5 ms·

Steam- * Just works * It's simple * Cloud saves all of my games (with a few exceptions when the game developer doesn't enable it for whatever reason, this ha

Steam- * Just works * It's simple * Cloud saves all of my games (with a few exceptions when the game developer doesn't enable it for whatever reason, this has only been for a few games so I'm not sure why) * Family sharing - this is HUGE for me. I can't re-buy every single game for my kids, so the fact that they can just play a game I purchased on their own account when I'm not online is an insane life saver. * Steam sales- yeah maybe they aren't quite as good as they used to be.. but still, before steam started doing sales I was buying $60 games. Now I generally just wait 6 months and never pay more than $20 for a game, usually even less * You could argue the indie game world would basically not exist without them. Indie games are basically all I even play on steam- and I buy a lot of games I could keep going on.. but honestly Steam just works. It's not the prettiest, but that's fine. Steam is like a web 1.0 site that does everything you want it to, and anything since then has been web 2.0 pieces of garbage that try to do all this fancy stuff but are unusable or annoying as hell. Epic Games Launcher is garbage. Microsoft store is garbage. So yeah it's weird, I am 100% OK with Valve getting the premium whereas I think it's sickening that apple/android do what they do. They are basically a walled garden. Steam is not, there are infinite ways to distribute a PC game. Probably the oldest tech company that can really say "we are not evil" and instead are actually helping both the consumer and developers.

hnbad 5y ago
> * Steam sales I think it's worth adding that Steam's (more recent) refund policy is also a big deal. Even if you don't need it, knowing that it's there can influence buying decisions because it feels more like you can "try before you buy" (although this actually involves paying before you get to try and then putting yourself in a situation where Steam could refuse to give you your money back). After using Steam almost exclusively for years, picking up a Nintendo Switch was jarring because there's pretty much no way to walk back from a purchase even if you have only played it for a few seconds (or just downloaded it). This also goes with games perpetually sitting at AAA release day price points, release dates often being unclear or promoted more than the actual release and sales affecting your wishlist being undercommunicated in comparison to Steam. Steam simply lures you back in by sending you that e-mail that the game you wishlisted five years ago is currently on sale at a 90% discount.
- 1_player 5y ago
  It is not rare that I buy a game at full price, and it's on sale within a week from my purchase. In fact Valve has recently decided to shorten the big sales cycle to one every 28 days (plus the small weekly flash sales).
querez 5y ago
Also (at least for me): Linux support. This is by far the one killer feature for me.
LinAGKar 5y ago
I think Humble Bundles did a lot for Indie Games. And of course phones and web games, and before that Flash Games.
ummonk 5y ago
To add to all the things you mention that just work, it's also a social network - a lot of games make it easy to setup multiplayer games with Steam friends. For these games, you don't have to go through the work of linking with friends' game accounts for every game you play.
spullara 5y ago
Wow, this is basically a description of the Apple App Store.
- sph 5y ago
  The App Store is not even close to the convenience and features of Steam. Awful search, awful review system, confusing interface and.. that's it? I don't see how the app store even compares.
  - brodock 5y ago
    Apple store is also annoyingly assuming you speak the language of the country where you live in. It doesn't allow you to choose "English" for example, if you are accessing it from Germany..
  - c0balt 5y ago
    You forgot that Apple's App store hast the best, and incidently only, reviews for iOS Apps. For the same reason it also features the 'best' search for consumers using Apple devices.
- eatsyourtacos 5y ago
  Except it's not. Biggest piece of the puzzle is there is no alternative. You are 100% forced to use the app store. No one forces you to use steam. There is generally always another way to buy a PC game, and if a developer chose to put it only on steam.. well, then that's the developer's fault and not steam's fault (I get that steam is mostly a monopoly on PC, so that's not entirely fair to say, but still.. the developer can always just throw their game on GOG or itch.io etc easy enough). So Apple's entire store is built upon forcing you to go put your product there, offering no alternatives, and then taking a large cut. Not to mention almost the entire mobile market is a hot piece of trash creating apps/games that are only there to suck up your money in microtransactions/ads or whatever. And Apple encourages that because they want the cut of all the bullshit money they pull out of people. Steam doesn't do that. Sure you can find some little garbage people put on there, but that's few and far between and not the norm- I pretty much never see that on my daily use. Steam still operates in a way that provides a great platform for people who love to make games and people who love to play games. Any comparison to the mobile market of ios/android is entirely disengenious.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> * Just works I don't game very often, but the way Steam "just works" can't be understated enough. It's not perfect. I've run into weird bugs occasionally, though they were likely the fault of a specific game. However, it's miles ahead of other game launchers I've dealt with. I'm a casual gamer, so if I end up fighting the game launcher and update mechanism for more than a few minutes, I'm just going to give up and do something else. Steam has come as close as I've seen to streamlining that experience for me.
- tyfon 5y ago
  It also "Just works" in linux. None of the other launchers do that :)
  - hnbad 5y ago
    I did have some problems with some games that claimed to support Linux but wouldn't run on latest 64bit Ubuntu or take issue with whichever graphics drivers I was using, but yeah, generally Steam games would simply work whereas the rest either wouldn't or would require layers of indirection like WINE and a lot of fiddling.
    - tyfon 5y ago
      Yeah. Now in my older days I really appreciate the "Steam play" proton layer. It just sets up everything for me so I don't have to mess with lutris, various wine versions and whatnot. I've found that using the libraries included in steam also removed all manual "fiddling" compared to running it with native arch linux libraries.
- lagmos 5y ago
  The 'it just works' part is something that i really struggled with and it tainted my view of stream for good. I absolutely hated when it forced an update download and wouldn't let you do anything about it. tryin to pay a game and then bring forced to wait an hour or something (my internet used to be bad)... was infuriating and ruined many gaming sessions. I never got a fondness for stream as a result and avoid it whenever possible. On that note, i was really surprised to find out that epic let's you start plenty of your games without having to open the client. That's a killer feature for me. Family sharing is too.
FranchuFranchu 5y ago
The thing I like the most about Steam, and this outmatches everything else, is the regional price localization. 60 USD is not worth the same around the world, and Steam compensates for it.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  This is the thing Australians hate. We don't get a straight $ for $ conversion. As a general rule we get charged more for the same digital download because of regional pricing. A reasonable price has to be found by buying steam keys from [HumbleBundle/GreenManGaming/etc]. I don't play the latest anymore. I will wait a year or two and get it on sale. I get a patched, solid game with well known reviews and the community wiki already filled out(so valuable in many modern games!), for much cheaper AND with that much cheaper price I don't have to worry so much about being gouged because my digital download has to travel further...
  - mdoms 5y ago
    Australians are incredible wealthy. In my experience (I lived in Aus for 5 years) Australians have no idea just how wealthy they are compared to other, even Western, nations.
    - _carbyau_ 5y ago
      You are probably right. I don't know enough to compare country citizen wealth. But while your point is relevant to the marketing person, it is irrelevant to me as a consumer. As per most humans of course, I never feel like I have enough. Like many, I have a mortgage and so am required to work until the day I die to keep a roof over my family's head. Not a glamourous roof, but ours. So when I have friends overseas getting the same digital files as I am for less money, I feel ripped off. For physical items in Australia you could argue the large distances for transport explain the cost/convenience difference. But on the internet where the cost of information transport is negligible, a minimum 20% mark up is too blatant for the exact same convenience.
nameisname 5y ago
There are a million ways to distribute an APK so I'm not sure where that parallel came from. I'm anti steam until they add decent support. I've dealt with marketplace issues too many times.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Marketplace is the one area where support is a negative; they can't be returning items to people because of accidental purchases, upsetting the seller which is likely just another regular gamer/steam user.
- SXX 5y ago
  There is huge difference. Google makes it's harder and more user-hostile to install APKs from 3rd-party sources. They also create vendor lock-in ecosystem where half of Android features are only available when using Google Play Services that might not work unless you use Google Play. On other hand Steam is just a software that works across multiple OS.
madeofpalk 5y ago
All of these points seem to exist for the iOS App Store (apart from the Steam sales, but there are other advantages as well). I think the takeaway is that on Windows there is a choice, and people (users and developers) actively choose Steam, whereas on iOS there just is not that choice. The market cannot exercise a preference.
- remus 5y ago
  For me the big difference is that using steam is a choice whereas using the app store is required. Developers use steam largely because they want to, not because they have to.
Moru 5y ago
Family sharing is a step in the right direction but in the old days with CD:s, you could buy it once and play multiplayer games together with your family and friends. Now you need separate accounts for everyone and a copy of each. In Sweden we pay a tax on each harddrive and other storage media to cover this sharing. It's alled Private sharing tax. It's distributed between creators by some organisation. Steam and other online stores prevents this law from working as intended. This has put me off Steam from the beginning already. I believe Steam got so big because they were first to deliver what everyone wanted, buy games without having to wait until release in your country. In Sweden we often had to wait half a year or more before the games showed up. I did not buy games on Steam for years because of the sharing aspects. I wanted to be able to share the good games with my kids or friends. On steam you don't own the games, you only rent them for a one time fee. Steam can take them down at any time.
- mmsbdjjkvjj 5y ago
  The tax you refer to is for backing up purchased content on external hdd and such only. You seem to misread the law to cover piracy (sharing with friends). > Privatkopieringsersättning är en lagstadgad kompensation för det inkomstbortfall som kopiering för privat bruk av musik, film och tv från en laglig förlaga medför för kulturskapare med upphovsrätt i de kopierade verken. Ersättningen betalas av tillverkare eller importörer av sådana lagringsmedier som är "särskilt ägnade för" privatkopiering,[1] som tomma CD, DVD, externa hårddiskar, USB-minnen och mp3-spelare. https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatkopieringsersättning https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatkopieringsersättning

hnbad 5y ago

> * Steam sales I think it's worth adding that Steam's (more recent) refund policy is also a big deal. Even if you don't need it, knowing that it's there can influence buying decisions because it feels more like you can "try before you buy" (although this actually involves paying before you get to try and then putting yourself in a situation where Steam could refuse to give you your money back). After using Steam almost exclusively for years, picking up a Nintendo Switch was jarring because there's pretty much no way to walk back from a purchase even if you have only played it for a few seconds (or just downloaded it). This also goes with games perpetually sitting at AAA release day price points, release dates often being unclear or promoted more than the actual release and sales affecting your wishlist being undercommunicated in comparison to Steam. Steam simply lures you back in by sending you that e-mail that the game you wishlisted five years ago is currently on sale at a 90% discount.

1_player 5y ago
It is not rare that I buy a game at full price, and it's on sale within a week from my purchase. In fact Valve has recently decided to shorten the big sales cycle to one every 28 days (plus the small weekly flash sales).

querez 5y ago

Also (at least for me): Linux support. This is by far the one killer feature for me.

LinAGKar 5y ago

I think Humble Bundles did a lot for Indie Games. And of course phones and web games, and before that Flash Games.

ummonk 5y ago

To add to all the things you mention that just work, it's also a social network - a lot of games make it easy to setup multiplayer games with Steam friends. For these games, you don't have to go through the work of linking with friends' game accounts for every game you play.

spullara 5y ago

Wow, this is basically a description of the Apple App Store.

sph 5y ago
The App Store is not even close to the convenience and features of Steam. Awful search, awful review system, confusing interface and.. that's it? I don't see how the app store even compares.
- brodock 5y ago
  Apple store is also annoyingly assuming you speak the language of the country where you live in. It doesn't allow you to choose "English" for example, if you are accessing it from Germany..
- c0balt 5y ago
  You forgot that Apple's App store hast the best, and incidently only, reviews for iOS Apps. For the same reason it also features the 'best' search for consumers using Apple devices.
eatsyourtacos 5y ago
Except it's not. Biggest piece of the puzzle is there is no alternative. You are 100% forced to use the app store. No one forces you to use steam. There is generally always another way to buy a PC game, and if a developer chose to put it only on steam.. well, then that's the developer's fault and not steam's fault (I get that steam is mostly a monopoly on PC, so that's not entirely fair to say, but still.. the developer can always just throw their game on GOG or itch.io etc easy enough). So Apple's entire store is built upon forcing you to go put your product there, offering no alternatives, and then taking a large cut. Not to mention almost the entire mobile market is a hot piece of trash creating apps/games that are only there to suck up your money in microtransactions/ads or whatever. And Apple encourages that because they want the cut of all the bullshit money they pull out of people. Steam doesn't do that. Sure you can find some little garbage people put on there, but that's few and far between and not the norm- I pretty much never see that on my daily use. Steam still operates in a way that provides a great platform for people who love to make games and people who love to play games. Any comparison to the mobile market of ios/android is entirely disengenious.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> * Just works I don't game very often, but the way Steam "just works" can't be understated enough. It's not perfect. I've run into weird bugs occasionally, though they were likely the fault of a specific game. However, it's miles ahead of other game launchers I've dealt with. I'm a casual gamer, so if I end up fighting the game launcher and update mechanism for more than a few minutes, I'm just going to give up and do something else. Steam has come as close as I've seen to streamlining that experience for me.

tyfon 5y ago
It also "Just works" in linux. None of the other launchers do that :)
- hnbad 5y ago
  I did have some problems with some games that claimed to support Linux but wouldn't run on latest 64bit Ubuntu or take issue with whichever graphics drivers I was using, but yeah, generally Steam games would simply work whereas the rest either wouldn't or would require layers of indirection like WINE and a lot of fiddling.
  - tyfon 5y ago
    Yeah. Now in my older days I really appreciate the "Steam play" proton layer. It just sets up everything for me so I don't have to mess with lutris, various wine versions and whatnot. I've found that using the libraries included in steam also removed all manual "fiddling" compared to running it with native arch linux libraries.
lagmos 5y ago
The 'it just works' part is something that i really struggled with and it tainted my view of stream for good. I absolutely hated when it forced an update download and wouldn't let you do anything about it. tryin to pay a game and then bring forced to wait an hour or something (my internet used to be bad)... was infuriating and ruined many gaming sessions. I never got a fondness for stream as a result and avoid it whenever possible. On that note, i was really surprised to find out that epic let's you start plenty of your games without having to open the client. That's a killer feature for me. Family sharing is too.

FranchuFranchu 5y ago

The thing I like the most about Steam, and this outmatches everything else, is the regional price localization. 60 USD is not worth the same around the world, and Steam compensates for it.

_carbyau_ 5y ago
This is the thing Australians hate. We don't get a straight $ for $ conversion. As a general rule we get charged more for the same digital download because of regional pricing. A reasonable price has to be found by buying steam keys from [HumbleBundle/GreenManGaming/etc]. I don't play the latest anymore. I will wait a year or two and get it on sale. I get a patched, solid game with well known reviews and the community wiki already filled out(so valuable in many modern games!), for much cheaper AND with that much cheaper price I don't have to worry so much about being gouged because my digital download has to travel further...
- mdoms 5y ago
  Australians are incredible wealthy. In my experience (I lived in Aus for 5 years) Australians have no idea just how wealthy they are compared to other, even Western, nations.
  - _carbyau_ 5y ago
    You are probably right. I don't know enough to compare country citizen wealth. But while your point is relevant to the marketing person, it is irrelevant to me as a consumer. As per most humans of course, I never feel like I have enough. Like many, I have a mortgage and so am required to work until the day I die to keep a roof over my family's head. Not a glamourous roof, but ours. So when I have friends overseas getting the same digital files as I am for less money, I feel ripped off. For physical items in Australia you could argue the large distances for transport explain the cost/convenience difference. But on the internet where the cost of information transport is negligible, a minimum 20% mark up is too blatant for the exact same convenience.

nameisname 5y ago

There are a million ways to distribute an APK so I'm not sure where that parallel came from. I'm anti steam until they add decent support. I've dealt with marketplace issues too many times.

judge2020 5y ago
Marketplace is the one area where support is a negative; they can't be returning items to people because of accidental purchases, upsetting the seller which is likely just another regular gamer/steam user.
SXX 5y ago
There is huge difference. Google makes it's harder and more user-hostile to install APKs from 3rd-party sources. They also create vendor lock-in ecosystem where half of Android features are only available when using Google Play Services that might not work unless you use Google Play. On other hand Steam is just a software that works across multiple OS.

madeofpalk 5y ago

All of these points seem to exist for the iOS App Store (apart from the Steam sales, but there are other advantages as well). I think the takeaway is that on Windows there is a choice, and people (users and developers) actively choose Steam, whereas on iOS there just is not that choice. The market cannot exercise a preference.

remus 5y ago
For me the big difference is that using steam is a choice whereas using the app store is required. Developers use steam largely because they want to, not because they have to.

Moru 5y ago

Family sharing is a step in the right direction but in the old days with CD:s, you could buy it once and play multiplayer games together with your family and friends. Now you need separate accounts for everyone and a copy of each. In Sweden we pay a tax on each harddrive and other storage media to cover this sharing. It's alled Private sharing tax. It's distributed between creators by some organisation. Steam and other online stores prevents this law from working as intended. This has put me off Steam from the beginning already. I believe Steam got so big because they were first to deliver what everyone wanted, buy games without having to wait until release in your country. In Sweden we often had to wait half a year or more before the games showed up. I did not buy games on Steam for years because of the sharing aspects. I wanted to be able to share the good games with my kids or friends. On steam you don't own the games, you only rent them for a one time fee. Steam can take them down at any time.

mmsbdjjkvjj 5y ago
The tax you refer to is for backing up purchased content on external hdd and such only. You seem to misread the law to cover piracy (sharing with friends). > Privatkopieringsersättning är en lagstadgad kompensation för det inkomstbortfall som kopiering för privat bruk av musik, film och tv från en laglig förlaga medför för kulturskapare med upphovsrätt i de kopierade verken. Ersättningen betalas av tillverkare eller importörer av sådana lagringsmedier som är "särskilt ägnade för" privatkopiering,[1] som tomma CD, DVD, externa hårddiskar, USB-minnen och mp3-spelare. https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatkopieringsersättning https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatkopieringsersättning