As a person who resisted hard 20 years ago, they earned it. I didn’t get used to it, I found value. In cloud saves, in steam sales, in no pushy advertising, and so on.
As a Linux user over 20 years they also did what nobody else really tried. That matters a lot.
My husband remembers buying The Ship in a store, and when he went to install it out said he had to install something called Steam for the multiplayer. He was baffled and annoyed.
Now all the games we have save a few from GOG are steam.
I see 0 reason to buy a used game over pirating it so I don’t really see what was lost. In both cases the devs get nothing, and buying from someone else is a hassle, and having large physical media instead of just some files is also annoying.
If we didn’t have steam we’d instead have the fucking epic games store or EA origin (or whatever they renamed it to). Just because valve isn’t perfect doesn’t mean any publically traded company wouldn’t have been so much worse. And they also did plenty of actual positives with SteamOS, Steam Deck, being the first to push consumer VR with the Vive…
No.
As a person who resisted hard 20 years ago, they earned it. I didn’t get used to it, I found value. In cloud saves, in steam sales, in no pushy advertising, and so on.
As a Linux user over 20 years they also did what nobody else really tried. That matters a lot.
My husband remembers buying The Ship in a store, and when he went to install it out said he had to install something called Steam for the multiplayer. He was baffled and annoyed.
Now all the games we have save a few from GOG are steam.
Some games are bought directly from the developer too.
They failed at first attempt with steamOS, but they learned the lesson, and came back swinging with years of preparation.
Yeah the steam “sales” that cost more than used physical games because valve killed them. How generous of Gabe.
The steam cult among PC gamers is fucking absurd. Valve did more damage to PC gaming than any other company on the planet.
If it weren’t for national and local governments repeatedly suing them we wouldn’t even have their meager 2 hour refund policy.
I see 0 reason to buy a used game over pirating it so I don’t really see what was lost. In both cases the devs get nothing, and buying from someone else is a hassle, and having large physical media instead of just some files is also annoying.
If we didn’t have steam we’d instead have the fucking epic games store or EA origin (or whatever they renamed it to). Just because valve isn’t perfect doesn’t mean any publically traded company wouldn’t have been so much worse. And they also did plenty of actual positives with SteamOS, Steam Deck, being the first to push consumer VR with the Vive…