memes

Also platformed independent game developers.

Microsoft practically handed it to Valve. Microsoft wanted gamers off the PC and on to the xbox so they ignored the PC platform they were already dominant on. This gave free reign to Valve. One of the biggest mistakes in PC history if you ask me.

Valve's big business strategy seems to be just wait for your competition to shoot themselves in the foot

Helping the gaming community by popularising not owning your games, lootboxes and child gambling, early access and asset flips as well as being the first to cave when visa and MasterCard started pressuring companies to stop selling certain games?

what were you smoking? nintendo has never been the good guy...they successfully patented the "digital representation of water" back in the day

Valve is worker-run and largely worker owned, it's literally 350 people who just work on whatever they think is a good idea

They're technically a corporation, but also an amazing argument for collective ownership

That scares me. I've been a huge steam fan boy since it was in beta. Lots of nostalgia. When the OGs pass away and valve is sold off to Amazon.. the end

Stop giving credence to valve being a monopoly. That's tech bro propaganda. They are literally not a monopoly. There is multiple digital storefronts for PC gaming. There is options. There is choice. Do not further the narrative and get fucking valve antitrusted for no goddamn reason other than Microsoft wants them dead.

I would go further and say that all that they've done are """merely""" sound elements in a strategy to avoid that in the era of always-online remote updateable software, Microsoft successfully uses their position as the provider (and, more importantly, controller of some of what runs in pretty much all consumer instances) of Windows to squeeze out Steam as a games store.

Microsoft slowly transforming for Windows applications into the equivalent of Apple for iOS applications (and their move towards signed applications could be part of that) would be a nightmare scenario for Steam and it's a realistic possibility, especially if you notice that Microsoft is moving towards "everything must be cryptographically signed by Microsoft" to run in Windows.

So it totally makes strategical sense for Steam to invest into getting as many gamers as possible away from the Windows ecosystem, and one path is to get more games to as easily as possible run in the already existing and established alternative to Windows - Linux - the easiest way being to invest in an ever improved Windows-Linux adaptor layer (i.e. Wine/Proton) backed by a Steam store in Linux which just seamlessly uses that layer when needed, whilst another path is to sell their own game machines which do not run Windows and there again using Linux makes sense as the OS, both because it already exists and is mature and because using it on their machines has synergies with their investment in the "make games targeting Windows seamlessly run on Linux without needing changes".

This isn't Valve and Steam being nice guys doing nice things because they love their customers who use Linux, it's just good long term business planning and management of maybe their greatest external risk - Microsoft.

I mean, "Yay for choosing Linux!" and "Respect for their business sense", but lets not deceive ourselves into thinking they're good guys because of doing what just makes sense strategically to manage Microsoft as a risk.

Fifa ultimate team. Magic the Gathering cards. Both older

I am not gonna buy it. But fuck man, I am exited as hell for what is going to happen with PC gaming and OSes. I feel that thanks to Valve we going to finally break MS' iron grip on OS market.

A few years ago? I would have said "oh that's near for laypeople, but I am better off building my own PC".

With the prices of GPU's, RAM, and SSD's.... The Steam Machine might legit be a better value than building it myself.

But what if I want to confirm I am rich for being smart and thinking out the box instead of having rich parents and exploiting people like half of those poors think I am?

Can we stop pretending steam is literally Satan when their competition is some of the worst companies to ever exist?

They are responsible for some of the worst practices in modern video games

Such as? They didn't invent micro transactions or DLC or DRM. They allow publishers to do that on their platform but do a better job than any other store at communicating those things to consumers.

not a consumer focused company

The reason Valve gets glazed is that they BALANCE the needs of their stakeholders better.

Microsoft has been laying off workers and increasing the price of their crappy hardware no one wants, trying to push Xbox Live so that consumers own nothing and just rent acces to games. They buy up studios and force them to make soulless games stuffed with micro transactions or just close them down. Even the famous horse armor debacle from Bethesda was because Microsoft pushed them to do it (the game was a timed exclusive for Windows and Xbox).

Nintendo insists on charging ridiculous amount for underpowered hardware, forcing their own proprietary cartridge formats that don't even have the game on it. Lockig. Their old library in a disney-like vault of either not publishing those old games, locking them behind a subscription, or charging ridiculous prices for ports to modern hardware. Refusing to publish on PC. To their credit, Nintendo seems to treat their employees well at least, with the executives taking significant pay cuts during the WiiU era in order to avoid layoffs or pay cuts for the rest of their employees.

Sony is... Mostly fine. They have had some layoffs, but nowhere near Xbox levels. Their hardware is expensive, but it's also the most capable (maybe some debate with the Series X but that's also more expensive)- they're just targeting a premium demographic and leaving the budget tier behind. Sony has been dominating hardware sales this generation simply by sucking less than the others. The biggest criticism is probably that all of their 1st party games are starting to feel the same: 3rd person over-the-shoulder cinematic experiences. It's also fair to criticize failed projects like PSVR2 I suppose, but I would say part of why that failed is that Sony didn't try to shove it down consumers throats and instead just made it available and let consumers tell them how much they want it (which was not much). In contrast to things like the Xbox Kinect or the WiiU Gamepad.

Epic games... I mean Tim Sweeney is just plain shitty. Their whole business model is to throw Fortnight money at everything and hope. Throw money at publishers for times exclusivity. Throw free games at consumers hoping they don't realize how terrible the platform is. Taking a lower cut of sales than Steam or physical retailers do is cool for the publishers, but that isn't enough to make me want to set up an account.

GOG is a fine niche. On paper I love the idea of changing the way games are sold so that people own games. Except you still don't. The publishers are still selling the exact same licenses they sell everywhere else. I can't copy or modify or re-sell my games, I can't leave them to my estate when I die, so I don't call that 'owning' my games. It's really hard to take them seriously when they don't support Linux too. Plus the launcher and the platform just don't have the features that Steam does.

In contrast... Searching for Valve layoffs on the internet I can only see that they laid off 13 people back in 2019. The Steam Store does a better job than any other of providing information for consumers to make informed decisions: what control options are available, what DRM and EULA's the publisher requires, what DLC and bundles are available, the use of AI in game creation, and a ton more. And as for price... You might occasionally find games cheaper elsewhere, but it's rare. Then the hardware... The Steam Deck is the best value anyone has put out since... Honestly I can't think of a better value in history. It's better than the PS2, the Wii, the GBA, everything else i can think of. The Valve Index was a competitive high-end VR system and the first steam controller has issues, but filled a specific niche and was a cult classic. The new hardware looks like it will be great, though of course we will need to see how it goes and what the prices are.

I would love it if Valve could stand up to payment processors to fight censorship, but I also understand they're over a barrel there. I would love it if Valve could convince publishers to get rid of DRM but that does not seem like a reasonable expectation (especially as long as people are willing to buy games with DRM anyways- I blame consumers for not caring more than I blame Valve). I might even be cool if Valve reduced their cut, but... Is that really what the games industry needs?

It's really bizarre to me how on Lemmy any time Valve does anything good there's a bunch of comments chastising people for "glazing" them or being "fanboys". Sometimes companies (especially ones that are not publicly traded) stumble into making decent decisions. There are still a few corporations that act like they are in mid-stage capitalism instead of late-stage capitalism. Costco would be another example in the grocery industry- I don't love them or everything they do, but they at least make some effort to balance the interest of ownership, employees, consumers, and suppliers so that they can sustain long-term business relationships instead of chasing quarterly profit increases.