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Valve is a darling. Not simply because of steam (though, that enables them) but because from HL1, they truly cared about making good games, providing gamers a p

Valve is a darling. Not simply because of steam (though, that enables them) but because from HL1, they truly cared about making good games, providing gamers a platform for good, working on problems outside their wheelhouse (Linux, VR, etc) for the betterment of gamers. Seriously. Yeah give them flak for steam’s store policies and such but Valve has always cared about gamers. They just don’t have the means to do it all (maybe they do?). I’m a fan. Not for HL1 or 2, not for Portal or TF2, not for CS, but for their never ending support on making sure “gaming” can be enjoyed by all.

deelowe 3y ago
Steam got so much flak when it first came out because it supported DRM, facilitated the death of physical media, and was generally kind of clunky and buggy. However, looking back, I'm thankful. I think Gabe did truly care about gamers/gaming and was worried about Microsoft's growing interest in gaming. I think he knew that that the transition to digital distribution was inevitable and made it his mission to get a platform out there before Microsoft did, because they would ultimately create something that was not gamer friendly. Perhaps this is all wishful thinking, but history has proven that Valve was perhaps the best steward we could have asked for in supporting the transition to online distribution. If we look at the alternatives be it Microsoft, Epic, or even GOG, no one has done it better. And, when tested, Valve continues to show they strive to do the right thing. For example look at returns. I never thought we'd see a no questions asked return policy for digital games and yet, with steam, it's a fairly simple process. On top of this, when the policy doesn't work (e.g. games which are broken outside of the return window), Valve again does the right thing and creates exceptions.
- blibble 3y ago
  steam was terrible when it came out however it was still miles better than "Games for Windows Live", which was so bad I don't even try replaying the games that still require it
  - dcdc123 3y ago
    Steam came out almost 5 years before GFWL.
    - blibble 3y ago
      probably about the same time they managed to get the Friends service to work
    - dspillett 3y ago
      Giving GFWL less excuse for being as bad as it was. They'd witnessed Steam's early problems, yet repeated them (and added more besides).
  - Insanity 3y ago
    I remember using Steam for the games library and using Xfire for the ingame chat features. At some point steam because the only survivor there.
    - HeckFeck 3y ago
      Xfire is something that died a sad death. Used it to chat with many people I met playing Star Wars Galaxies and Empire at War - think it was actually bundled with that one. The profile pages and screenshot uploads were fun too. Another online community lost to the sands of time, alas.
      - Arrath 3y ago
        Don't forget GameSpy. Many, many rounds of multiplayer C&C: Renegade played through that back in the day.
  - waymon 3y ago
    > steam was terrible when it came out Do people really think this? I remember applying updates to CS before steam and it was awful. Steam streamlined that and gave us a much needed friends list. I never ever thought steam the application was a bad.
- have_faith 3y ago
  > was generally kind of clunky and buggy Steam is by far the jankiest program I have installed on my machine. It's TSAB (time to seeing a bug, I just made it up) is measured in seconds, not minutes or hours. I know they're raking in money for being what is mostly a very large FTP server (I kid...), but please spend some of it on the basic experience.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    Strange, Steam is quite stable for me. On both my SteamDeck, my couch PC on the main TV, and my laptop. A lot more stable than Tim Sweeneys ego.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    I have only seen one Steam bug once in the last 6 years and that was a game that restarted its download from scratch, followed by the client crashing. Never happened again, never saw another bug either. Used it on hard drives, SATA SSDs and NVMe SSDs.
  - ElectricalUnion 3y ago
    Of all the "app store" type programs that I have to interact with, Steam is somehow the least painful one. And I deal with a bunch of them; Gnome Software, Microsoft Store, Epic Games Store, Google Play Store, (Samsung) Galaxy Store, F-droid, not counting some dedicated pseudo-stores aberrations like JetBrains Toolbox and Wargaming.net Game Center... Those are all much smaller (ok, Google Play Store is probably the largest), almost featureless in comparison, yet they are slow as molasses and buggy as hell.
    - subtra3t 3y ago
      Maybe its just my bad system (integrated graphics, 4 GB ram, i3 8th gen processor) but Steam actually performs far worse than MS store, Gnome Store, and the Google Play Store (though thats on my phone and not my laptop).
      - jstarfish 3y ago
- lolinder 3y ago
  > I never thought we'd see a no questions asked return policy for digital games and yet, with steam, it's a fairly simple process. In general their policy very good, but it's not quite no questions asked—they're pretty strict about the 2 hour playtime limit, which is quite a short time to decide if a game will actually be fun. In many types of games by the time you get through the tutorial and have access to all the game mechanics you're already past the two hour mark, and they also can't tell the difference between actual play time and time in the menu while you're doing something else. EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying it's a bad policy, there are obviously reasons for this. But it's not truly no questions asked.
  - ragestorm 3y ago
    The frequency of the returns probably plays a part. Anecdotally, I've returned a couple of games over the 2h limit and they have refunded, no questions asked.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      My only experience with hitting the limit was also the only time I've ever tried to return a game. I'm sure it mostly depends on the service rep handling your claim and how many bogus returns they've seen so far that day.
    - dspillett 3y ago
      Was that 2 hours since purchase, or 2 hours play time? The current limits are 14 days since-purchase as long as you've played the game for less than 2 hours.
      - ragestorm 3y ago
        Hours played. Can’t remember the purchase timeframe. Could of been the difference.
  - pseg134 3y ago
    It is quite literally no questions asked. It isn’t meant to be a demo system which is what you seem to want.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  Steam continues to be the best platform because it shares per-game and per-user cross-game transactional data with everyone. It's kind of hard to explain why this is so important, but it is unique to Steam, compared to all pay-to-play and subscription media as far as I know. Whereas things like DRM and returns and even royalties differ amongst platforms, and none of those have the same hegemony as Steam does; and the compulsory platforms, like the App Store and Google Play, developers complain bitterly about them in a way I've never heard regarding Steam, which they participate in voluntarily.
  - gabereiser 3y ago
    Valve will never say “You know what, we are going to go this direction, market be damned. Follow us if you want to be cool” and proceed to introduce a new graphics API. Don’t get me wrong, we needed one, but the current state of graphics “drivers” sucks. Here comes Valve: “Hey bro, I heard graphics apis suck and are bifurcated by platform, here’s a wrapper that wraps them all into an API you probably already use.” (Initial version of their DX9->OpenGL bridge). Years later, Valve again: “You know, we just kept going on that thing we told you about, here’s a full fledged x86 win32 compatibility layer for anything posix. We had to patch the kernel but they were receptive.” Who does this? No one. Not a single company does this. They all have ulterior motives. Patch Linux for some hardware they are introducing for sale or patching it for some platform to get your PII data. Valve is the only company that is patching to make things better for the sake of making “the ecosystem” better. Apple: “We have the best products” yet those products aren’t helping the compute ecosystem. Microsoft: “We have AI” yet those products are still being worked out and is under active litigation from pretty much every creative out there. Valve: “We just want to play, make sense of players, to make better play experiences, to make better games, and not write more code than we have to. Our business is games, not code”.
    - DanielHB 3y ago
      I might get some flak for this, but Meta is pretty big contributor to open source projects. The amount of bugs and features that they work on that are not used in their own products is quite staggering. Their open source projects are very embracing of the community. Google on the other hand...
- grumbel 3y ago
  > I never thought we'd see a no questions asked return policy for digital games and yet, with steam, it's a fairly simple process. That was however not Valve's idea, but only came in response to EA Origin offering a return policy in 2013, Valve follow up in 2015 with their own. One of the very rare cases where the competition was a little ahead for once.
  - TAForObvReasons 3y ago
    Valve's 2 hour refund option came in direct response to a 2014 lawsuit from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission[1]. Rod Sims, head of ACCC at the time, asserted that Valve's original no-refund stance broke Australian law. > Under Australian Consumer Law, everybody who buys a product or a service has a right to a refund if the product doesn’t work. They have a right to a refund, or a repair. Those rights are enshrined in Australian Law, and our allegation is that Valve sought to remove those consumer rights which is a breach of Australian Consumer Law [1] https://gizmodo.com.au/2014/08/accc-commissioner-heres-why-were-suing-valve/ https://gizmodo.com.au/2014/08/accc-commissioner-heres-why-w...
  - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
    UK Consumer Rights Act gives you two weeks for no fuss return of items bought remotely. IME, Steam do not adhere to the law here.
    - solardev 3y ago
      Digital items too?
      - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
        Yes, see eg https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15 section 34.
      - angus-prune 3y ago
        No, GP is incorrect. Digital goods are treated differently under the act.
- semi 3y ago
  For some context on the early days of steam, I remember the Friends network having reliability issues presumably due to scaling as everyone adopted steam. But by reliability issues I don't mean it occasionally failed. It did, but that was early on. I assume they just killed the backend and never pushed a client update to remove it because I remember what was at least months if not a full year of the friends UI just saying it failed to connect to the Friends network. The actual matchmaking never had any real issues that I remember, but the login servers definitely did, and deleting clientregistry.blob and restarting steam was just a routine thing you did to get steam working again. None of this is really that surprising though, steam was originally a tool just for beta testers, while the live game used WON for matchmaking. WON was shutting down and Valve had to rush steams public release.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  It got flak when it came out because it was released at the same time as HL2 and steam was the _only_ way to get HL2. If you wanted HL2 then you were installing steam, even if you weren't interested in it.
  - gabereiser 3y ago
    Steam came out before that. You missed the HL1 mod era.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      I was around before HL1 existed, I didn't miss anything. I wasn't trying to imply they were released on literally the same day, of course steam was out before HL2, but HL2 is what drove its popularity because people were forced to install steam to get access to HL2. And most people resented them for it. At that time, store purchases was still the common way to get at PC games.
      - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
        I resent them now for the same reason but on another game: Civ 5. I even bought that one in a box from a store.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        and still had to install steam? ouch, yeah, that would irritate the crap out of me too.
        Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
        Yes. DVD was pointless. Online steam was required. Worse still it happened to be down that day. The worst possible first impression.
MegaDeKay 3y ago
That their games aren't filled with Pay To Win microtransactions and Day 1 DLC is yet another reason to love Valve. If someone wants to spend a few bucks to buy a hat in TF2, that's fine by me.
- lapetitejort 3y ago
  Conversely, CSGO and DOTA 2 has facilitated real money gambling among the youth on third party sites for years. Valve has attempted to crack down on gambling sites, however it's still possible for a fourteen year old to insert credit card details and lose real money gambling for virtual skins.
  - ysavir 3y ago
    And Artifact has card packs that are effectively loot boxes, and a whole marketplace to facilitate selling/buying them. I don't know how much/if they made any cut from the marketplace, but it's certainly a form of "play to win".
  - waveBidder 3y ago
    this is nothing compared to Roblox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ
    - gabereiser 3y ago
      Man complaining about a monetization platform by making a video on a monetization platform.
  - dietr1ch 3y ago
    Which could easily be fixed if Valve decided to put a hard-cap by selling skins for a fixed price, even if they were only for sale a couple weeks a year. They'd also pocket all that money, but I guess they don't want people who spent more than said cap to get their skins. But people who are spending 100+ on skins should know they are playing the NFT game.
- 3y ago
ant6n 3y ago
But when will Half Life 3 be released.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Other than DRM, what's not to like about Steam policies?
- alexb_ 3y ago
  They've caught a TON of criticism for Counterstrike cases, which is where they make an absolute crapload of money. I don't think it's a big deal, but others do.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  I don't know if this is accurate, but IIRC, if you're banned, you lose access to even the single-player games in your collection.
  - Quikinterp 3y ago
    That sounds odd, because how does your steam account even get banned? If you cheat in a game and get banned, your steam account isn't banned
    - lvass 3y ago
      AFAIK most horror stories are from people who move between countries, particularly from one with "cheaper" prices like Argentina to one with more expensive ones. Not sure if the account itself gets banned but the games previously bought do get locked out.
    - mjh2539 3y ago
      Back in the day playing on VAC servers and attempting to use exploits would get your whole account banned.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    I don't think that happens. You might lose access to features and multiplayer, but not the games you own. At worst, you cannot buy more games or gifts or trade your items. But you can still download the single player games you already have. EDIT: Generally it seems account suspension is possible, but that usually means they noticed something illegal or extremely suspicious activity.
lsaferite 3y ago
My personal Steam customer support 'win' was several years back when I decided to start building a game library for my son. I had purchased Conan and Elite Dangerous while they were on deep discount and gifted them to my son's account. At the time I was unaware that gifts can expire and be refunded. So, at some point the gifts expired and they refunded the purchases, but the game were no longer on that deep discount. I was fairly upset and contacted customer support. The initial customer support agent was unhelpful and I sent a follow-up contact to Gabe that expressed my discontent. I explained that they'd managed to alienate a user that had been on the platform since 2005 and who had a massive library of purchased games at that point. I told them I would no longer be using the platform and would not be using it for my kids either. This email elicited a response from one of the Steam devs and they agreed that my initial interaction was not what they wanted the experience to be. He sent me copies of the games that have been refunded and he sent me to codes for "all present and future Valve titles" for me and my son to be able to play together. In the end he turned it around fully and only increased my appreciation for the company and platform.
- oynqr 3y ago
  You "own" Half Life 3 in some timeline.
- eropple 3y ago
  Yeah, Steam has always some really impressively dedicated help when somebody escalates. It's probably harder to access now, but I remember one time in college when TF2 came out of beta and performance was awful. Steam Support didn't have anything, so I sent an email to GabeN; he put me in touch with a senior Source dev who had me press some debug buttons and hop in a game with a bunch of Valve folks (I was pretty good but this was definitely an exception to "game devs are worse that their games than players", I got my ticket punched worse than when I was playing in competitive leagues). A few weeks later there was a patch that significantly improved perf on my particular flavor of hardware.
- callalex 3y ago
  I’m glad everything worked out for you in the end, but it seems like the Steam policy here is pretty reasonable, and you come across as unreasonable.
BowBun 3y ago
I whole-heartedly agree. They seem good for the right reasons. That said, I'm scared about the inevitable creep of capitalism. What happens when Gabe retires? Or some legal/financial event changes things? I have no reason to doubt them, but history gives me reasons to be cautious with my optimism. We've seen similar parallels with beloved tech companies in the past.
babypuncher 3y ago
Developers don't get much sympathy from users over Valve's store policies precisely because Valve cares so much about the users. Epic makes a big deal about digital storefronts only needing a 12% cut to turn a profit, but Epic isn't turning around and investing that money into things that make the platform better for everyone like Valve does (Steam Input, Proton, Workshop just to name a few things).
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  Just like Apple? I do agree with you overall but 30% is still excessive
  - happymellon 3y ago
    Better than Apple. Apple don't reinvest in creating open standards, and don't invest in improving user experience for everyone. Their investments are generally to increase lock-in.
  - Dr4kn 3y ago
    Yes 30% is a lot, but valve does a lot more than apple imo. Games are a lot larger so bandwidth costs are much higher, they don't charge for in-game transactions, you get free cloud storage for saves, free mod hosting, good multiplayer functionality and much more. Apple gives you less features, has a lot more restrictions and is pretty annoying to deal with
- danShumway 3y ago
  >into things that make the platform better for everyone Correction, for Steam users, not for everyone. Steam Input and Workshop are completely proprietary services that do not work outside of Steam. Steam Input configs are difficult (not impossible, but unnecessarily complicated) to access/share across services, meaning that even if you do use Steam, if you bought a game outside of Steam and are importing it, you're probably going to be rebuilding the Steam Input config from scratch. Steam Workshop is also inaccessible to games purchased outside of Steam even if you import those games into Steam. And not only has Valve not built a way to link imported games to a Workshop and not provided mechanisms for games to make use of Workshop outside of Steam as an independent service, the company has actually clamped down on efforts to circumvent that DRM and shut down community projects. Both Steam Workshop and Steam Input are very clearly designed to be vendor lock-in. To gamers who only use Steam and nothing else, it feels like Valve is making it better for everyone, but it's a lot more like the Apple ecosystem -- Valve is leaving behind anyone who buys games outside of Steam and almost explicitly punishing users who get games from other storefronts. The company offers a lot of services that can't be debundled from Steam -- you can't as a developer pay Valve to make use of Workshop outside of Steam. And so a lot of these "universal" benefits are really only benefits for people who buy games exclusively on Steam. That's not to say Valve doesn't do great work elsewhere. Proton is genuinely good for the ecosystem, even though Valve still ties it heavily into Steam and combines it with Steam-specific features like shader caches that are inaccessible outside of Steam. I think the Steam Deck is a wonderful device hampered only somewhat by the fact that it's so reliant on Steam Input which is entirely proprietary. But it's still miles above other consoles and I'm genuinely grateful that Valve built it and even more grateful that they based it on Linux. It's repairable, it's far more open than other consoles. Valve might "punish" users for installing 3rd-party software on it but at least installing that software is allowed. Valve is neither perfect nor evil. People get enamored with Valve because our standards for companies have fallen so unbelievably far, to the point where just allowing people to install 3rd-party software and responsibly contributing back to an ecosystem that Valve is heavily reliant on feels like being granted an unexpected gift. We're used to companies abusing consumers even when there's no reason to do so. And so Valve saying "yeah, it makes more sense to us contribute upstream and it makes sense not to treat our customers like crap" is a refreshing difference. But Valve is still a company and is still willing to prioritize its own hold on the PC marketplace over consumer and developer rights; it has plenty of vendor lock-in and plenty of proprietary services and systems that are designed to make it so that you as an end-user can buy the exact same game on two platforms and run both versions on the same device, and one of them will literally perform worse, will be harder to configure, and won't have mod support.
miki123211 3y ago
> but for their never ending support on making sure “gaming” can be enjoyed by all. Oh how I wish that was true. Steam's accessibility story is an utter and inexcusable piece of garbage. Using Steam with a screen reader is a constant struggle, to the point where people had to write guides [1] on how to go about this. It got a bit better recently, at least on Windows, Mac still sucks. There are plenty of Steam games that a blind person can play, sometimes natively[2][3], sometimes through special accessibility mods[4][5][6]. Not to mention the Steamdeck, which has no accessibility support at all, despite the fact that Linux screen readers do exist[7], and consoles like PS5 and Xbox implement their own[8][9]. Valve really doesn't care. [1] (outdated) https://www.mail-archive.com/audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/msg291641.html https://www.mail-archive.com/audiogames-reflector@sabahattin... [2] https://blind.shadows1428.com/ https://blind.shadows1428.com/ [3] https://mortalkombatgamessupport.wbgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/19435787154963-Mortal-Kombat-1-Accessibility-Features-A11Y- https://mortalkombatgamessupport.wbgames.com/hc/en-us/articl... [4] https://github.com/bradjrenshaw/say-the-spire https://github.com/bradjrenshaw/say-the-spire [5] https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/16205 https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/16205 [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQC6TJkBElY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQC6TJkBElY [7] https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/getting-started-with-orca/ https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/getting-started-with-orca/ [8] https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessibility/narrator-on-xbox-one#:~:text=Customize%20your%20options-,Press%20the%20Xbox%20button%20%EE%8F%A3%20to%20open%20the%20guide%3B%20and,turn%20it%20on%20or%20off https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessib.... [9] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-accessibility-settings/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-acces...
- idontknoworcare 3y ago
  Their policy is for you to get a Gameboy clip on magnification panel. Ebay has them.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    I don't think that would help blind users. In before Steam has moved off of web interfaces (I haven't checked in a couple of years so they might be doing something different now particularly with big picture mode), but I'm frustrated that we all started building interfaces for native platforms in HTML/Javascript and it didn't lead to embracing any of the accessibility features that those same interfaces would get by default inside of a web browser. To be fair, my understanding is that Linux screenreader support is pretty bad, but it does seem like if a developer is going to the trouble to build the majority of their interface in a semantic XML-like pure-text format, there should probably also be an option to read that text out loud.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
They haven't really cared about games since Portal 2. Counterstrike simply enabled them to benefit from their own marketplace, which spread to other games. And we don't need to Talk about Artefact. Alyx was really good but inherently niche given its focus on VR (which made sense, because they had a hardware investment in VR). They have billions so they can do both games and services if they want to. But it sounds like there was a lot of brain drain from the game designer perspective as Valve's priorities shifted. Why risk something as unstable as a game if you can focus on steady income from others making games?
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  As much as I like half life games, there are a handful of studios capable of creating interesting sci-fi shooters but no other company can really have things like Steam Deck, Proton, etc. as some of their core products
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >no other company can really have things like Steam Deck, Proton, etc. as some of their core products well of course not. These aren't product that directly make money. Maybe a small chinese startup can do it, but they would still prefer to ship with Windows. I only really played Portal so I have no real fond memories of TF/CS/HL. But I'm just saying that Valve definitely has the money to invest in games if they really wanted to.
- danShumway 3y ago
  > Alyx was really good but inherently niche given its focus on VR I'm being pretty critical of Valve on here in other places, but I would say that taking the time to make an excellent game even though a platform is niche and even though that game is essentially just a hardware advertisement and even though that advertisement isn't likely to move that platform to be non-niche to me shows a strong commitment to good game design. Alyx didn't really need to exist I don't think. I don't think it moved the needle on making VR any less niche. I don't see it as a good economic move. And yet it's arguably one of the best shooters on VR. I do think they're a lot less interested in game development than they used to be, I do have criticisms of some of their monetization schemes, but whenever they do get interested in games enough to actually make something, they seem to do a pretty good job of it. Even with Artefact, I'm not sure if the game was bad as much as just part of a crowded market and burdened with Valve's (admittedly awful) monetization philosophies for games as a service.
c-hendricks 3y ago
Steam Input alone gets them a lot of respect from me.
fullspectrumdev 3y ago
Years ago I lost access to my steam account that I had since HL2 came out. I was able to get back in by emailing Valve support the account name, and photos of the box and serial key HL2 came in. I was genuinely impressed - up to that point I had absolutely despised Steam as DRM shovelware that almost never worked right due to constantly downloading updates over my shitty internet connection.
Fluorescence 3y ago
I want to see what happens when Gabe retires. If Steam goes public, starts hiring EA management and begins to squeeze the sponge ala Unity, we will regret not challenging Steam's supremacy earlier.
- amatecha 3y ago
  Yeah, it's already bad enough you can no longer play games through Steam that were made for the respective OS, e.g. Windows XP, and soon Windows 7... like, I bought games on steam nearly 20 years ago, and the games I bought at that time were designed to run on the systems of that time (and many haven't been updated since). I expect to still be able to play those games on my old computers... but I literally can't (unless I pirate them), because Valve decided old computers just don't matter and you might as well throw those in the trash, I guess? Cool. Take your favorite game today. In ~20 years, you'll be lucky if you can even play it at all. I guess luckily the backup insurance we have is Linux... but that's also a matter of how far back of a Linux install you could log into Steam with. I guess we'll see. :)
  - dpkonofa 3y ago
    Can't you just play these in a VM?
    - amatecha 3y ago
      What OS would I be running in the VM? I still can't run Steam on the old OS, and thus can't install/run the respective game I'd want to play :( Actually, now that I think about it, I bet a pretty noteworthy % of my Steam library is literally not playable on any OS supported officially by Steam...
      - dpkonofa 3y ago
        I'm pretty sure you have a few options - you can download an old version of Steam and just not update, you can download the games for offline use and then copy them to the VM, you can just download a crack for that game since any game old enough to not be usable on a new OS wouldn't have DRM, or you can pirate them (as you said). :)
aceazzameen 3y ago
It helps that they aren't beholden to shareholders and the "value" of showing unlimited growth. You'll never see enshitification there. They're a group of creators who want to create. Sometimes they slip up, but it's no more than anyone else would.
waihtis 3y ago
Well said. Many Valve products have been absolute artisanal masterpieces. Very rare today.
subtra3t 3y ago
They had the means to implement a good refund policy for Steam (evidenced by the fact that they have a good refund policiy now) but they didn't implement it until they were legally forced to.
kart23 3y ago
wat. enabling kids to gamble with csgo skins and then only doing something about it when it got exposed in the media? the amount of money and stress that minors were going through with the entire csgo gambling racket was insane. they caused real harm imo, and they didn’t even make a change prohibiting it until this year. https://kotaku.com/valve-steam-gambling-csgo-skins-ban-1850428697 https://kotaku.com/valve-steam-gambling-csgo-skins-ban-18504... they don’t care about gamers wellbeing when the alternative is a money printer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_gambling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_gambling
xinayder 3y ago
Don't forget that: - they did a massive fuck up with Artifact, thinking they could pull out MTG's monetization model for an online game (where you didn't even receive card as rewards for levelling up, you actually had to spend money to enjoy playing the game) - they released Underlords and killed it right away, the battle pass is still the first one and the game hasn't received any balancing patch in 3 years Underlords could be a real good competitor to TFT. and Artifact would be nice to compete against Hearthstone's cash grab. Thankfully they actually listened to our feedback and put a nail on the coffin for Artifact.
gumballindie 3y ago
Funny how tech companies that are still owned or run by the technical people that founded them are awesome, while those where business bros take over turn to … dust. A lesson to be learned by us, the market, when we spend money. I prefer spending on those still “true” to their core - steam being one of them. I am literarily using linux daily part thanks to them (I still play games sometimes).
dpkonofa 3y ago
It makes me sad to think about what will happen when the guiding lights at Valve grow dim and have to be replaced. I hope that they can continue this culture that you're describing. Their games are my favorites, the Steam Deck is incredible, Steam itself is wonderful, and Valve's VR platform is the only one that I've ever really enjoyed enough to tell non-tech people about it. Long live Valve. Long live the cabal.

deelowe 3y ago

Steam got so much flak when it first came out because it supported DRM, facilitated the death of physical media, and was generally kind of clunky and buggy. However, looking back, I'm thankful. I think Gabe did truly care about gamers/gaming and was worried about Microsoft's growing interest in gaming. I think he knew that that the transition to digital distribution was inevitable and made it his mission to get a platform out there before Microsoft did, because they would ultimately create something that was not gamer friendly. Perhaps this is all wishful thinking, but history has proven that Valve was perhaps the best steward we could have asked for in supporting the transition to online distribution. If we look at the alternatives be it Microsoft, Epic, or even GOG, no one has done it better. And, when tested, Valve continues to show they strive to do the right thing. For example look at returns. I never thought we'd see a no questions asked return policy for digital games and yet, with steam, it's a fairly simple process. On top of this, when the policy doesn't work (e.g. games which are broken outside of the return window), Valve again does the right thing and creates exceptions.

blibble 3y ago
steam was terrible when it came out however it was still miles better than "Games for Windows Live", which was so bad I don't even try replaying the games that still require it
- dcdc123 3y ago
  Steam came out almost 5 years before GFWL.
  - blibble 3y ago
    probably about the same time they managed to get the Friends service to work
  - dspillett 3y ago
    Giving GFWL less excuse for being as bad as it was. They'd witnessed Steam's early problems, yet repeated them (and added more besides).
- Insanity 3y ago
  I remember using Steam for the games library and using Xfire for the ingame chat features. At some point steam because the only survivor there.
  - HeckFeck 3y ago
    Xfire is something that died a sad death. Used it to chat with many people I met playing Star Wars Galaxies and Empire at War - think it was actually bundled with that one. The profile pages and screenshot uploads were fun too. Another online community lost to the sands of time, alas.
    - Arrath 3y ago
      Don't forget GameSpy. Many, many rounds of multiplayer C&C: Renegade played through that back in the day.
- waymon 3y ago
  > steam was terrible when it came out Do people really think this? I remember applying updates to CS before steam and it was awful. Steam streamlined that and gave us a much needed friends list. I never ever thought steam the application was a bad.
have_faith 3y ago
> was generally kind of clunky and buggy Steam is by far the jankiest program I have installed on my machine. It's TSAB (time to seeing a bug, I just made it up) is measured in seconds, not minutes or hours. I know they're raking in money for being what is mostly a very large FTP server (I kid...), but please spend some of it on the basic experience.
- happymellon 3y ago
  Strange, Steam is quite stable for me. On both my SteamDeck, my couch PC on the main TV, and my laptop. A lot more stable than Tim Sweeneys ego.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  I have only seen one Steam bug once in the last 6 years and that was a game that restarted its download from scratch, followed by the client crashing. Never happened again, never saw another bug either. Used it on hard drives, SATA SSDs and NVMe SSDs.
- ElectricalUnion 3y ago
  Of all the "app store" type programs that I have to interact with, Steam is somehow the least painful one. And I deal with a bunch of them; Gnome Software, Microsoft Store, Epic Games Store, Google Play Store, (Samsung) Galaxy Store, F-droid, not counting some dedicated pseudo-stores aberrations like JetBrains Toolbox and Wargaming.net Game Center... Those are all much smaller (ok, Google Play Store is probably the largest), almost featureless in comparison, yet they are slow as molasses and buggy as hell.
  - subtra3t 3y ago
    Maybe its just my bad system (integrated graphics, 4 GB ram, i3 8th gen processor) but Steam actually performs far worse than MS store, Gnome Store, and the Google Play Store (though thats on my phone and not my laptop).
    - jstarfish 3y ago
lolinder 3y ago
> I never thought we'd see a no questions asked return policy for digital games and yet, with steam, it's a fairly simple process. In general their policy very good, but it's not quite no questions asked—they're pretty strict about the 2 hour playtime limit, which is quite a short time to decide if a game will actually be fun. In many types of games by the time you get through the tutorial and have access to all the game mechanics you're already past the two hour mark, and they also can't tell the difference between actual play time and time in the menu while you're doing something else. EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying it's a bad policy, there are obviously reasons for this. But it's not truly no questions asked.
- ragestorm 3y ago
  The frequency of the returns probably plays a part. Anecdotally, I've returned a couple of games over the 2h limit and they have refunded, no questions asked.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    My only experience with hitting the limit was also the only time I've ever tried to return a game. I'm sure it mostly depends on the service rep handling your claim and how many bogus returns they've seen so far that day.
  - dspillett 3y ago
    Was that 2 hours since purchase, or 2 hours play time? The current limits are 14 days since-purchase as long as you've played the game for less than 2 hours.
    - ragestorm 3y ago
      Hours played. Can’t remember the purchase timeframe. Could of been the difference.
- pseg134 3y ago
  It is quite literally no questions asked. It isn’t meant to be a demo system which is what you seem to want.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
doctorpangloss 3y ago
Steam continues to be the best platform because it shares per-game and per-user cross-game transactional data with everyone. It's kind of hard to explain why this is so important, but it is unique to Steam, compared to all pay-to-play and subscription media as far as I know. Whereas things like DRM and returns and even royalties differ amongst platforms, and none of those have the same hegemony as Steam does; and the compulsory platforms, like the App Store and Google Play, developers complain bitterly about them in a way I've never heard regarding Steam, which they participate in voluntarily.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  Valve will never say “You know what, we are going to go this direction, market be damned. Follow us if you want to be cool” and proceed to introduce a new graphics API. Don’t get me wrong, we needed one, but the current state of graphics “drivers” sucks. Here comes Valve: “Hey bro, I heard graphics apis suck and are bifurcated by platform, here’s a wrapper that wraps them all into an API you probably already use.” (Initial version of their DX9->OpenGL bridge). Years later, Valve again: “You know, we just kept going on that thing we told you about, here’s a full fledged x86 win32 compatibility layer for anything posix. We had to patch the kernel but they were receptive.” Who does this? No one. Not a single company does this. They all have ulterior motives. Patch Linux for some hardware they are introducing for sale or patching it for some platform to get your PII data. Valve is the only company that is patching to make things better for the sake of making “the ecosystem” better. Apple: “We have the best products” yet those products aren’t helping the compute ecosystem. Microsoft: “We have AI” yet those products are still being worked out and is under active litigation from pretty much every creative out there. Valve: “We just want to play, make sense of players, to make better play experiences, to make better games, and not write more code than we have to. Our business is games, not code”.
  - DanielHB 3y ago
    I might get some flak for this, but Meta is pretty big contributor to open source projects. The amount of bugs and features that they work on that are not used in their own products is quite staggering. Their open source projects are very embracing of the community. Google on the other hand...
grumbel 3y ago
> I never thought we'd see a no questions asked return policy for digital games and yet, with steam, it's a fairly simple process. That was however not Valve's idea, but only came in response to EA Origin offering a return policy in 2013, Valve follow up in 2015 with their own. One of the very rare cases where the competition was a little ahead for once.
- TAForObvReasons 3y ago
  Valve's 2 hour refund option came in direct response to a 2014 lawsuit from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission[1]. Rod Sims, head of ACCC at the time, asserted that Valve's original no-refund stance broke Australian law. > Under Australian Consumer Law, everybody who buys a product or a service has a right to a refund if the product doesn’t work. They have a right to a refund, or a repair. Those rights are enshrined in Australian Law, and our allegation is that Valve sought to remove those consumer rights which is a breach of Australian Consumer Law [1] https://gizmodo.com.au/2014/08/accc-commissioner-heres-why-were-suing-valve/ https://gizmodo.com.au/2014/08/accc-commissioner-heres-why-w...
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  UK Consumer Rights Act gives you two weeks for no fuss return of items bought remotely. IME, Steam do not adhere to the law here.
  - solardev 3y ago
    Digital items too?
    - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
      Yes, see eg https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15 section 34.
    - angus-prune 3y ago
      No, GP is incorrect. Digital goods are treated differently under the act.
semi 3y ago
For some context on the early days of steam, I remember the Friends network having reliability issues presumably due to scaling as everyone adopted steam. But by reliability issues I don't mean it occasionally failed. It did, but that was early on. I assume they just killed the backend and never pushed a client update to remove it because I remember what was at least months if not a full year of the friends UI just saying it failed to connect to the Friends network. The actual matchmaking never had any real issues that I remember, but the login servers definitely did, and deleting clientregistry.blob and restarting steam was just a routine thing you did to get steam working again. None of this is really that surprising though, steam was originally a tool just for beta testers, while the live game used WON for matchmaking. WON was shutting down and Valve had to rush steams public release.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
It got flak when it came out because it was released at the same time as HL2 and steam was the _only_ way to get HL2. If you wanted HL2 then you were installing steam, even if you weren't interested in it.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  Steam came out before that. You missed the HL1 mod era.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    I was around before HL1 existed, I didn't miss anything. I wasn't trying to imply they were released on literally the same day, of course steam was out before HL2, but HL2 is what drove its popularity because people were forced to install steam to get access to HL2. And most people resented them for it. At that time, store purchases was still the common way to get at PC games.
    - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
      I resent them now for the same reason but on another game: Civ 5. I even bought that one in a box from a store.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        and still had to install steam? ouch, yeah, that would irritate the crap out of me too.
        Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
        Yes. DVD was pointless. Online steam was required. Worse still it happened to be down that day. The worst possible first impression.

MegaDeKay 3y ago

That their games aren't filled with Pay To Win microtransactions and Day 1 DLC is yet another reason to love Valve. If someone wants to spend a few bucks to buy a hat in TF2, that's fine by me.

lapetitejort 3y ago
Conversely, CSGO and DOTA 2 has facilitated real money gambling among the youth on third party sites for years. Valve has attempted to crack down on gambling sites, however it's still possible for a fourteen year old to insert credit card details and lose real money gambling for virtual skins.
- ysavir 3y ago
  And Artifact has card packs that are effectively loot boxes, and a whole marketplace to facilitate selling/buying them. I don't know how much/if they made any cut from the marketplace, but it's certainly a form of "play to win".
- waveBidder 3y ago
  this is nothing compared to Roblox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ
  - gabereiser 3y ago
    Man complaining about a monetization platform by making a video on a monetization platform.
- dietr1ch 3y ago
  Which could easily be fixed if Valve decided to put a hard-cap by selling skins for a fixed price, even if they were only for sale a couple weeks a year. They'd also pocket all that money, but I guess they don't want people who spent more than said cap to get their skins. But people who are spending 100+ on skins should know they are playing the NFT game.
3y ago

ant6n 3y ago

But when will Half Life 3 be released.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Other than DRM, what's not to like about Steam policies?

alexb_ 3y ago
They've caught a TON of criticism for Counterstrike cases, which is where they make an absolute crapload of money. I don't think it's a big deal, but others do.
sangnoir 3y ago
I don't know if this is accurate, but IIRC, if you're banned, you lose access to even the single-player games in your collection.
- Quikinterp 3y ago
  That sounds odd, because how does your steam account even get banned? If you cheat in a game and get banned, your steam account isn't banned
  - lvass 3y ago
    AFAIK most horror stories are from people who move between countries, particularly from one with "cheaper" prices like Argentina to one with more expensive ones. Not sure if the account itself gets banned but the games previously bought do get locked out.
  - mjh2539 3y ago
    Back in the day playing on VAC servers and attempting to use exploits would get your whole account banned.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  I don't think that happens. You might lose access to features and multiplayer, but not the games you own. At worst, you cannot buy more games or gifts or trade your items. But you can still download the single player games you already have. EDIT: Generally it seems account suspension is possible, but that usually means they noticed something illegal or extremely suspicious activity.

lsaferite 3y ago

My personal Steam customer support 'win' was several years back when I decided to start building a game library for my son. I had purchased Conan and Elite Dangerous while they were on deep discount and gifted them to my son's account. At the time I was unaware that gifts can expire and be refunded. So, at some point the gifts expired and they refunded the purchases, but the game were no longer on that deep discount. I was fairly upset and contacted customer support. The initial customer support agent was unhelpful and I sent a follow-up contact to Gabe that expressed my discontent. I explained that they'd managed to alienate a user that had been on the platform since 2005 and who had a massive library of purchased games at that point. I told them I would no longer be using the platform and would not be using it for my kids either. This email elicited a response from one of the Steam devs and they agreed that my initial interaction was not what they wanted the experience to be. He sent me copies of the games that have been refunded and he sent me to codes for "all present and future Valve titles" for me and my son to be able to play together. In the end he turned it around fully and only increased my appreciation for the company and platform.

oynqr 3y ago
You "own" Half Life 3 in some timeline.
eropple 3y ago
Yeah, Steam has always some really impressively dedicated help when somebody escalates. It's probably harder to access now, but I remember one time in college when TF2 came out of beta and performance was awful. Steam Support didn't have anything, so I sent an email to GabeN; he put me in touch with a senior Source dev who had me press some debug buttons and hop in a game with a bunch of Valve folks (I was pretty good but this was definitely an exception to "game devs are worse that their games than players", I got my ticket punched worse than when I was playing in competitive leagues). A few weeks later there was a patch that significantly improved perf on my particular flavor of hardware.
callalex 3y ago
I’m glad everything worked out for you in the end, but it seems like the Steam policy here is pretty reasonable, and you come across as unreasonable.

BowBun 3y ago

I whole-heartedly agree. They seem good for the right reasons. That said, I'm scared about the inevitable creep of capitalism. What happens when Gabe retires? Or some legal/financial event changes things? I have no reason to doubt them, but history gives me reasons to be cautious with my optimism. We've seen similar parallels with beloved tech companies in the past.

babypuncher 3y ago

Developers don't get much sympathy from users over Valve's store policies precisely because Valve cares so much about the users. Epic makes a big deal about digital storefronts only needing a 12% cut to turn a profit, but Epic isn't turning around and investing that money into things that make the platform better for everyone like Valve does (Steam Input, Proton, Workshop just to name a few things).

ffgjgf1 3y ago
Just like Apple? I do agree with you overall but 30% is still excessive
- happymellon 3y ago
  Better than Apple. Apple don't reinvest in creating open standards, and don't invest in improving user experience for everyone. Their investments are generally to increase lock-in.
- Dr4kn 3y ago
  Yes 30% is a lot, but valve does a lot more than apple imo. Games are a lot larger so bandwidth costs are much higher, they don't charge for in-game transactions, you get free cloud storage for saves, free mod hosting, good multiplayer functionality and much more. Apple gives you less features, has a lot more restrictions and is pretty annoying to deal with
danShumway 3y ago
>into things that make the platform better for everyone Correction, for Steam users, not for everyone. Steam Input and Workshop are completely proprietary services that do not work outside of Steam. Steam Input configs are difficult (not impossible, but unnecessarily complicated) to access/share across services, meaning that even if you do use Steam, if you bought a game outside of Steam and are importing it, you're probably going to be rebuilding the Steam Input config from scratch. Steam Workshop is also inaccessible to games purchased outside of Steam even if you import those games into Steam. And not only has Valve not built a way to link imported games to a Workshop and not provided mechanisms for games to make use of Workshop outside of Steam as an independent service, the company has actually clamped down on efforts to circumvent that DRM and shut down community projects. Both Steam Workshop and Steam Input are very clearly designed to be vendor lock-in. To gamers who only use Steam and nothing else, it feels like Valve is making it better for everyone, but it's a lot more like the Apple ecosystem -- Valve is leaving behind anyone who buys games outside of Steam and almost explicitly punishing users who get games from other storefronts. The company offers a lot of services that can't be debundled from Steam -- you can't as a developer pay Valve to make use of Workshop outside of Steam. And so a lot of these "universal" benefits are really only benefits for people who buy games exclusively on Steam. That's not to say Valve doesn't do great work elsewhere. Proton is genuinely good for the ecosystem, even though Valve still ties it heavily into Steam and combines it with Steam-specific features like shader caches that are inaccessible outside of Steam. I think the Steam Deck is a wonderful device hampered only somewhat by the fact that it's so reliant on Steam Input which is entirely proprietary. But it's still miles above other consoles and I'm genuinely grateful that Valve built it and even more grateful that they based it on Linux. It's repairable, it's far more open than other consoles. Valve might "punish" users for installing 3rd-party software on it but at least installing that software is allowed. Valve is neither perfect nor evil. People get enamored with Valve because our standards for companies have fallen so unbelievably far, to the point where just allowing people to install 3rd-party software and responsibly contributing back to an ecosystem that Valve is heavily reliant on feels like being granted an unexpected gift. We're used to companies abusing consumers even when there's no reason to do so. And so Valve saying "yeah, it makes more sense to us contribute upstream and it makes sense not to treat our customers like crap" is a refreshing difference. But Valve is still a company and is still willing to prioritize its own hold on the PC marketplace over consumer and developer rights; it has plenty of vendor lock-in and plenty of proprietary services and systems that are designed to make it so that you as an end-user can buy the exact same game on two platforms and run both versions on the same device, and one of them will literally perform worse, will be harder to configure, and won't have mod support.

miki123211 3y ago

> but for their never ending support on making sure “gaming” can be enjoyed by all. Oh how I wish that was true. Steam's accessibility story is an utter and inexcusable piece of garbage. Using Steam with a screen reader is a constant struggle, to the point where people had to write guides [1] on how to go about this. It got a bit better recently, at least on Windows, Mac still sucks. There are plenty of Steam games that a blind person can play, sometimes natively[2][3], sometimes through special accessibility mods[4][5][6]. Not to mention the Steamdeck, which has no accessibility support at all, despite the fact that Linux screen readers do exist[7], and consoles like PS5 and Xbox implement their own[8][9]. Valve really doesn't care. [1] (outdated) https://www.mail-archive.com/audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/msg291641.html https://www.mail-archive.com/audiogames-reflector@sabahattin... [2] https://blind.shadows1428.com/ https://blind.shadows1428.com/ [3] https://mortalkombatgamessupport.wbgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/19435787154963-Mortal-Kombat-1-Accessibility-Features-A11Y- https://mortalkombatgamessupport.wbgames.com/hc/en-us/articl... [4] https://github.com/bradjrenshaw/say-the-spire https://github.com/bradjrenshaw/say-the-spire [5] https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/16205 https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/16205 [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQC6TJkBElY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQC6TJkBElY [7] https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/getting-started-with-orca/ https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/getting-started-with-orca/ [8] https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessibility/narrator-on-xbox-one#:~:text=Customize%20your%20options-,Press%20the%20Xbox%20button%20%EE%8F%A3%20to%20open%20the%20guide%3B%20and,turn%20it%20on%20or%20off https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessib.... [9] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-accessibility-settings/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-acces...

idontknoworcare 3y ago
Their policy is for you to get a Gameboy clip on magnification panel. Ebay has them.
- danShumway 3y ago
  I don't think that would help blind users. In before Steam has moved off of web interfaces (I haven't checked in a couple of years so they might be doing something different now particularly with big picture mode), but I'm frustrated that we all started building interfaces for native platforms in HTML/Javascript and it didn't lead to embracing any of the accessibility features that those same interfaces would get by default inside of a web browser. To be fair, my understanding is that Linux screenreader support is pretty bad, but it does seem like if a developer is going to the trouble to build the majority of their interface in a semantic XML-like pure-text format, there should probably also be an option to read that text out loud.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

They haven't really cared about games since Portal 2. Counterstrike simply enabled them to benefit from their own marketplace, which spread to other games. And we don't need to Talk about Artefact. Alyx was really good but inherently niche given its focus on VR (which made sense, because they had a hardware investment in VR). They have billions so they can do both games and services if they want to. But it sounds like there was a lot of brain drain from the game designer perspective as Valve's priorities shifted. Why risk something as unstable as a game if you can focus on steady income from others making games?

coffeebeqn 3y ago
As much as I like half life games, there are a handful of studios capable of creating interesting sci-fi shooters but no other company can really have things like Steam Deck, Proton, etc. as some of their core products
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >no other company can really have things like Steam Deck, Proton, etc. as some of their core products well of course not. These aren't product that directly make money. Maybe a small chinese startup can do it, but they would still prefer to ship with Windows. I only really played Portal so I have no real fond memories of TF/CS/HL. But I'm just saying that Valve definitely has the money to invest in games if they really wanted to.
danShumway 3y ago
> Alyx was really good but inherently niche given its focus on VR I'm being pretty critical of Valve on here in other places, but I would say that taking the time to make an excellent game even though a platform is niche and even though that game is essentially just a hardware advertisement and even though that advertisement isn't likely to move that platform to be non-niche to me shows a strong commitment to good game design. Alyx didn't really need to exist I don't think. I don't think it moved the needle on making VR any less niche. I don't see it as a good economic move. And yet it's arguably one of the best shooters on VR. I do think they're a lot less interested in game development than they used to be, I do have criticisms of some of their monetization schemes, but whenever they do get interested in games enough to actually make something, they seem to do a pretty good job of it. Even with Artefact, I'm not sure if the game was bad as much as just part of a crowded market and burdened with Valve's (admittedly awful) monetization philosophies for games as a service.

c-hendricks 3y ago

Steam Input alone gets them a lot of respect from me.

fullspectrumdev 3y ago

Years ago I lost access to my steam account that I had since HL2 came out. I was able to get back in by emailing Valve support the account name, and photos of the box and serial key HL2 came in. I was genuinely impressed - up to that point I had absolutely despised Steam as DRM shovelware that almost never worked right due to constantly downloading updates over my shitty internet connection.

Fluorescence 3y ago

I want to see what happens when Gabe retires. If Steam goes public, starts hiring EA management and begins to squeeze the sponge ala Unity, we will regret not challenging Steam's supremacy earlier.

amatecha 3y ago
Yeah, it's already bad enough you can no longer play games through Steam that were made for the respective OS, e.g. Windows XP, and soon Windows 7... like, I bought games on steam nearly 20 years ago, and the games I bought at that time were designed to run on the systems of that time (and many haven't been updated since). I expect to still be able to play those games on my old computers... but I literally can't (unless I pirate them), because Valve decided old computers just don't matter and you might as well throw those in the trash, I guess? Cool. Take your favorite game today. In ~20 years, you'll be lucky if you can even play it at all. I guess luckily the backup insurance we have is Linux... but that's also a matter of how far back of a Linux install you could log into Steam with. I guess we'll see. :)
- dpkonofa 3y ago
  Can't you just play these in a VM?
  - amatecha 3y ago
    What OS would I be running in the VM? I still can't run Steam on the old OS, and thus can't install/run the respective game I'd want to play :( Actually, now that I think about it, I bet a pretty noteworthy % of my Steam library is literally not playable on any OS supported officially by Steam...
    - dpkonofa 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure you have a few options - you can download an old version of Steam and just not update, you can download the games for offline use and then copy them to the VM, you can just download a crack for that game since any game old enough to not be usable on a new OS wouldn't have DRM, or you can pirate them (as you said). :)

aceazzameen 3y ago

It helps that they aren't beholden to shareholders and the "value" of showing unlimited growth. You'll never see enshitification there. They're a group of creators who want to create. Sometimes they slip up, but it's no more than anyone else would.

waihtis 3y ago

Well said. Many Valve products have been absolute artisanal masterpieces. Very rare today.

subtra3t 3y ago

They had the means to implement a good refund policy for Steam (evidenced by the fact that they have a good refund policiy now) but they didn't implement it until they were legally forced to.

kart23 3y ago

wat. enabling kids to gamble with csgo skins and then only doing something about it when it got exposed in the media? the amount of money and stress that minors were going through with the entire csgo gambling racket was insane. they caused real harm imo, and they didn’t even make a change prohibiting it until this year. https://kotaku.com/valve-steam-gambling-csgo-skins-ban-1850428697 https://kotaku.com/valve-steam-gambling-csgo-skins-ban-18504... they don’t care about gamers wellbeing when the alternative is a money printer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_gambling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_gambling

xinayder 3y ago

Don't forget that: - they did a massive fuck up with Artifact, thinking they could pull out MTG's monetization model for an online game (where you didn't even receive card as rewards for levelling up, you actually had to spend money to enjoy playing the game) - they released Underlords and killed it right away, the battle pass is still the first one and the game hasn't received any balancing patch in 3 years Underlords could be a real good competitor to TFT. and Artifact would be nice to compete against Hearthstone's cash grab. Thankfully they actually listened to our feedback and put a nail on the coffin for Artifact.

gumballindie 3y ago

Funny how tech companies that are still owned or run by the technical people that founded them are awesome, while those where business bros take over turn to … dust. A lesson to be learned by us, the market, when we spend money. I prefer spending on those still “true” to their core - steam being one of them. I am literarily using linux daily part thanks to them (I still play games sometimes).

dpkonofa 3y ago

It makes me sad to think about what will happen when the guiding lights at Valve grow dim and have to be replaced. I hope that they can continue this culture that you're describing. Their games are my favorites, the Steam Deck is incredible, Steam itself is wonderful, and Valve's VR platform is the only one that I've ever really enjoyed enough to tell non-tech people about it. Long live Valve. Long live the cabal.