The 'enshittification' of the Steam games platform is inevitable, and there are already warning signs.
  • BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    One extremely important factor that this article neglects to address: Valve is a private company - it’s not publicly traded in Wall Street. That is the reason Steam has remained the best in the business; it’s not beholden to shareholders’ short-sighted meddling. It’s also the reason Steam is effectively immune to enshittification.

    • potatopotato@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      2 years ago

      The unspoken part is that unless Gabe has a very strong plan involving some sort of employee co-op, when he retires or dies the company will likely get sold by the estate to private capital which is 100x worse than being a public company.

    • tabular@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      When Valve makes a change to Steam that you disagree with your choice is to give up using Steam, and your purchased games, or just accept it and continue. Steam is proprietary software: it gives unjust power over user’s computing. Even good people are not immune to the temptation to use power for themselves at the expense of others. While Valve have done a lot of good, indeed are the best, no one is perfect. I don’t understand why you think it has no potential to become a lot worse.

      • hikaru755@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        Nobody is talking about “no potential”. Just “a lot less potential than any other option out there”, and that’s currently the best we got

        • Heavybell@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          GOG doesn’t contribute to Proton AFAIK, and doesn’t offer amazing QOL stuff like Steam Input. But what you buy from them is yours forever, assuming you sensibly back it up yourself. So “best we got” is debatable depending on what you value.

    • corbin@infosec.pubOP
      01·
      2 years ago

      Valve has avoided many of the same anti-consumer moves as other tech and gaming giants, likely due to its smaller size, status as a non-public company, and the long-time leadership of Gabe Newell and other executives. Valve won’t stay that way forever—the company is not immune to the pressures of capitalism, and there are already examples of anti-consumer behavior.

      Valve is not immune to enshittification, and it has already happened on some level with minimal current Mac support, facilitating gambling through item trades, etc.

  • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.ca
    0·
    2 years ago

    I do hope to see more competition in the Linux gaming space. It’s not good long term to fully rely on Valve for everything.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    01·
    2 years ago

    My primary complaint with Steam is the quality of the games.

    I’ve had a Steam account now for… let’s see here… 19 years:

    Being primarily a console gamer, I rarely used it until I bought a Steam Deck. Then I went looking for Steam exclusive games I couldn’t otherwise play on my Xbox Series X, PS5, Nintendo Switch…

    What I found was a lot of garbage porn games, and a lot of garbage anime games, and a lot of garbage anime porn games.

    It’s super difficult finding something worth while to play. So it’s not a surprise to me to see that the #1 game is eight years old:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/8-year-old-game-is-currently-steam-deck-s-most-played/ar-BB1l2KRV

    • fictitiousexistence@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 years ago

      What I found was a lot of garbage porn games, and a lot of garbage anime games, and a lot of garbage anime porn games.

      Dang that sucks. Sorry you couldn’t find a porn game you liked.

      🤭