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Can we stop the steam/gabe glazing?
They are responsible for some of the worst practices in modern video games and are generally not a consumer focused company but you're doing PR for them for free
Can we stop pretending steam is literally Satan when their competition is some of the worst companies to ever exist?
This is what I mean, you give any criticism of lord Gaben and people will act like I'm saying steam is "literally satan"
I'm not pretending that the epic cunt store from Tim Sweeney is better by any metric, but let's remember there are problems with Steam, it playing a role in the introduction of gambling into videogames. CSGO, TF2, without the steam integration, it would not have worked. And furthermore, Steam is proprietary and works as digital restrictions management. Without Steam running in the background, your game won't start. Yes, there's offline mode, but one day it could be taken away from you and there's nothing you could do against that. I say this with my large steam library and it worries me.
One day MS could come to your home and shoot you in the face too...
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.
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.
The big ones being the popularisation of the licence model for video games, so you don't actually own your games and they can pull your licence at any time.
Loot boxes and child gambling, they basically started that with CS.
They're the ones that popularised early access as a format.
Had to be sued into having a refund policy
Gabe newall is a biollaire that owns a yatch company and a fleet of super yacht, all that money has been skimmed from actual hard working Devs, many smaller ones also have been squeezed into participating in steam sales when they don't want to just to get steam to promote their game. Even thought they will happily push asset flips slop.
They have also put in place system to protect Devs from "review bombing" when those Devs screw over their olayerbase, then will also allow "legitimate" reviews after a human has reviewed them, that are just culture war stuff that has nothing to do with the game.
Because steam has very few employees and basically doesn't make games anymore.
This goes back decades before Gaben left Microsoft. Valve absolutely did not "popularize" it- this wa ready the industry standard. Even GoG, though they give lipservice about "owning" games, only sells licenses. They give access to files, sure, but it's still not legal to copy or re-sell them, you can't legally pass them down in your will when you die, you can't modify or reverse-engineer the code. Well, technically it depends on the publisher so you may find the occasional exception, but by and large you do not "own" your games on any platform.
First of all, I don't even know what you're referring to here. HALO 3 had a beta back in 2007. Minecraft was early access in 2009.
Second, is early access even a bad thing? It's been an incredible boon for the indie scene because it bypasses the need for a ton of up-front capital. This has allowed indie devs to throw up a Kickstarter and start getting money in the door to quit their day jobs, and also allowed player feedback throughoit the development process. Yes, there are some risks and there have been abuses. But there have also been a ton of success stories. Personally I played Subnautica and Hades in early access, and I think they were great at the time and great at their time of full release. Games like Slay the Spire, Prison Architecht, Darkest Dungeon, Dead cells, Kerbal Space Program, and more were made possible by early access. Even Baldur's Gate 3 benefited from an early access (though that was probably more about the feedback than the money).
They still provided refunds prior to that, it's just that before then they were such a small company it was handled on a case-by-case basis. The lawsuit was about the application of specifically Australian consumer protection law and whether that was applied to international digital commerce. The judge ruled that the laws did apply, so Valve went ahead and covered their asses by writing up the policy, which is still one of the most generous for digital videogames in the industry.
I'm all in favor of having nationalized platforms instead, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon. Go ahead and seize all the assets of every billionaire. But if we are going to do that, I think we should start at the top with the richest and then see how the rest divest themselves of assets first.
Technically, this hurts publishers directly and devs only indirectly.
Also 30% has been the industry standard since before Valve existed, going back to physical stores. Should Valve reduce it? Maybe, but if we look over at what Epic is doing with their 12% cut I'm not impressed. The platform sucks and the savings don't seem to be passed to consumers so I don't see how that's any better.
Shovelware has always been a thing. Go look back at the great videogame crash of 1983. Go look at the Nintendo eShop today or the Google Play Store. You're kind of disproving yourself here- you claim that 30% cut is preventing indie devs from releasing on Steam, yet there were over 19,000 games released on Steam this year alone! Surely there aren't that many big AAA titles, are there?
What Steam DOES provide is tools to allow the consumer to make an informed decisions and easily filter out what they do and don't want. I see people complain about all the NSFW games even though the default setting is to hide them lol.
Welcome to the modern Internet. "Review bombs" can be for a variety of different reasons and my opinions differ. When 2K updated their launcher and added it to games that previously didn't, and broke Steam Deck compatibility, those games absolutely deserves to get negative reviews. If a company tweets a pride flag in June and a bunch of incels decide to review bomb the game, well, I'm glad Valve steps in to stop that.
I'd say Valve does a better job of handling reviews than most companies. Having information like the reviewer's play time and the ability to vote reviews as helpful or unhelpful is great. But really I see reviews as being more for the person leaving it to scream into the void than anything else. If I'm making a purchasing decision and I'm looking for more information on a game, I'll go to YouTube or Reddit or Lemmy or any one of a variety of other places first anyways.
This is still an instance of them being less shitty than their competitors. They DO still make games, just smaller ones like Aperture Desk Job and Half-Life Alyx. They also support their live service games. They also have hardware.
They make good decisions and don't take dumb risks with their headcount. That doesn't make them a great company, but that makes them better than most of the industry.
No. With physical media you owned it and pre steam you couldnt have a licence arbitrarily revoked.
Betas are not early access.
Yes it's bad for consumers, to release unfinished products, just look at KSP2
Oh yeah steam was just a poor tiny multi billion dollar company and by far the biggest disturber of pc games before 2015. And they weren't against refunds, hence why they fought tooth and nail against the lawsuit and every individual refund before then.
Cool, the cut record labels take is pretty standard. That doesn't mean it isn't predatory.
Tell the TF2 community they support their service games
No, you don't own a game just because you have it physically. Just because you chose not to read the legalese in the manual or in the game itself doesn't magically grant you ownership. Physical media IS memuch harder to revoke the license for, nearly impossible. This applies to all software, not just videogames.
Superdistribution was one of the earliest forms of DRM, invented in 1983. Even before that there were videogames that came with physical objects and codes the user had to input.
You're splitting hairs a bit here with Early Access vs Beta, but fair enough I should have specified that HALO 3 had early access. There was a multiplayer, unfinished version of the game available for purchase before the game was finished.
No one is saying that releasing unfinished products is good for consumers, but that happens both with and without early access. Look at Superman64 or Cyberpunk2077. Just because the dev chooses to slap a 1.0 version number on a piece of software doesn't mean it's a fair deal, and just because they use a 0.X version number doesn't mean it's a bad deal.
At the start of 2015, Steam hit a record of 8.47 million concurrent users. . Just a couple of months ago, Steam set the current record of 41.6 million. That's basically a 5x increase. For reference, the PS2, DS, and Switch EACH sold more than 150 million units in their lifetimes. Steam was just a tiny fraction of gamers back in 2015, and it's still only a small chunk.
The Australia lawsuit was NOT because Valve was refusing to give refunds, but because they did not have a written policy fully informing Australian consumers of their rights and did not have statutory guarantees that the goods would be of acceptable quality. The lawsuit itself between Valve and the Australian government for not following the full letter of compliance and having the correct legalese on the storefront, not because Valve was some sort of anti-redund advocate.
You're just going to call Valve charging for their services predatory? That's a bold claim. Is Valve colluding with other storefronts? Have they captured regulatory bodies to put rules in place that prevent new competitors from entering the industry? Have they started buying up their competitors to form a horizontal monopoly, or their suppliers/customers to form a vertical monopoly?
Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 were both updated 3 days ago. Counter-Strike 2 was updated LITERALLY AS I WAS TYPING THIS. It's hard to imagine having a worse take than this lol.
Well you could always be writing paragraphs and paragraphs defending a billionaire from mild and valid criticism on the internet.