I love how Valve's strategy is basically just 'don't piss off the customers and occasionally do something super fucking cool', while everyone else in the space seems to be cutting off their nose to spite their face
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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Valve also gutted their LGBTQIA+ content a few months back. And they have had a MASSIVE nazi infestation basically since they set up message boards because Gabe Newell is infamously libertarian.
So... chill a bit with the glazing. They are better in a lot of ways but they are not our friends.
don't piss off the customers
Unless it's their UI, they love to do pointless changes nowadays. On top of the stuff mentioned by the other replie
It’s literally a plagiarism machine, so I completely agree with them.
Epic Games CEO and Fortnite boss Tim Sweeney:
everyone will have to 'fess up to using it eventually as AI will become "involved in nearly all future production."
Once again Epic games act like the moronic villains they are.
It's sad how huge companies are basically their CEO. CEO makes decisions and talks - that's the company. Even if the hundreds and thousands of workers below them [largely] disagree and would do differently.
This is especially bad in USA, but usually a bit better in European countries that have representation of the unions on the board.
I want to know if AI was used or not to make a game; it's a deciding factor for me, as I will not buy anything built with AI. No matter if it's a placeholder or not, as "AI" is an ethical and environmental concern for me, every prompt, and usage makes things worse. For me, I don't want to send a message that using "AI" is okay for a dev studio by buying the product. I'll exclude them my purchasing choices to send the right message.
I want to know if AI was used or not to make a game; it’s a deciding factor for me, as I will not buy anything built with AI. No matter if it’s a placeholder or not
Same. Once they dipped into the convenience, I can't believe they wouldn't use it again when they're in a rush, crunching, etc.
I don't even touch games with AI-generated store assets, they just feel so cringeworthy. If you can't afford an artist, just use assets from the game ffs.
"Calls."
There's only one call, and it's coming from Tim Sweeny at Epic. It's just more of his usual yelling at clouds, because he's got a pathological hate-on for anyone else who runs a storefont, including Apple and Google but especially Valve. He hasn't made any positive contribution to the world since about 1998, and at this point we can all safely discard his opinion with nothing of value being lost. He wants to allow AI slime on his own platform because he thinks it'll make him free money, but maybe he ought to worry about the smell coming from his own house before he goes around trying to dictate at others how they should run theirs.
It's so unfunny that the only one to contest Valve on PC monopoly is Tim Fortnite, who seemingly does the worst job everywhere yet still can still afford it. It's almost like Gaben himself created a perfect villain for his company, so it'd never be criticized.
Gog (and to an extent, itch) are also competing with steam but while they might not be coming close to their market share they don’t draw anywhere near the ire that epic does and just similarly just rely on their strengths.
Yeah. GoG and Humble (as well as many MUCH smaller stores) have very much criticized the de facto Valve monopoly over the years (... decades?). As have many devs who have criticized just how much of a percentage Valve takes (and how they reduce that for the big games). They just generally are smart enough to say it VERY obliquely because they know they don't want to antagonize a rabid userbase.
Epic... Epic increasingly are poised to "not need" PC gamers as it were. Fortnite is its own platform and Unreal Engine is increasingly used by film and industry. So they are much more willing to criticize Valve (and only occasionally remember EGS is sort of a thing...) which... tends to highlight why nobody else does.
Your comment just made me realize I did a kind of GOG holiday sale shopping spree this year after having not done a steam holiday sale purchase in like a decade.
And the majority of it was having cheap easy drm-free access to some very good and very old games. Like yeah I know I have my ISO of the TIE Fighter collector's cd-rom somewhere around here, but if I can permanently have legit drm-free access to all versions of the game for just a few dollars, then supporting the business enabling that is a no brainer.
That needs just two words:
Thank you.
Gabe wins the internet once again.
Wasn’t Gabe, but it was an artist for Valve.
A king's victory is won by his soldiers
(/j they're not monolithic or synonymous)
Based
Cool.
Maybe they can also stop forcing updates that break my game, too?
Fortunately, GOG exists. Which proves that Steam doesn't need to force the updates on us, but chooses to.
If your games are breaking on update, isn't that the game devs' faults?
It varies.
There are definitely cases where the latest update outright breaks the game and that is bad QC.
But what people generally refer to here are games with a modding scene. A vocal part of the userbase rely heavily on mods and/or custom DLLs. So when the game updates, all of those break until the modders and tool writers are able to catch up.
There are a lot of implications to this for games with (meaningful) online components. But for predominantly SP games? It is a fun time when you sit down to play a game in the evening and see it was updated and know you can't go back to that save/game for at least a few days. And there very much SHOULD be a way to opt out or freeze a version for those.