I’m actually pretty worried about him dying. Hopefully he has a chosen successor that he’s indoctrinated.
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Yesterday I bought something on Steam for the first time in many years. (I have a large Steam library, but in recent years I’ve been getting games from gog and itch instead.)
Since I hadn’t bought from Steam in a long time I figured I should read the “Steam Subscriber agreement” that you have to click to accept when you buy something. Let me just say now, the agreement is a very very bad deal for customers.
It goes to great lengths to make it very clear that you don’t own anything. You aren’t buying anything, you have no essentially rights. You are simply paying for a license subscription to use software with various conditions. Valve is able to end your subscription with no refund if you break the agreement. And the best bit:
Furthermore, Valve may amend this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use) unilaterally at any time in its sole discretion.
So by using Steam we’re putting a lot of trust in Valve; because the ‘agreement’ basically says they can do whatever they want, any time they want, for any reason they want.
Steam is quite good. I particularly appreciate their Linux support. But they are clearly using their position of dominance to make people agree to unfavourable terms. At the moment, things are fine. But make no mistake - when you use Steam, Valve has all the power. They can screw people over whenever they choose to.
With all that in mind, buying DRM free is better if you want to still have access to the software when a company decides to change direction for whatever reason.
Doesn’t matter, Steam offers DRM free games. Steam DRM is opt-in and can be broken by anyone in seconds, and games with other DRM have a big glowing warning on their store page. You give money to Steam for their servers that support multiplayer, their workshop, seamless patching, user forums, image hosting, controller support, Proton for Linux, SteamDB, easy multiplayer via the friends interface, achievement tracking, and a large majority cut to the developers. Your complaints apply to basically every storefront, the only way you’ll own data is by having it on your own disk which Steam lets you do.
Welcome to the modern world. Pretty much lines up with 99% of services people use daily.
I won’t ever move from steam to GoG, valve makes everything too convenient.
You can use them both of course. That’s what I do, and I usually just go with the one with the best price or best deal.
If it’s a game that I really need to be DRM free, then GoG is best.
There’s anothee way to keep having access to software no matter what companies do.
I have the generic steam crack well saved in my computer in case the decide to pull the plug.
Very good idea, I gotta look into that
Steam effectively makes buying games itself count as MTX. They’re making your Steam library no different from your MMO inventory.
That said, I’m addicted.
NoOoOoO. You’re not allowed to bad mouth Steam here. Everything steam does is amazing. Steam is nothing like those filthy console companies. Steam good guys. Steam forever friend
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My bad. Forgot to add the /s
It’s to keep people from doing stuff like requiring refunds or court cases for being banned, VAC or otherwise. To make some things not technically gambling, etc.
Valve is the paragon of gamers. They offer a great portal, free no bs family shares, pressure companies into sales on legacy software. Push VR from meme status (the oculus is even originally stolen valve tech look it up). Steam stream, steam controller, steam deck emulation of Nintendo switch, Jesus it’s endless.
And still there are people like you out here who have to lead with complaints about a bunch of text which everyone knows is exclusively for legal piss matches against companies and troublemakers.
I don’t know how you can be pleased by anything. Isn’t your life tiring living the life of a zealot? Or do you have just an unsatisfiable need to complain?
The company may be nice now and it’s okay to be happy with them, but that doesn’t mean you attack the personality of someone for pointing out factual information written in your beloved companies agreements.
I will never ever understand how a normal person can ever worship / love a corporation… It has to be some kind of mental illness.
Corporations DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU! Sooner or later they will fuck you unless you are constantly pushing back against them and keeping them on their toes. Relaxing, just becuase Steam is good right now, is not a option.
I don’t know how you can be pleased by anything. Isn’t your life tiring living the life of a zealot? Or do you have just an unsatisfiable need to complain?
wtf man. Did someone shit in your breakfast cereal or something?
You’re the one getting mad at steam for things they could “maybe” do in the future. Stop incepting yourself with fantasy and then posting about it. “Hey guys you won’t BELIEVE what’s in this EULA” “Did you know TECHNICALLY valve could just do whatever they want?!?”
From your post history you’re older, you know EULAs are so ignored across the board that they’re there for entirely legal reasons. Oh yeah a company that has done all this good, (for you especially, without valve it’s safe to say there would be ZERO Linux gaming support like there is now.) But we better be ready for something that’s just completely antithetical to their history of actions because of some creative writing episode you’ve dreamed up. Corporations are bad capitalism is bad, open software and Linux gaming only please. No rights, no AAA just indie titles and slow burn, artistically crafted projects of love.
You’re like the vegans of computer science you’re insufferable.
Had a bad day?
People probably felt the same way Unity’s relatively fair licensing terms, or D&D’s license. They’ve rolled back now, but it’s common for companies to push this sort of thing, roll back, and then slowly introduce the same thing.
The point is not to avoid Steam, but to keep an eye out for scummy moves because no entity operating for profit is immune to temptation. Be ready to abandon ship should the time come or you’ll be the one left holding the bag.
I hope he has some sort of contingency plan. Perhaps he can find a successor.
It involves golden tickets and the unsolved disappearances of a handful of children.
Brutal, I know, but it’s the only way.
I selfishly wish he had a son or daughter to carry on his legacy lol
More generations deserve to know how good Valve is.
He has 2 kids lol. The eldest - Gray Newell, seems to be more into racing than game dev, though.
Yeah but whales are gonna get all the tickets. There’s no IRL Charlie luck magic.
Grandpa Joe’s probably a whale.
I need that comic where the girl is super frugal about everything except one particular thing.
Chat GPT predicts one of the kids will…
…get physically pulled into valves code? Not sure how that happens lol
🎵 One clicked on files they shouldn’t dare Now lost in code, they’ve disappeared in air Gaben warned, but they didn’t heed Now in the depths of Steam, they’ll forever plead
🎵 Oompa loompa doompety dah If you’re not careful, you’ll go too far Respect the rules when visiting Gaben’s lair Or vanish forever, lost in Valve’s software!
I will cause a resonance cascade on Valve HQ if that ever happens.
That, sadly, is the future. Valve is one of those rare companies that put out something interesting then got out of the way so that others could put out their ideas. Steam and PAX are a fantastic way to enable the creativity of others. I will keep my fingers crossed that this all works out, but I am fully prepared to be sad between now and, say, 10 years in the future.
Honestly, why ruin something already raking in money hand over fist? Valve is profitable, sustainable, and all around well executed.
Messing with it would cut profits!
The same reason countless studios have destroyed successful IPs (like EA). Sure it’s profitable but it could be MORE profitable. Sales were up last year? Cool story, have sales improved over that this year though??
It’s not just shareholders, I mean that’s a huge part why public corporations endlessly seek growth. But, even private corporations are beholden to capitalism’s inherent growth imperative.
The only way to maintain solvency is to grow. Without growth you can’t save, and if you can’t save, you can’t accumulate investment capital. Which basically means your corporation is stuck in stagnation and is being eaten alive by interest rates.
without growth you can’t save
What? Why? If I’m making a million dollars profit a year, why can’t I just put it in a bank account or ETFs or whatever every year?
If you aren’t investing back into your company as much as your competitors then they will eventually push you out of the market. It’s called the Growth imperative .
But if we add a subscription required to access already bought game we would surely make more money this quarter. Or how about charging for online play.
Greed and incompetence
In the end, the people who make these sorts of decisions will often bail out with their quarterly bonuses before the poo hits the fan. It’s everyone else who has to deal with the fallout.
If you’ve read/watched ready player one, that’s what likely to happen if the sixers won.
You clearly haven’t heard of private equity
Because enshitifying their service would earn them short term profits, which is the only thing corps/shareholders care about.
Do you know what the word shill means?
Baby, it means whatever you want it to mean.
That would require self awareness.
GabeN is the Ruth Bader Ginnsberg of gaming. Please sir, take care of yourself, for all of us.
So he’s going to stay in his position way past when he reasonably should because of pride and not take advice from his friends and family to step down so he could transfer power to a worthy successor?
Let’s not place all the blame on her Republicans were going to let Obama place anyone on the supreme Court. They rejected all his nominations. It was wait for Democrats to have full control or hang on cause Republicans wouldn’t let anyone but a Republican get nominated.
She was damned if she did damned if she didn’t. But cause see hanged on we all blamed her instead of rightful raging at McConnell
Republicans seem to throw their weight around all the time and never need this excuse. Dems have no teeth, they never have. They had 2 years of full control during Obama’s first term and couldn’t get anything done and let the GOP carve up Affordable Care just so they could take pretend it was bipartisan. The excuses just get old, I’ve been hearing them since they let bush steal the election
🏴☠️
I wish I could work for them with some sort of employee stock program. I’d be dumping literally every cent into the stock.
Cmon, you know he’s going to pick a sucessor wisely
Noo, no rape please 😭
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You know, when I worked in retail, the store would obviously buy up stock from suppliers for a price and then sell it for profit. I don’t know all the technical terms in English, but in order for the stores to actually make money at the end of the day we had a goal of reaching that exact amount of profit, 30% of the retail price. So how exactly is this different from retail stores? Sure, they don’t have to actually buy up stock, but the game companies don’t have to make physical copies either. It’s not like the game companies would make 100% of the money if they sold them elsewhere.
Retail stores are bad
Who cares lol, that argument is so fucking weak.
I have listened to a ton of game developer talks over the years. Some of the old indie devs that have given talks basically all welcomed steam because it meant that they didn’t have to deal with all of the stuff that steam does themselves. Before people started buying games through steam, doing an acceptable level of DRM, distribution, payments, refunds, etc. was all hand-rolled, for each company.
You can still do that yourself. Why do people stick with steam with the supposedly onerous 30% cut? It’s because steam provides a valuable service. Now the people that build games don’t have to deal as much with the things that aren’t building games.
In my opinion, a platform like Steam was bound to emerge at some point. Let’s thank our fucking stars that the company that “won” is not beholden to any shareholder and is run by a gamer that understands what people who love video games needed.
If you think that the 30% cut is too high, there’s nothing stopping you from building all the infrastructure yourself. And there are plenty of companies that have done so, like Epic and, until recently, Sony.
But I would say unless you are a team building AAA games and making millions and millions a year, where the savings you can realize outweigh the cost of rolling your own infrastructure, steam is kind of a good deal.
Lemmy: Corporations are terrible. None of them have your back. They’re all just out to make money and the only reason they pay their employees is because slavery is illegal.
Also Lemmy: Step on me harder, Daddy Gaben!
Shit has some real Tesla-bro circa 2013 energy.
I know right, its almost like the dumbass in charge at Tesla is a different person than the one in charge at Valve!
Gabe Newell has made some of the best games and Steam is the best platform for consumers, sure Epic Games is better for developers but it’s not great to actually use as a consumer.
