From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
This isn’t really that hot of a take. Steam does keep winning and it’s because of convenience for consumers. Valve also is probably the best of those companies when it comes to not violating rights. I really hope when Gaben passes the torch for valve ownership that it’s someone with his vision and priorities
As a Linux user, nothing else comes even close. I can read on ProtonDB if I can expect a Windows game to just work, and more often than not, it does.
GOG is also a great concept, and somewhat Linux friendly, but it doesn’t have the Steam “click and play” convenience.
Epic Game Store however, has been decidedly Linux hostile for some reason??? As I see it, Steam and GOG are for gamers, Epic Game Store is for business. It would be a dark day for gamers, if Epic ever became dominant.
Epic is Linux adverse mainly because of its Chinese investors. They don’t want to open source their spyware.
Why would they have to open source anything? Just because it’s running on Linux doesn’t mean it’s OSS or even F(L)OSS. Steam isn’t open source either.
Not to mention that open source software can and sometimes does contain spyware.
Nobody with two brain cells says foss can’t have spy/malware. What’s true is only that in important projects, it is very likely it will raise flags very soon. For example, see your link
I would think China would be eager to get out of western (USA) dominated Operating Systems.
I know Russia has attempted it as couple of times, but with very little success.
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Steam and GoG are not just free services for gamers either. At their core they are businesses, and they invest significantly to try and make people spend more/get addicted to their services.
I hate this whole idea that some companies are your friend. That just shows their marketing and branding is working on people and blinding people.
Publicly traded companies, which we’ve all learned to hate and not take as our friends, are in no way comparable to Steam which is privately owned. Gabe Newell is in no way forced by shareholders to push for increased profits, the company has no interest in pushing for enshittification unlike VC funded startups.
Valve is also a privately held company, unlike most (all?) of the other big players. Therefore they don’t have the ever present drive and threat of “the line must always go up” to contend with. Valve can do whatever the fuck they feel like, however the fuck they feel like, and as long as they’re bringing in enough revenue to keep the lights on and keep Gabe Newell in Acapulco shirts and Cheetos, or whatever his jam is, there’s nothing anybody can do about it.
They can gamble and release a VR headset or two, and if it’s not a huge success, who cares? There are no shareholders breathing down their necks. They can support the Linux community and if it pisses of Microsoft, or whoever, so what? They want to wait 16+ years before getting around to releasing the sequel to their flagship franchise? There is no boardroom pushing them to slap it together and shove it out the door before Christmas, so they can just do that. Etc.
They were the company who had people who recognized that they already did all of their ideas and their best bet was to get out of the way for the next generation of developers. The other studios are apparently run by narcissists who still think they are at the top of their game. The world could learn a big lesson from Valve.
It’s not narcissism. It is a rational decision with major upside if you can pull off building your own storefront and launcher. If you can stop paying steam 30 percent of every sale, and have direct access to the user for data collection and targeted advertising, you try to execute. There is a ton of upside for Epic, EA, or Ubisoft to go direct to consumer and not have a middle man (and possibly be the middle man for others).
I’m referring to the young Gen X and elderly Millennials who still run the industry and still think that everything should be full of micro transactions, huge bugs, and DLC with no content. I’m referring to the people who are scared of Baldurs Gate III and claim that nobody can reach that standard. They are still thinking of games as they were 15 years ago but the world has moved on.
I’ve said this before but as soon as Valve becomes a public company, immediately start protesting and sailing.