to be the best. The biggest changes on Steam in the recent years are what - updating the UI aged ago? adding a points system so people can get silly profile decorations as an additional reward for buying a video game? Steam has created a platform so good all they need to do is sit back relax, and think of what other sprinkles colour to add to the cake pie?
Steam has competitors, but the difference is Steam is for gamers, and most of their competitors is for money
god help us all if that ever were to change, the second Steam enshittifies the internet will implode
Steam recently the added the ability to easily record gameplay footage. They are also updating the family sharing system (that feature alone would probably never come to other platforms). They also continue to improve gaming on Linux. I don’t remember how long it has been, but they massively updated the library with a lot of really useful features such as being able to select a friend and it’ll show what games you have in common so picking a game to play with a friend is a lot easier.
Further back we see the remote play together feature added to Steam; I was hesitant to use it for a long time but as long as you and the host have a decent internet connection it works pretty flawlessly.
Their custom control settings and community sharing of the different controller schemes is incredibly helpful with some games.
Their review system is pretty good and always helpful to me when exploring for new games I haven’t previously heard of. They have also seem to try to keep the reviews more legit and less spammy/meme-y and more relevant to the actual game itself.
They also implement rules to keep game pages on the store less spammy, they had a big overhaul on the rules around thumbnails for games to keep text off of them because developers started overloading them with advertisements for other games.
They have also recently announced allowing for refunds on season passes when the developers take too long or never deliver on their promises they sold you on. This of course should have always been the case, but at let they’re coming around. I also don’t know if any of the other platforms make it as easy to get a refund as Steam does, but that’s been around for a while now.
I believe there has also been a lot of work developing server side cheat detection so maybe one day we won’t have to rely on client side anti-cheats so much. I also believe they recently made a change to their rules where if a game has a kernel/root level anti cheat that they have to flag that on the store page for the game.
Steam (Valve) actually seem to care about games and the industry in general and want to see the environment around gaming improve.
From my current view point Steam is an actual platform everyone else are just store fronts that provide no additional value to the consumer. So yeah, pricing is rarely the issue when it comes to piracy and Steam really shows how true that statement can be.
Also, most people don’t realize that Steam doesn’t force games to use DRM, that’s purely up to the developers.
Edit: fixed some typos.
Steam has something like 75% of the PC market share based on a figure from the anti trust lawsuit.
Steam is already enshitified. Every other marketplace just sucks that much.
No it isn’t. I have yet to pay a single cent or subscription in more than a decade.
Are you trying to imply subscription fees are necessary for something to be called enshitified?
Nows a good time to articulate a defense. Because as far as their impact on gaming as a distributor, theyve enabled more than any other company by far
You view this as me saying it’s a bad platform. I don’t think it is. I love it and use it often. GoG is probably the only one that’s not enshitified.
Any examples? AFAIK they improved a lot, especially in Linux space which I am very grateful for. I wouldn’t be using Linux if it wasn’t for steam. Although there are still a lot of things to complain about but if it wasn’t better before then it isn’t enshiftification by definition.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a marketplace that isn’t enshitified in some way. Most are going to shove ads in your face which is shitty, but most people aren’t going to recognize it as a bad thing because they’re there to shop.
I can see how you can say that about the Steam’s UI in some spots, but not Steam as a whole. They have a great business model, as far as video games are concerned.
They have some of the highest paid employees, and they keep prices low.
Just because Steam is objectively the best doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize them when it matters.
Think the CEO of Costco did a similar move with the hot dogs
Close. The founder told the CEO if he raised the price on the hotdog “I will fucking kill you”.
So, who really gets the credit here is up to you.
The person who threatened to kill the CEO if the CEO fucked his customers, or the CEO who didn’t fuck his customers out of self-preservation?
They also bought 2 hotdog factories to minimize the loss.
Costco does pay decent as well.
Could they do better? Yes, but they are pretty decent for employees and consumers.
Oh come on, don’t be naïve. They bought two factories so they could switch from “hot dogs” to “mechanically-recovered animal-based byproducts” let’s be realistic
Apparently they make more money from memberships than from sales margins, which are capped.
Last I heard, their profits were nearly entirely from memberships. This was probably five years ago though. I don’t know if their numbers have changed since.
Also. I believe, he also said , if the workers think they need a union, we’ve failed as managers.
So. Yeah
I mean, it’s an understandable viewpoint.
It’s when union busting tactics are being brought in that things are problematic.
I wish more companies had this mindset. If you treat your employees well and listen to their needs, they won’t need to unionize. When they do unionize, it means they don’t feel that they have been treated well and listened to.
It seems that the end result of this philosophy would be to treat your employees well!
If you have an employer that does the right thing, you should have a union that doesn’t need to do much. But you should still unionise, because it’s niave to think the company will always continue to behave that way. If anything, they naturally drift away from that state and it’s only a matter of time until it changes. The union is about having a level playing field with the company when you need it.
“I came to [Sinegal] once and I said, ‘Jim, we can’t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty. We are losing our rear ends,’” Jelinek recalled in a 2018 interview with 425 Business. “And he said, ‘If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.’”
https://thehill.com/homenews/4696314-costcos-new-cfo-makes-announcement-about-1-50-hot-dog-combo/#:~:text=We are losing our rear ends%2C’%E2%80%9D%20Jelinek,effing%20hot%20dog%2C%20I%20will%20kill%20you.
Out of curiosity, how is it legal for Sinegal to say that to Jelinek? Or it isn’t but no one cares to press charges?
CEO of Ben &Jerry’s. They are not just posting the black square on their insta and then moving on, like half their posts are about fighting inequity, encouraging people to vote for actual human rights, openly pro abortion, pro immigrant rights, pro black rights, pro women’s right, about fighting climate change etc. they are walking the walk, conservative dollars be damned
Also AFAIK they are one of the few companies that have been removed from the BDS list after improving behavior and leaving illegal Palestinian settlements. Recently they sued their parent company for silencing their statements on Palestinian rights.
I don’t love ever setting any people or corporations on a pedestal. Nevertheless this is reassuring behavior to see amidst all the Starbucks, AirBnB and Re/Maxes of the world.
It’s a shame they don’t fully move to vegan ice cream
Edit: When the very base ingredient of their ice cream is based on exploitation and torture, how much are their initiatives really worth? It’s virtue signalling at its best
Plus I’m yet so see someone giving a valid reason as to why they shouldn’t. Just tell me you don’t care and I’ll move along
Why should they? I have no problem with people being vegan and I have no problem with vegan food being provided as an option but I don’t think vegans have the right to dictate to everyone else how they live their lives.
A. Ben & Jerry’s moving to exclusively vegan ice cream is in no way forcing people to live their lives a certain way. Recipes are not protected by copyright law so anyone can make and sell ice cream however they want.
B. The dairy industry wreaks havoc on the planet. It would benefit everyone if the dairy industry disappeared or at least shrank
Humans are literally forcing animals to live and die by their life styles. The only ones forcing anybody here are humans.
There is no sound reason as to why B&J doesn’t fully move away from non-vegan ice cream. They’ve proven that they can produce vegan flavours, that they cost them the same (probably less even), that they taste well enough for them to remain among the flavours they offer. It’s just stigma and prejudice that leads to people shutting off completely when veganism is even mentioned.
Realistically, like be frank with yourself for a second and don’t resort to a kneejerk reaction: would you mind if your ice cream was vegan? It’s a luxury item, it’s a sweet, so it’s not essential. Most sweets you eat are vegan already. What’s one more? Plus, you end up helping a bunch of animals.
GabeN has been pretty cool.
Gabe has 6 yachts worth about $1 billion dollars. Not very cool at all, imho.
He didn’t kill anyone by denying them insurance or anything like that tho. Just took a commission on every game sold on Steam, a platform nobody’s forced to use.
And by running a casino that rakes in millions of dollars off kids. I can appreciate the positives he’s done with Steam, but I’m not about to ignore the negatives.
Being a bit greedy =/= Killing millions of people through death panels
Huge difference
Nobody becomes a billionaire by being “a bit greedy”
One billion dollars is an insane amount of money.
Isn’t the Steam business model to charge less than everyone else though?
That seems like the exact opposite of greedy.
Im a huge steam fan.
I am not a fan of someone who can own multiple yachts.
Sorry GabeN.
This CEO, Gabe Newell, and (if he was still alive) the founder of Little Caesars, who, if I recall correctly, secretly paid for Rosa Parks apartment until her death.
The founder of Little Caesars was a typical magnate developer who bought up much of downtown Detroit and let it rot until he received tax incentives to build, and kicked out many low income residents from apartments he let sit until they got city money. His family continues this tradition. The Rosa Parks thing is the only good thing I’ve ever heard of that man and his family do.
Add Steve Wozniak to the list of the ones to be protected. The Woz has done more to pull people up and we should all aspire to that level if we ever have the means.
Woz isn’t a CEO and was stabbed in the back so many times he makes the Ten of Swords look like a sign for future friendships
Gabe Newell owns fleets of yachts and private jets. The man is using your sweet gaming money to burn the planet.
Yeah we need a source.
Also, as far as CEO’s go, speaking from an outside perspective obviously, the man is wonderful. Valve makes solid business decisions in favor of long term growth instead of short term profits. They do this buy making sure that their platform is easy, safe, reliable, and not abusive for their consumers. They institute their own consumer protections into the platform that make them less money, just to make sure they remain a place we WANT to shop, when everyone else tries to make themselves the only place to shop, and then fucking over their consumers at every opportunity. Valve is a fucking case study on how companies should be ran, and a perfect display of how modern american capitalism is ruining everything, by being the antithesis of it.
maybe he’s just buying up all the yachts and private jets so no one else can have them.
Nah people need to stop jerking off Gabe and valve I general.
They started predatory lootboxes, ridiculously expensive cosmetics, early access, owning a licence instead of the actual game, had to be sued just to get refund policy and the vast vast majority of his wealth has come from just skimming a bit off from people who actually make games he distributes.
If you look at valve without the “omg steams sale XXXDDD”" mentality, then they are no better than ea or Activision.
Do you understand how much work goes into distributing terabytes of content around the world?
Valve give you AAA games. For free. No material restrictions on game-play or competitive advantage. They pay for the server hosting, anti-cheat and matchmaking.
The provide a storefront that anyone can sell their games on. And they don’t contract you into exclusivity periods like others do. Do you think it’s coincidence that they have, by far, the largest games store in the world?
They have supported games, for free, for over 10 years. You could have 10 years of world-class online gaming (CS:GO/2 or DOTA2) and have not spent a single penny, with no hit to your ability to play and win.
Sure, they’re not perfect, they are at their core a profit-driven company and they can do things that are not in the consumers best interest.
But to compare them to shitbags like EA and Activision/Blizzard is an incredible thing to do. And removes any weight from your argument.
Virtual Casino. More addictive than IRL ones. Insidiously pushed on kids. Predatory. As Fuck.
I knew comments like this would turn up. But it still saddens me that even Lemmy users, who ar in general much more cognizant of these things and less likely to get caught up in the circlejerk, can’t acknowledge that Gabe Newell isn’t your best freind, he is in fact just another money hungry corporate CEO.
You say comparing valve to say, blizzard is incredible, but the points you use to defend valve can also be made of them.
Is Overwatch 2 not free? With no pay 2 win features? Does Blizzard not pay for the server hosting anti cheat and matchmaking? Do they not also support there game for years? ( also I find that funny given the fact the TF2 community is going ballistic right now over the fact valve isn’t doing shit to support it against cheaters and bots)
Yes they provide a store front anyone can sell on. Including shitty asset flips, early access pump and dumps, predatory spyware etc. And are very reluctant to do litersly anything about it when those scams are called to attention.
And again, that storefront isn’t some altruistic endeavour Gabe took on out the kindness of his heart. No he’s made BILLIONS by exploiting the worl of others, just like every other billionaire. And if providing a basic service makes up for your predatory bullshit, well we might as well let literally every other CEO off the hook then right?
It’s not a bad in to admit you got sucked in my propaganda or marketing or just general Internet circlejerks, what is a bad thing is to vehemently refuse any introspection on your current beliefs and defend them to the death simply because they are what you currently believe. I really hope I can reach out to people on Lemmy and that you guys can actually take a step and try to look at things objectively instead of doubling down.
He also normalized hosting kid’s content and adult/gambling content on the same platform. Anyone who tried to open up a game store that also sold adult material would get crucified nowadays.
The reason Steam is praised so much is because unlike EA and Activision, regardless of what they try to push that they shouldn’t, they do put in the effort of going back and looking at issues from gamer’s eyes. Those cosmetics? They came about at a time when P2W was much more of a concern, and paying for something merely visual was considered much more acceptable. Early access? It came about from trying to open up development to more indies instead of just the big devs and publishers. Licensing instead of owning? The alternative were much more costly physical copies that also degraded with time and which you had to maintain a backup of yourself. If your local game store didn’t have it, you were screwed, and there could be no discounts. Porn on the platform? Don’t care, not a child and I’m responsible.
Even then, I still damn Valve on both normalizing licenses on a subscription service that were it not for its market dominance could easily be teetering right now along with most people’s game library’s, and for not bothering to make an adult/gambling only version of a game store. GOG needs a competitor (remember Devotion and now Nine Sols), and it has none. It is possible to make money and be a digital distribution service without being a subscription service. There should be far more distance between adult and predatory content and normal gaming content, not all parents are responsible and it more easily creates communities predators can target from overlapping interests.
Making the claim that adult content = predators preying on children has a couple issues:
- Predators are incredibly rare, and it has been repeatedly shown that these claims of predators-behind-every-account are blown out of proportion for political scare reasons (see Satanic Panic, all of human history for more examples).
- Even if the above weren’t true, why on earth would those people be spending their time on adult content instead of, say, roblox or minecraft? You know, games for children, that children play?
The debate over steam hosting adult content is some really regressive stuff. An alternative take, the one I hold, is “It’s really heartening to see a major content platform not giving in to the conservative moralists that view anime tiddies as somehow damaging to the fabric of society. Making sexuality a less shameful topic for discussion also, conveniently, reduces ‘shame’ as an effective lever for preying on children, and makes them more likely to come forward and tell people when they’re actually in danger”.
Fine, kick the kids off. It’s better that way. Heaven forbid there be a place with both kinds of content. Imagine what would happen if bookstores or streaming services or years ago video rental places would do if they had all kinds of content. Oh and imagine that Steam had a filter to hide all that adult content wouldn’t that just be absolutely crazy?
Not everything has to be safe for kids. Kick them the fuck out if it’s an issue. Don’t dumb down the adults experience.