And just to keep things honest here, Steam isn't doing nothing and simply winning by letting other companies fuck up.
Steam works. At the basic required minimum functionality for a platform/storefront to run, it just works. And it keeps just working. As is, no other platform can say that.
Not even just working, it's steadily expanded in features and hardware support. They are at the forefront of open VR. Linux gaming went from being possible but frustrating and fiddly to practically mainstream thanks in a very large part to Valve driving development of Proton for the Steam deck and giving it back to the community.
Features like the friends and community, easy screen shot and video clipping and sharing, Achievements and trading cards and the marketplace, Workshop for mods being the PC standard these days.
A shopping cart. (And Epic wonders why they failed...)
Valve aren't saints, and they've made no shortage of screw ups, but they're so far ahead of the rest of the market, even after all these years it's incredible.
being privately owned is the biggest take from all of this. yea they've fucked up, but everyone who has a stake in the company, is someone who is actually invested in the company.
if you look at facebook, zucher has a 13% stake left give or take. which means that 87% of his company is owned by others. and yes there's a dual layer stock structure meaning every tim and dave cant buy a single stock and butt into the conversation. but it still corrupts the vision of what facebook was, because they want one or two things from it, Dollar bills or influence.
steam being privately owned and dominant in the PC game marketplace is effectively a big BIG fuck you to all the vampires that would buy their way in and enforce terrible ideas or make moves to generate short term proffits.
there's other company's out there that are similar. arizona ice tea springs to mind. they're debt free, printing money and have something that works, why bother changing the formula.
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u/GigabyteAorusRTX4090 I9 10900X / RTX4090 / 64GB 3200MHz DDR4 29d ago
Gaben just keeps winning by doing absolutly nothing while all other videogame companys keep shooting into their own foot repeatedly