this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2026
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These guys are so privileged they think they are entitled to success without innovation.
THERE WAS NOTHING LIKE STEAM AT THE TIME.
If they want what Gabe has they need to do what he did: INNOVATE.
I cannot emphasize this enough. This is the entire modus operandi when it comes to venture capital and "entrepreneurs" in industry.
They have a singular talent: exploitation. Be it a mineral rich vein under a mountain, an oil/gas field, middle-class folks with spending cash, gig workers, or information economy workers (e.g. programmers), it's just one more resource to convert into wealth. Left unchecked, all the social evils we see from this thinking come into play: inequality, slavery, usury, fascism, and so on. The above even applies to their own employees, as there is no distinction in class of human being outside of the status of "owner". There is no higher calling, no alternative focus. There are only resources and money.
The instant you make "keeping the company alive", "make a product people actually want", or even "employ people"a focus, the goal is no longer exploitative. It's arguably more socialist, even if the overall goal is to continue to thrive as a for-profit business. As a result, it's not useful to these jackals as-is. It must first be converted into parts to be exploited.
Such a thing is also a pariah in capitalist circles. They fucking hate it. The bigger Valve gets, the more hit-pieces we see in the media. Also, the more we see CEOs circle the wagons when the likes of Epic attempts to topple their market dominance somehow, and it always fails. Socialist corporate ju-jitsu appears to be a winning strategy, and thank goodness.
Also not be shitbag garbage monsters.
A lot of people don't seem to understand that Steam is DRM.
No one wanted to use Steam when it was released and the only reason anyone did is vendor lock-in on copies of Half-Life that were purchased at retail with no mention of Steam until Valve altered the bargain.
Some "innovation" to force people to use your service to keep playing a game they already purchased.
I'm surprised that people are so pro steam here. I guess more younger people than older people that remember how garbage it was. It was GameSpy arcade with extra steps. I'll get down voted all day but this is how steam was looked at. No one wanted it and it was a complete disaster for a long time. Like let's add a monstrous background task when everyone had single core cpus.
Because most people started using Steam when it became good, and not the clunky pile of shit it was before 2008.
Solid point.
Who is really denying or surprised by the idea that Steam is a form of DRM?
His innovation was to create the modern online verification bullshit that plagues the industry. Before Steam, you bought a game, put in the disc, and played it. If it HAD and online component, you may have had to type in a CD key.
No extra launcher to access your library. No having to reconnect to the internet to renew your license. I had a dedicated gaming PC that didn't even have a modem. And no mandatory updates. It's unacceptable that any time I want to play a single-player game I have to hope there hasn't been some 140 gig patch that I have to install because the multi-player suite I'll never open added a new $30 outfit to a character and they just make everyone reinstall everything.
If Half Life 2 had come out a year earlier, I wouldn't have been able to play it because I didn't have internet connected to my gaming PC until college.
God I remember raging at having to go online and install this "Steam" bullshit thing just to play a game I bought from the brick and mortar store in my town.
All of those problems are easily avoided by not playing AAA slop
If you're installing a game through Steam, you're dealing with DRM, a third-party launcher, and online verification, and Steam is taking a 30% cut to insert those features into the process. It doesn't matter how "indie" your game is.
I hardly deal with online verification. I travel a lot and have a laptop with singleplayer games I downloaded through Steam and play them with no internet connection whatsoever all the time
In some industries and markets, copycats can come along and undercut the original without actually improving things, but just offering a better price. For whatever reason, nobody else seems to be able to meaningfully compete with Steam on that front, either.