Game devs praise Steam as a 'democratic platform' that 'continues to be transformative' for PC gaming today
Game devs praise Steam as a 'democratic platform' that 'continues to be transformative' for PC gaming today
"It's just a great constant in our industry that is [otherwise] really in f***ing panic mode."
- Provide a good service
- Don’t fuck with it
- Count your money
Steam is a true “disrupter,” because they do business the way people did for centuries before higher short-term profits became the only goal.
I find it hilarious that despite competition from a dozen game studios and publishers, steam essentially destroyed all of them by doing basically nothing and merely maintaining their service.
Ditto, and then you see people claiming they're a monopoly despite not doing anything monopolistic, supporting other launchers in steam, and allowing keys purchased through other stores to activate on steam.
Meanwhile epic is throwing around exclusivity deals, but that's fine because they're too incompetent a storefront to make an actual impact I guess?
I don’t even view Steam as being particularly innovative. They just don’t suck. It does what it’s supposed to do.
That's the thing. You can launch Steam and have it just get the hell out of your way, and go enjoy your games. You don't really have to interact with any of the features on a regular basis. For many players, that's perfect.
But it's actually been incredibly innovative. Proton has made Linux gaming a reality when it previously seemed impossible. Remote Play Together is basically wizardry. Steam Input is fucking brilliant and lightyears beyond other control customizations. These things are available to every Steam user gratis if you want them.
(fixed minor typos)
I like the controller support and streamlining of Linux working compared to stuff like heroic launcher.
It's not innovative anymore, but it sure was when it released. But they kept it near its peak instead of making it utter horse crap.
It's not innovative anymore
What have you been smoking? That's just plain wrong. See my other comment for examples.
I don’t even view Steam as being particularly innovative. They just don’t suck
Sadly, that's basically 'innovation' in this climate. Not being a shitty corpo is an innovation for a lot of MBAs that have more years in school than sense in their head.
Dear valve. Please never ever go public. We will happily keep giving you money while you keep yourself a private company
Better yet:
Dear Gabe Newell,
Please never die so you can continue running this company as you always have. You make my life as a Linux user much better, and I'll keep paying you as long as that remains the case.
There may only be dozens of us, but we love your product. Never change.
My hope is that community-developed Proton forks reach a point where they can stand on their own without Steam and Valve, perhaps as a component of or a sibling to Lutris, to conveniently run games from other platforms too.
I'll admit that I don't have a clear idea of how that would look or come about. It's hard to beat the convenience of having the compatibility tool built directly into the launcher like in Steam, with individual prefixes and settings for different games if they have different requirements.
They're the perfect example of why profitable companies should stay private. They make bonkers money, and if next quarter they make the same amount it's fine, as opposed to a public company where they only have value if they increase.
Would be good to see gog get more popular. Fuck drm
You'd be surprised how many steam games have no DRM other than steam itself. And how easy it is to put in a replacement (open-source) dll that acts as a steam emulator and runs the games without steam. I'd say... pretty much every non-AAA game on steam can have DRM removed this way. It's such barebones DRM that I can't really find reason to be angry at it.
Yup, but they need to support Linux better. I'm glad that Heroic exists and apparently they're now taking a cut of GOG purchases made through their launcher, but there's still a lot missing from what Galaxy does.
FYI games on Steam don't actually have to use any DRM. e.g. Kerbal Space Program -- you can download it, close the Steam client, copy it to another folder, unplug your network cable... then go launch the .EXE from its directory and play anyway.
True, and I've played GOG games that were misconfigured when using the downloaded installer but were fine when installed with their launcher. So its not as clear cut as it looks on the surface.
But I do wish steam promoted DRM Free games with a tag like they do gamepad support, family sharing, or steam workshop.
I like gog the site not the gog galaxy app. I always have to look too hard to start a game up.
@JulesTheModest Er...How do you mean? The Galaxy app has its issues, but I've not run into this one.
Biggest issue I ran into was years back trying to point it to my existing directory of GOG games from before Galaxy to get it to recognize them without reinstalling them, but eventually I just decided to reinstall whenever I felt like playing them again (and uninstall from old location).
I used GOG much more when they were the only ones in town releasing old games, especially DOS games, that actually ran on modern systems. Steam has a lot of what I wasn't able to get anywhere but GOG now; many are even updated graphically or on new engines because certain old games are in vogue now. This isn't Steam or GOG's fault though... If anyone can be blamed, I'd blame Nightdive for making kick-ass source ports and not having them available on GOG.
It's true that most (not all) old games on GOG now are also on Steam, but I do still find the GOG versions are often better configured, sometimes with custom or community patches preinstalled that Steam doesn't include.
Some of things I hate like extra launchers and DRM are still kind of good that Valve even gives people who publish there to have the flexibility to do whatever they want. Same goes for publishing of "crap" games. With Valve being the dominant one in the PC space being super draconian would be a bad thing, since just as they could go the good route for consumers they could go the bad route too. So the kind of "hands off " approach is a good one even if it doesn't always work out for us.
Nothing I appreciate more than checking out the reviews and seeing "don't let it go unnoticed that this is an Ubisoft title, and therefore uses their launcher and drm" saved me regretful purchases (before the 2 week/2 hour return window) many times.
Yep and Valve themselves display clear warnings on the store page for 3rd party account requirements, DRM and additional launchers.
With Valve being the dominant one in the PC space
This is a common misconception. Revenue on Steam is around 8.6 Billion out of 45 Billion. The actual heavy hitters (Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite) aren't even on Steam.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/video-game-industry-revenues-by-platform/
Ah yes I often use the Minecraft launcher to buy the latest AAA titles
Apples and oranges
Okay, but if you aren't making a single multi-billion dollar game that doesn't need a storefront because it functionally is one, then Steam is by far the biggest and most dominant player out there.
Nice graph tho.
it is a dominant one if it's by number of game developers.
Still I will not buy all my games on Steam. You never know what next person will be in charge and will turn steam into garbage. Don't want to have all my games locked into one plattform.
Really wish Valve or at least Steam became a steward owned company to save it from future owners ruining it.
Would be cool.
But honestly, since I'm a Linux user and Valve has invested in Linux gaming, I'll stick with them for now. If they violate my trust, I'll move to GOG or something. In fact, now that Heroic gets a cut from GOG sales, I'm buying some of my games there, just to indicate to GOG that there's interest.
If a competitor comes along, I'll use them. But for now, Steam is the best option for me, so I'm rewarding them.
I tend to buy on both Steam and GoG. That way I can have my preferred client but also have downloadable full copies of games.
I always check GOG first when I want to buy a game
It'd be impossible to create a competitor in this day in age, because what made Steam win out is that it was the first and that it hasn't acted like a greedy dick trying (too much) to monetize their platform dominance. Arguably, GOG is a better platform because it is much more against DRM, but when you get right down to it, gamers don't really care enough about those issues to put a dent in it even if the loudest voices do, so I doubt Steam's success has much to do with being a 'democratic platform'.
You're ignoring a ton of stuff Valve has done. Look at what they've done for Linux gaming at a bare minimum.
If all you're doing is buying games for Windows, Steam doesn't offer much more than GOG. But if you're playing those games, well, that's a different story.
Not to mention that Steam lets you use keys bought from other platforms.
Valve tried to Android their gaming platform under SteamOS, yes. They really didn't do it for Linux. Rather, they know Linux distros can't really complete with their specialized house advantage for gaming, in the general consumer sense.