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>into things that make the platform better for everyone Correction, for Steam users, not for everyone. Steam Input and Workshop are completely proprietary ser

>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.

skeaker 3y ago
Regarding Steam input, can't you add any program as a "non-steam game" and apply custom inputs with it? I haven't used it much myself, but as far as I know there isn't any sort of lockout on what you're able to apply it to. And regarding the workshop, I would be lying if I said that I never bought a game on Steam only for the convenience of using the workshop for said game... But then I have also paid Nexus for their mods because by default they cap downloads at 1 mb/s. I am also aware of tools that let you download workshop mods for games you don't own. It's certainly less convenient to have to manually download them and drag-and-drop them into your mod manager or mods folder or whatever, but they hardly make it impossible, so it's not like the mods are actually locked in to the platform.
- danShumway 3y ago
  > can't you add any program as a "non-steam game" and apply custom inputs with it? I mentioned this -- you can only do so if you use Steam as the launcher, Steam Input is tied to using the overall Steam client. Additionally, you'll have to make that config by scratch, Steam's community sharing for configs is much more limited for non-Steam games. This seems like a small complaint but if you're buying new games you don't know what the optimal config is, so the Steam Input experience for non-Steam games is that you load up the game and as you play it you constantly adjust the config until you find an setup that works, as opposed to Steam games where you just download the highest rated community config and go from there. On top of that, there are Steam Input features that flat-out don't work for 3rd-party games; specifically input glyphs within the game. Steam offers an API for developers to define "action sets" that among other features will make sure that instructions within the game use the correct keybindings and pictures. 3rd-party game are (as far as I can tell) completely locked out of that service. ---- > I am also aware of tools that let you download workshop mods for games you don't own [...] but they hardly make it impossible, so it's not like the mods are actually locked in to the platform. I mentioned this as well, Steam has actually gone after and shut down community projects that allow you to do this. It's much harder than it used to be and for some games it's outright impossible. Steam Workshop is literally DRM as far as I'm concerned; there are plenty of games that are completely inaccessible. Even if that wasn't the case, the inability for 3rd-party games to be linked to Steam Workshop profiles by users is vendor lock-in. The vast majority of gamers didn't have the technical skills to route around Steam's restrictions even before Steam started shutting down community projects and putting ownership checks in front of downloads. ---- What would be far more market-friendly and what would actually benefit everyone would be for Valve to debundle those services from Steam -- I'm not saying every developer should be able to use Steam Workshop for free, but Steam Workshop should not be tied to Steam. It should just be "Valve Workshop". There are a lot of games that are Steam exclusive specifically because there are Steam APIs that they can't take advantage of on other storefronts. And it's very common for games to come to other platforms outright missing features (particularly online content) because developers don't even have a choice to pay to utilize those features outside of Steam. I think modding and input configuration are the two most obvious examples of this, but if you've ever bought a game on GoG and then found out after the fact that it's missing an entire game mode, Steam is (in my experience) probably the reason for that.

skeaker 3y ago

Regarding Steam input, can't you add any program as a "non-steam game" and apply custom inputs with it? I haven't used it much myself, but as far as I know there isn't any sort of lockout on what you're able to apply it to. And regarding the workshop, I would be lying if I said that I never bought a game on Steam only for the convenience of using the workshop for said game... But then I have also paid Nexus for their mods because by default they cap downloads at 1 mb/s. I am also aware of tools that let you download workshop mods for games you don't own. It's certainly less convenient to have to manually download them and drag-and-drop them into your mod manager or mods folder or whatever, but they hardly make it impossible, so it's not like the mods are actually locked in to the platform.

danShumway 3y ago
> can't you add any program as a "non-steam game" and apply custom inputs with it? I mentioned this -- you can only do so if you use Steam as the launcher, Steam Input is tied to using the overall Steam client. Additionally, you'll have to make that config by scratch, Steam's community sharing for configs is much more limited for non-Steam games. This seems like a small complaint but if you're buying new games you don't know what the optimal config is, so the Steam Input experience for non-Steam games is that you load up the game and as you play it you constantly adjust the config until you find an setup that works, as opposed to Steam games where you just download the highest rated community config and go from there. On top of that, there are Steam Input features that flat-out don't work for 3rd-party games; specifically input glyphs within the game. Steam offers an API for developers to define "action sets" that among other features will make sure that instructions within the game use the correct keybindings and pictures. 3rd-party game are (as far as I can tell) completely locked out of that service. ---- > I am also aware of tools that let you download workshop mods for games you don't own [...] but they hardly make it impossible, so it's not like the mods are actually locked in to the platform. I mentioned this as well, Steam has actually gone after and shut down community projects that allow you to do this. It's much harder than it used to be and for some games it's outright impossible. Steam Workshop is literally DRM as far as I'm concerned; there are plenty of games that are completely inaccessible. Even if that wasn't the case, the inability for 3rd-party games to be linked to Steam Workshop profiles by users is vendor lock-in. The vast majority of gamers didn't have the technical skills to route around Steam's restrictions even before Steam started shutting down community projects and putting ownership checks in front of downloads. ---- What would be far more market-friendly and what would actually benefit everyone would be for Valve to debundle those services from Steam -- I'm not saying every developer should be able to use Steam Workshop for free, but Steam Workshop should not be tied to Steam. It should just be "Valve Workshop". There are a lot of games that are Steam exclusive specifically because there are Steam APIs that they can't take advantage of on other storefronts. And it's very common for games to come to other platforms outright missing features (particularly online content) because developers don't even have a choice to pay to utilize those features outside of Steam. I think modding and input configuration are the two most obvious examples of this, but if you've ever bought a game on GoG and then found out after the fact that it's missing an entire game mode, Steam is (in my experience) probably the reason for that.