Modder behind the 'Swiss army knife of PC gaming' deletes their 20 year-old Steam account with anti-Valve manifesto: 'By the end of my bitter dealings with Valve… there was zero hope'
I don't entirely disagree with all of this persons points, but then they praise EGS and M$ as somehow better? Valve has plenty of issues, but they are definitely a shining beacon of light in contrast to the void that is pretty much any other storefront (GOG being an exception that they also recognize). Like, I agree that their promises of contingency plans regarding Steam DRM seem like a lie at this point, but every other store (except GOG) does this and Valve has done plenty of good for PC gaming otherwise. Steaminput works fine for me and I love that SteamOS is a viable alternative to M$, and all the good stuff is free.
Okay, Valve has a DRM API, their client doesn't support old operating systems, and they hook system APIs in dumb ways. The first and last points—sure, that I agree with. Not indefinitely supporting EOL operating systems, I don't, but whatever.
But to then go on and recommend Epic Games Store and Microsoft Game Pass? Buddy, you're deranged.
EGS is consumer hostile and a side project for a company whose main revenue comes from Fortnite and Unreal Engine. Steam is a side project-turned-cash-cow for a former game development studio and makes up 99% of their revenue. If either of these is going to be shuttered and end up as a waste of my hypothetical money with nothing to show for it, it ain't going to be Steam.
And then Game Pass... If you're resigned to being a pessimist and accepting that you'll never own anything, fine. That's your choice. But to recommend it to others as a better alternative to Steam? Steam has its problems, but it's not vendor-locked to its own operating system or a recurring monthly subscription. And if a game gets delisted, you at least still get to keep it on Steam.
After reading both the article and his GitHub post, he very clearly got butthurt about something personal and crashed the fuck out. I just think the AI writing for PCGamer just doesn't have the ability to identify common human behavior so they think it's actually news?
Meanwhile M$ is pricing new games in an intentional way to push people to monthly game subscriptions, which will be enshitified to milk both players and developers once all are locked into the platform