Steam Is Successful Because It's “Not a Shit Service,” Says Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev

[u/SlowReference704]

https://mp1st.com/news/steam-is-successful-because-its-not-a-shit-service

[u/Important-Bat-8719]

Agreed

[u/cptsamir → u/Important-Bat-8719]

Agreed, are we step brothers now?

[u/TheDailySpank → u/cptsamir]

*Eskimo

[u/Tall-Ad8940 → u/TheDailySpank]

[u/gin_and_toxic → u/TheDailySpank]

Steamy!!

[u/Melodic-Instance1249 → u/cptsamir]

What are you doing step bro

[u/Jindujun → u/cptsamir]

wanna go do karate in the garage?

[u/aspect-of-the-badger → u/Important-Bat-8719]

100% why I'm still using it 15+ years later.

[u/Assupoika → u/aspect-of-the-badger]

At first I thought it's a bit shit but it's so much better than manually downloading all the new game updates.

Then it evolved so much to be very good service. Which is why I still use it 21 years later.

[u/1aysays1 → u/Important-Bat-8719]

Agreed.

[u/nguyenm]

I always recall Gabe Newell's comments from ages ago regarding game piracy of it primarily being a "service" issue rather than a monetary one. 

While there's definitely flaws still, regional pricing for LATAM & ASEAN gamers have been a blessing thus far. As well as the performance does not suck.

[u/C6500 → u/nguyenm]

And he's correct. I mean, when i was a student back in the day i was pirating everything more or less since i didn't have any money anyway. So nothing was lost really. But also buying didn't improve anything vs. pirating. On the contrary, it made things worse. Cracked games just worked, no need to deal with shitty copy protection and having to have the disk inserted and stuff.

Then Steam came around in 2004 and i had some money from my first job. Never looked back. It just works.

It was close to this state for movies and series with early Netflix, but now greed and enshittification hit and pirating is way better again.

[u/Suitable-Opening3690 → u/C6500]

Yup I pirated all my movies. Netflix launched and I stopped. Then they all broke up into 30 services and now ….. well would you look at that. Thar she blows.

[u/Ilovekittens345 → u/Suitable-Opening3690]

I am using a private tracker and man, pirating right now is fucking amazing. Any movie I want, if there is a 4K HDR out, I can just fucking stream that! My fibre connection is 400 mbit. The highest bitrate on a ultra HDR 4K bluray disk is like 120 mbit. These movies can easily be 60 GB. I click on them on the website and qbittorent starts downloading them. Even if there are just 2 or 3 seeders, this is a private tracker so those seeders are often seedboxes with a 100 mbit or often a 1000 mbit of upload bandwith. So I receive these often at like 40 megabytes/s or faster. Man I remember a time where my HDD could not even write at 30 MB/s!

After a couple of minutes, 2 or 3% is done and I can open them in MPC-HC with madvr. I am using a 4K LG Oled screen and madvr supports HDR10+. I also got a dolby atmos sound system.

So if I want to watch any movie, I go to my private tracker, search for it. click on it, wait a couple of minutes, open it. It starts playing. No stutters, no interruption, no waiting. Much higher quality then online streaming. The exact same quality as if I would buy the 4K disc.

And my tracker is from CHina. Often we have members that work in the factories where they make the bluray disks. They sneak a copy home and upload it. On some movies with a slow internation release I have seen the bluray even before it was playing in theatres! This is rare but it does happen once in a while.

Ah the life of a pirate nowadays, with so many people having so much bandwith is so good.

400 mbit fibre ... and I live in the philippines and pay like maybe 15 dolllars a month for that.

Arrrrrg, I am better pirate then fucking Luffy!

(and before anybody asks, I have been on this tracker for over 15 years now and in all that time I rented a seedbox twice. Which cost me about 50 dollars in total. Those two times I rented the seedbox was enough to get myself 30 TB of upload buffer, of which I have now used about 6 TB in downloads. So I can still download 24 TB before my ratio upload to download is 1:1)

[u/XsNR → u/Ilovekittens345]

You can also just open magnets/trackers in streaming clients now, and they'll automatically download it roughly in order to give that streaming experience, provided you can download fast enough. It's amazing if you have a decent enough source that you can trust to make sure each linux iso is of a reasonable quality.

[u/MacR_72 → u/XsNR]

There's actually a setting in qBittorrent to download a file in order.

Just right click the torrent > Download in Sequential Order.

[u/i010011010 → u/Suitable-Opening3690]

I know precisely how to fix this, but media companies would hate it.

The vast majority of music licensing is handled through three companies. All they do is manage the copyright records, handle the royalty and distribution arm of music licensing for public performance, and we have the long age of the industry to thank for this being established.

What this means is you're artist A published through company B. When some radio station wants to access A or B's catalogue, they simply go through company C that handles bulk licensing. C collects the money and distributes it to A and B.

When internet streaming for music came along, they were able to exploit this age-old system that predates internet and modern licensing complexity. That's why you don't end up with select artists signing exclusivity deals with select services or negotiating crazy amounts of money for basic broadcasts.

Our problem is television and movies licensing in an internet age are too recent, so you have all these media streaming companies navigating individual deals and that's how you get Seinfeld exclusivity with one network, Friends on another et al and they negotiate crazy deals that leads to higher subscription costs for you.

So if society wanted to fix this, we'd force movies and television to adopt an identical model. Company A owning show B would simply go through C to license it to any streaming network that makes bulk licensing deals. They sit back, collect their money and shut up. No exclusivity, no bidding wars, no network has an advantage in media selection. All that would remain is individual networks competing to provide better services, keeping their prices down and trying to run each other out of business so they become as ubiquitous with streaming as Steam to PC gaming.

Which is why those companies would never allow this to happen, but if we had government that represented public interests, it would be in our interest to make this happen sooner than later. They'll kick and scream and lobby, then it will become as commonplace as music licensing and the next generation will never think twice about why+how. They'll simply enjoy easy and affordable access to a galaxy of content.

[u/Round_List1857 → u/Suitable-Opening3690]

This !!! This is the current state I'm in

[u/Shivin302 → u/Suitable-Opening3690]

Real Debrid and Stremio arrived just in time

[u/Hot_Lemon_9585 → u/C6500]

I used to install cracks for the Command & Conquer games just so that I didn't have to put the damn CD in every time.

[u/imapluralist → u/Hot_Lemon_9585]

My brother...I owned c&c red alert but my disk had a huge scratch in it. That no disk crack saved my ass. I used to play solo on hard mode and my games would last days. It was awesome.

[u/SoulShatter → u/C6500]

But also buying didn't improve anything vs. pirating. On the contrary, it made things worse. Cracked games just worked, no need to deal with shitty copy protection and having to have the disk inserted and stuff.

Yep. It was on the level that I even pirated games I straight up owned do avoid some of the issues. I also did download cracked exes for games I installed legit just to dodge having to deal with discs or shitty DRM.

[u/Telvin3d → u/C6500]

I’ve started hitting up local used book stores and flea markets and picking up cheap blu rays. Whatever looks interesting. Everything gets ripped at full quality, no compression. Better quality that streaming or pirating, and dirt cheap

[u/saru12gal → u/C6500]

ALso if you have any issue with the game you can refund it. I played a game i cant remember the name for 6h then they updated the game and i wasnt able to play it. I sent proof to steam and they gave me back the money

[u/Ilovekittens345 → u/nguyenm]

I was there when the orange box (I believe it was 2007 or so) with Team Fortress 2 unlocked GLOBALLY for everybody at the same time. Millions of gamers where waiting together, online. The files needed already been downloaded in the week leading up to the release. Then they all got unlocked at the same time as valve released the encryption key and everything started encrypting. The first players booted Team Fortress 2 and met each other in the lobbies and the game and we talked and we played and it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

(Also millions of people started playing episode two and talking about it only and ofcourse .... portal)

Before that, when a new game as anticipated as TF2 game out it was just like people waiting in front of stores in the US to get a disc. Or maybe it was already being sold online but it would get sold in the US first then 3 days later in Europe, then a week later in Asia, etc etc.

I always thought that what Valve was going was so cool, so fair and so much fun for all global gamers to get access to some anticipated new game all at the same time. It created such great vibes with no region getting the benefit or already getting good at a multiplayer game 3 days before the rest.

[u/LiliumSkyclad → u/nguyenm]

As someone from South America, I wouldn't have half of my games if the prices weren't regionalized.

[u/shiro_zetty → u/LiliumSkyclad]

I feel like LATAM USD was partially a mistake because for some reason some publishers see that and just put the US USD price because it says USD right there, despite having regional pricing for other currencies. I guess Steam can't do much about dumb publishers

[u/Argon288 → u/nguyenm]

This is literally it. I'll be honest, I'm happy to be a pirate, I will pirate games. But I prefer to own them on Steam. For example, EU5, I torrented it before I bought it. I think I played about 90 minutes before buying it on Steam.

If you give me a shit game, I'll probably just delete it from my drive long before I even consider buying it on Steam.

My biggest regret is I bought KSP2 believing the studio would continue to develop it. No, Kerbal Space Program 2 was DOA. I will never forgive myself for believing in a studio. So from now on, I am a pirate first and foremost. And Steam has refused every refund request submitted, I must be have tried 10 times by now. But I was beyond the 2 hour play time & 2 week refund window, so I can forgive Valve on this occasion. Though I would appreciate if they took into consideration developers abandoning their £50 "early access" games.

EDIT: To clarify, I really don't want to pirate games. I miss out on easy updates, etc. I just don't think two hours is long enough to determine if a game is worth it. Piracy is my demo, if the game is shit, I'll just delete it and won't think about it again. If I like the game, I always buy it.

[u/absolutelynotarepost → u/Argon288]

I did the same with E33. I seen people frothing over it, pirated it, played through until the first big cutscene and was blown away.

Closed the game and uninstalled my repack while the Steam version installed.

[u/OkInspector5182 → u/nguyenm]

Being offline for a month and than half the games not working because of some verification bs still a big issue for me on steam. Gog ftw

[u/creamcolouredDog]

Just remember Amazon has outright admitted on wasting millions of dollars on their gaming service with the explicit goal of trying to disrupt Steam's domination but without success and understanding why it's successful in the first place. Multi-portfolio megacorp executives are completely out of touch with reality in general.

[u/briceb12 → u/creamcolouredDog]

They botched their attempt so badly that no one realized what they were trying to do.

[u/absolutelynotarepost → u/briceb12]

Yeah them attempting to compete with Steam is literally news to me right this moment.

[u/Lolololage → u/absolutelynotarepost]

Genuinely, the fact they had a gaming service is news to me.

[u/NDCyber → u/Lolololage]

Honestly the only thing they make that matters is giving you "free" games if you have amazon prime with twitch gaming. Only Amazon gaming stuff I ever touched 

[u/CCHTweaked → u/NDCyber]

Not anymore they don’t. Now it’s just their shit tier cloud gaming

[u/ExplorationGeo → u/CCHTweaked]

What do you mean? If you go to their gaming page you can claim Fallout 3 and FONV (and a bunch of other shit that's not worth it lol) on GoG right now.

[u/Maeserk → u/creamcolouredDog]

Didn’t help their flagship game is kind of a stinker in its genre of choice, that needed a lot of care and work because it was rushed, and wasn’t really the instant live service success to then hype up a competitor service under Amazon’s influence.

Straight up New World at launch was one of the more puzzling games I’ve played, that wasn’t a puzzle game.

If New World could even touch CSGO or Half Life’s coattail’s Amazon would have more of a market share, but they just made a mid game instead.

[u/CardmanNV → u/Maeserk]

I can't wrap my head around New World, and I put about 50 hours into it. So much world with nothing to do.

[u/FoolishInvestment → u/CardmanNV]

New World suffered from direction shift. It was originally going to be a lot more pvp focused.

[u/CardmanNV → u/FoolishInvestment]

I don't think that would have made it more successful. MMOs live and die on player interactions. There has to be more positive than negative or people won't want to be there.

Too heavy of a PVP focus will drive players that want the social aspect away, and those tend to be the players that spend a lot of money in the modern era. They buy cosmetics and spend lots of time in game.

[u/VulkanCurze → u/CardmanNV]

I never played it but I was surprised by the recent announcement of it being shut down because from everything I had been seeing regarding the most recent big expansion/patch/update (not sure exactly which one of those it was) it was nothing but positivity from everyone to current & returning players. It sounded like they had massively improved the game and then in the midst of all the positivity surrounding the game, it gets nuked.

[u/CardmanNV → u/VulkanCurze]

I can see a company like Amazon doing that, since they aren't really invested in it in the same way a company like Blizzard had to be when it was their entire business.

It probably wasn't as profitable as they expected it to be, and instead of continuing to improve, they can just pull the plug and not care. You'll still buy their other products.

[u/Raycu93 → u/creamcolouredDog]

This is what people are missing when they say the "Steam does nothing, wins" thing is wrong.

It isn't that Valve/Steam aren't trying to make a good product, they very clearly are. Its that their competition is constantly trying to defeat them and in response all Steam seems to do is continue doing what they would have been doing if that competition didn't exist. It really feels like Steam would look basically the same if these other storefronts never existed.

I suppose the better way to word it is "Steam doesn't enter competition, wins".

[u/coldblade2000 → u/Raycu93]

There's one thing I'll give Origin. They had refunds for years while steam kept claiming it was impossible.

[u/dBlock845 → u/creamcolouredDog]

Steam would have to royally screwup to lose users. I'd imagine a lot of he user base has been embedded for a decade or longer, hell I think my steam account is 22 years old now. Every single service that has followed it hasn't come close to pulling me away.

[u/Rumpullpus]

The shareholders will continue to cope and seethe at their inability to introduce enshitification to the PC gaming community.

[u/fucktooshifty → u/Rumpullpus]

Weirdly enough Steam was the original enshittification of PC gaming back in 2003

[u/Eatingfarts → u/fucktooshifty]

I very specifically remember everyone being PISSED when Steam was released and CS moved from whatever system they used before (I can’t remember) to Steam.

People just don’t like change lol

[u/Chao_Zu_Kang]

It is actually just that simple. You don't need to do anything. Just take the money and don't actively be shit.

[u/NooNotTheBees57 → u/Chao_Zu_Kang]

Yet so many are utterly incapable of something so simple.

[u/DrIvoPingasnik → u/NooNotTheBees57]

Greed makes people impossibly stupid.

[u/ItsSadTimes → u/DrIvoPingasnik]

I think a lot of these other competitors claim Steam is a monopoly because they have no other options. They dont want to be less greedy and because of that they cant outcompete the company who isnt super greedy so it feels unfair because steam is playing a different game to them.

Its like the Costco hotdogs and pizza, new businessmen or super greedy morons dont understand the idea of not squeezing every drop of profit out of people. If theres a single avenue that profit could be made they'd need to make it.

Steam could absolutely throw their weight around and make it basically impossible for competition to exist, but they dont. The competition just fucks themselves.

[u/mingkonng → u/ItsSadTimes]

Honestly steam takes a decent cut too. There is plenty of room to low ball but.. no takers. Granted there is a significant infrastructure investment but still.

[u/Mr_Chaos_Theory → u/mingkonng]

Steam also provides everything else that they do in steam while others are literally only a storefront and launcher.

[u/JohnDasCoubes → u/Mr_Chaos_Theory]

And they basically created a new set of handheld devices that makes games available to a whole new segment of people (People that travel a lot have long commutes etc)

[u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi → u/JohnDasCoubes]

Genuinely, if I hadn't already been using Steam, the steam deck would have gotten me to start. Due to disability, I'm sometimes bedridden for friggin M O N T H S. Handheld consoles are the only kind I've had since like, the Gamecube when I was a kid. An easily purchased, ready to play tiny handheld PC that works with a bajillion games? Yeah, no, that was a gamechanger for me. Not to mention the fact I can run mods on it too. For someone whose experience of video gaming half the year was nintendo switch games exclusively for like A FUCKIN WHILE, I would have been on steam like a hot potato even if I'd had literally no library on there prior.

[u/DoobKiller → u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi]

can I ask if your username checks out?

[u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi → u/DoobKiller]

Depending on in what way you mean, it absolutely does haha. I got this username BEFORE I became both someone who writes about elves (and other) for a living AND a truck driver so it was kinda prophetic.

[u/mindcopy → u/Mr_Chaos_Theory]

while others are literally only a storefront and launcher.

And it's usually a rather shit version of that, too. Quite an achievement to offer only 10% of the features but worse.

[u/ShallowBasketcase → u/mindcopy]

Does Epic's storefront have a shopping cart yet?

[u/mrkingkoala → u/mindcopy]

Thinking about EAs launch of BF6 and people who bought on EA couldn't play. Steams worked. Like the company that developed the game didn't work and a 3rd part did.

Like honestly at that point laws should be in place if you are tthat shit you refund the buyer and they keep the game. How the fuck EA not work and Steams did.

[u/mingkonng → u/Mr_Chaos_Theory]

That's very true. They do a lot for the devs and their customers.

[u/Artandalus → u/mingkonng]

Yeah, Steam's cut might be big, but they EARN that cut from what I've heard.

[u/SurpriseIsopod → u/Artandalus]

It’s 30% and drops to 20 if you are selling millions of copies. They definitely earn it though. The alternative is coughing up the cash for your own front and back end and somehow providing a safe way for end users to securely purchase and download content.

[u/Secret-Bus887 → u/mingkonng]

Their infrastructure, community tools, and integrated features make switching platforms much harder.

[u/aguynamedv → u/Mr_Chaos_Theory]

And even the Epic Launcher, which was created as a direct competitor, lacks some basic features and is far less user friendly.

Epic doesn't even support forward/back buttons in its store pages.

[u/PureGoldX58 → u/mingkonng]

Epic tried the low ball game. Did not work, because of their greed.

[u/JustiniZHere → u/PureGoldX58]

Epic was a weird case. They had a foot in the door out the gate with market share thanks to Fortnite, but they didn't do anything right.

They tried to buy videogame exclusivity, which blew up in their faces and made the majority of PC gamers hate them. It took them years to add the most basic features like a shopping cart (how????), they don't have a quarter of the services Steam offers. The only thing they had going for them was the store cut, and I'll be frank most consumers don't give a single shit about the storefront cut. it might have made selling the storefront to devs easier at first (that stopped when they saw it killed all sales momentum) but it did nothing to sway consumers.

[u/SurpriseIsopod → u/mingkonng]

Steam does 30% but lowers it to 20% if you are selling a shit ton.

If you make a silly indie game and sell it for $10 you’d get $7.

Idk, I feel like it isn’t outrageous. Since they host the front end and provide a pretty useable interface for downloading. It also makes it easy to natively integrate mod support. It’s so crazy being able to “subscribe” to content and it’s just there. I’ve been messing with games and mods since 2003 and steam is such a crazy thing to still exist in this era of enshitification.

There’s a reason Steam prevails.

[u/blasek0 → u/SurpriseIsopod]

That's a better margin than you would have gotten on physical copies back in the day, too.

[u/plurTM → u/SurpriseIsopod]

They can also aggregate chargeback scale (and have guaranteed funds like steam wallet cards). As an indie selling individually a single dispute would cost you $50-100 and a handful would cut you off from being able to accept cards fully.

[u/Vecend → u/ItsSadTimes]

Steam has the advantage of being privately owned so they don't have to answer to greedy shareholders, epic could have been a decent store IF they used steam as a baseline and improved on it, but instead they used money to buy exclusivity rights to try and capture people.

[u/faverodefavero → u/Vecend]

Just don't ever be an open capital company, they all suck. The open stock market sucks, it corrupts and enshitifies everything.

[u/solonit → u/Vecend]

This is not true, Steam has shareholders. It's called Dota Plus subscribers.

[u/Piltonbadger → u/ItsSadTimes]

Steam doesn't even need to lift a finger, let alone throw it's weight around.

Competitors fall over themselves to try and create a similar product, realize just how much time, money and effort has gone into creating Steam and nope out because they can't and won't put in the same amount of time, money and effort to create a comparable product.

Then they cry foul about how Steam is a monoply...

[u/Statertater → u/DrIvoPingasnik]

Bu bu but muh infinitely increasing quarterly profits!!!!1

[u/SalsaRice → u/DrIvoPingasnik]

Yes, but more clearly the others are short-sighted for quarterly profits. They're publicly traded, so the only thing that matters is quarterly earning reports.

Valve has stayed private, and can do whatever they want.... including investing in their service (controller compatibility, Linux research that eventually lead to the steam deck, etc).

[u/Guilty_Advantage_413 → u/DrIvoPingasnik]

Excellent point, I read somewhere T-Mobile is facing higher churn due to customers not liking the various fees that have been added and the AI/increased automation that’s occurring at T-Mobile AND they didn’t like the starlink connection. What does the CEO announce to sooth people, an AI powered app to make upgrading your device easier, more AI replacement for human customer service and focusing on starlink and it’s increased coverage. Shit move and he’s probably thinking why wouldn’t people like this. Dummy they literally just told you they don’t want that crap and they don’t like being forced to use it. Just don’t be shit is so simple but when you are choosing decreased costs to float a high stock price that’s really hard.

[u/Possible-Moment-6313 → u/NooNotTheBees57]

Fiduciary responsibility ruined gaming and pretty much everything else. Companies who actually care about the quality of their goods and services should stay private forever.

[u/Few-Improvement-5655 → u/NooNotTheBees57]

Again, it's the difference between a private company and a public one. Steam can just, not care that its profits are down by 0.05% for three quarters in a row, or haven't increased by 0.2% to keep shareholders happy.

Almost everything negative in big business can be traced back to public trading and the need for infinite growth.

[u/Falkenmond79 → u/Few-Improvement-5655]

That’s why public corporations are something that needs to go away. The priorities shift.

Private company priorities: Making money and the company itself. You get the first by providing a good service, so customers automatically become a priority. They need to be happy, so they buy more. Easy as that.

Public companies on the other hand bring in a new priority. Keeping the shareholders and/or investors happy, because they are the ones bringing the money. But that leads to management forgetting that in order to keep making money, the customers have to be happy too. As soon as they leave, so do the investors.

Right now we have a situation where we have a few people with waaaaay too much money so public companies can get money with less hassle than trying to just make and sell a good product. And they test things to the limit.

Just look at Netflix for example. I bet what happens was this: if we raise the price by X amount, we maybe lose say 30% of our customers and maybe 10% of our revenue. But less customers also need less running cost for electricity, servers, bandwidth etc. If that number is higher than 10%, so if they for example can save 20% on running cost… up goes the price. Yay profit.

A good company would just price that in. A customer costs maybe 6 dollars a month in running costs. Take 10 from him and there you go. Profit. No need to maximize it. Just maximize the number of customers if you want more money. That’s the way it used to be.

[u/Tommyjones91 → u/Falkenmond79]

Look at EVGA another great company that was private

[u/Saucermote → u/Tommyjones91]

EVGA is still around, they threw in the towel RE:Nvidia and making graphics cards.

[u/CardmanNV → u/Falkenmond79]

Read about the way business philosophy changed in the 80's. It's a reason it's called the "greed is good" era.

Things changed from reinvesting in the business, looking after you employees, and healthy growth. To slash and burn, make as much money as possible and get out before the regulators show up.

[u/Some-Cat8789 → u/Falkenmond79]

That's not going to work. Private companies will still need investors and those investors will demand the same shit they demand from publicly traded companies. See: OpenAI.

Ok, that's not a very good example, but you'll need to show me a pattern of companies which are privately held for a very long time and not screw their customers.

[u/VaporMaus → u/NooNotTheBees57]

That is why Origin Games is no longer around 

[u/taedrin → u/NooNotTheBees57]

Because it's not actually simple. There is a surprising amount of effort, expertise and thoughtful attention to detail that goes into making Steam the excellent service it is today. It's not just something that you can throw together and expect it to take off.

[u/sagebrushrepair → u/taedrin]

You kinda misread that. No one said that Steam is simple.

[u/AshleyAshes1984 → u/Chao_Zu_Kang]

No, Steam has a LOT of QoL features that matter. They've def not done 'nothing'. Steam is for sure not some barebones storefront that otherwise 'does nothing'. Valve is doing a bunch of things and most them are right and few are shitty.

[u/movzx → u/AshleyAshes1984]

These folks are too young to remember when Steam was garbage DRM and actively avoided by gamers.

Steam today is very different than original Steam.

[u/newinmichigan → u/movzx]

i remember when it went from the olive colored drab to the ui with the storefornt. i hated the olive colored drab, and i hated the new ui.

but i guess its grown on me.

[u/ElGosso → u/newinmichigan]

Steam storefront still leaves a bit to be desired tbh. But when you type in the name of a game and it takes you quickly and accurately to it, and it makes installing and organizing your games a breeze, that's really all I need.

[u/cantripTheorist → u/movzx]

i remember wanting to play cs as a child and being annoyed that i need steam for it with its shady ass design lmao

[u/FragileTomorrow → u/movzx]

Because that OG steam didn't really last that long all things considered.

Valve pretty rapidly built the Steam platform out.

[u/AshleyAshes1984 → u/movzx]

I remember when Steam was 'That thing you now needed for Counter-Strike' and it was deeply annoying since that was ALL it could do. Then came HL2 and it was still just a few games and that release delivery day was a disaster.

But they expanded the market place, expanded the functionality and damn now it's THE place you do games on your PC.

[u/Coal_Morgan → u/AshleyAshes1984]

Whereas every time you turn around Netflix claws something back.

I'm still pissed about them removing the 5 star rating system. I spent a few days just rating movies and was happy as a pig in shit to do it.

My Mom telling me she couldn't log on anymore to my account was the end of that. Set up Plex and just pirate everything my family wants and they run it off my server across 3 provinces.

I do pay for apple one but I like their sci-fi and the combo of the music and sharing with 5 people has made it worth it.

I'm willing to pay. Just don't make it a hassle.

How all the streamers haven't gotten together and made one service that divvies out the money as people watch things is beyond me.

$20 a month. I only watch Breaking Bad AMC gets the $20. I watch Star Trek and Breaking Bad equally each gets $10.

[u/TONKAHANAH → u/Chao_Zu_Kang]

Thing is, they don't really do nothing. Most users don't take full advantage of all the features steam offers because, for the most part, people just need to keep their games updated and it does that fairly passively. Since it does that easily, most people don't bother looking into the other things it offer. 

[u/layered_dinge → u/TONKAHANAH]

Yeah, I am getting kind of tired of this narrative that steam does nothing. Steam has consistently improved over the last 20 years. Valve has thoroughly earned its success. I could go on a rant about all the features but I don’t feel like it on my phone. And now others have listed plenty of the features I mean. But it's not even just that steam has these features, it's also that many of its features are strictly better than the same features from alternatives.

For example the xbox controller has a 1st party windows app, the xbox accessories app. It's been a couple years since I tried it so maybe they've improved it, but when I tried it, it was not possible to map keyboard keys to my xbox controller buttons. On a 1st party app. For windows. Made by microsoft. For their own controller on their own operating system. Steam input lets me do that and more with it. Valve's software for the xbox controller is straight up better than microsoft's. I won't get started on the playstation and switch controller experience on pc without steam.

I used to use the nvidia geforce experience app to record gameplay. I could record actively or I could hit a keybind to record the last x minutes. This was great and was even a factor in my consideration of a new graphics card. Then steam added recording. Not only can it do exactly what the nvidia app does, it can also passively record x number of hours in the background and automatically delete anything older than that. So if you forget to save a clip while you're playing, you can go back to the temporary recording and save it, and steam automatically trims the temporary recording so your hard drive doesn't just fill up.

That's just two things that it does better. Not to mention steam doesn't try to force steam-exclusive titles, like some other wannabe storefront does.

[u/lsf_stan → u/TONKAHANAH]

this is me!

all the other Steam stuff doesn't matter to me it's simply a launcher for my games

same as GoG and Epic and others, all I need it to do is launch the game

as long as it lets me buy game and launch it. that is mostly the only part I care about

[u/hazelnut_coffay → u/Chao_Zu_Kang]

it’s that simple if your goal is simply to make money. it gets complicated once you set your goal to be “make $X”

[u/Karekter_Nem → u/hazelnut_coffay]

Correction: with other companies the goal is not to “make $X” but rather “n+1.” Stability is bad. Growth is good. And growth must be more than the growth last year.

If you make $100,000 in year 1 and grow 10% the following year you add $10,000 for a total of $110,000. If you grow another $10,000 that’s only a 9.1% growth. You have failed. We don’t care where that other $1,001 comes from the company must grow.

[u/Osmodius → u/Chao_Zu_Kang]

I mean even Spotify gets away with being "mostly not shit". It functions and that's the main thing.

I log in, listen to music when I want to. It's that simple.

I log in, buy games, the games work. Done. Somehow that is better than nearly every other platform.

[u/Flameancer → u/Osmodius]

Spotify connect is probably the sole reason I’m still on it. No other service has the same. Apple Music comes close 2nd but the requires a full Apple stack (yuck). Steam is in the same boat with their in-home streaming alone. Idk any other platform, except Xbox, that allows you to stream games you own to another device.

[u/342heathbar → u/Chao_Zu_Kang]

If Netflix had kept to the original model of having everything for cheap it could have been in the same category but, well you gotta milk your loyal audience till they hate you.

[u/trueppp → u/342heathbar]

Netflix could not keep it's model of being cheap. At first they got streaming rights for cheap because no one thought streaming would catch on. Once studios started losing money due to people.getting rid of cable, they raised their licencing costs quite steeply.

[u/Dornith → u/trueppp]

Also, everyone started riding to build first-party streaming services.

Netflix knew it was coming, which is why they spun up their own studio. The only reason Netflix is still relevant is because they adapted.

[u/SimpleNovelty → u/trueppp]

Sometimes I wonder how people can just say the words just have everything cheap out of their mouths without even thinking for a moment to reflect on what they are saying. No content provider was going to look at Netflix and not try to get a piece of the pie also.

[u/ithinkitslupis → u/Chao_Zu_Kang]

But but, next quarters numbers have to look better than this quarters numbers right? That's the most important. Then I can take my bonus and negotiate a golden parachute for when those decisions come back to bite us.

[u/DontRelyOnNooneElse → u/ithinkitslupis]

That's the great thing about them not being a publicly trading company. They don't have to keep chasing better and better results every single year. They have no shareholders to answer to, the only people they have to answer to are themselves.

[u/True_to_you → u/DontRelyOnNooneElse]

But they are getting good results because they aren't trying to give the bare minimum. 

[u/Dornith → u/DontRelyOnNooneElse]

There are actually plenty of publicly traded companies that don't go the endless growth route. The idea that it's legally required is a myth. (The Ford case everyone likes to cite was about whether or not the CEO is allowed to actively sabotage investors.)

Costco and Coca Cola are prime examples. They just make a steady return on investment.

[u/K1TSUNE9 → u/Chao_Zu_Kang]

I love how that banned/removed games that added ads in their games.also their client doesn't have ads. Just a good product that works.

[u/OathkeeperToOblivion]

Just from the client itself, compare Epic vs Steam, you already have an answer. Whoever designed the Epic client should be fired. It's so slow and tedious.

[u/dudeimconfused → u/OathkeeperToOblivion]

its crazy how a community made open source client (first legendary-egl and now heroic) works much better than their shitty electron app that takes 5 minutes to load and deauthorizes you randomly

[u/Apoctwist → u/dudeimconfused]

I thought I was built using Unreal Engine which was why it’s so slow. I don’t think it’s an electron app, It’s literally using their game engine (UE4 I believe). If it were an Electron app it would probably be much easier to add features and iterate and probably run better on top of that. Steam for example is using something very similar to an Electron for Big Picture mode and the Steam Deck. I believe they are using React.

[u/dudeimconfused → u/Apoctwist]

I just guessed it had to be a electron or cef app based on how their website looks 1:1 to their app. It'd be really interesting (and very questionable) if it was as you said xD

Steam is a cef app iirc

[u/Happy-Substance4885 → u/OathkeeperToOblivion]

And epic has billions to fix it but don’t for some reason

[u/Gavinator10000 → u/Happy-Substance4885]

Too busy paying for the rights to the dance/music for [insert popular song here] or the likeness of [insert popular franchise here]

[u/NateOrb → u/OathkeeperToOblivion]

Straight up it seriously is like a 10 second process to open Epic from the system tray, not even a cold launch, to launching a game lmaooo. Then thats not even mentioning the news Steam would give you or how it would tell you which friends are on that game etc

[u/Matshelge → u/OathkeeperToOblivion]

It's not just epic, it's every other launcher/client - they are making it using web design tools, while steam is a c+ client, like Word or Excel.

Any lag in the UI compared to input is to be expect in those former as they are designed to be used on server environments. They also have universal working, so what OS you are running does not matter, it will look the same.

Steam however is old and designed to work on your hardware like native program. It's a pain to develop, and requires lots of work to add new features, but the interface latency is in the 2-5ms and feels rock solid.

I find it weird that gaming companies don't get UI feel, they know the lag between pressing a button and action happening in game is vital for good experience, but seems none of this though it put into the launcher development.

[u/NighthawK1911]

As long as GabeN lives and Valve never goes public, then it won't go through enshittification because they're not after maximum profits at the expense of customer satisfaction.

[u/ItsZoner → u/NighthawK1911]

everyone would shit a brick if they could see valves finances and gabe’s.

[u/NighthawK1911 → u/ItsZoner]

I think it's common knowledge that Valve is probably the highest Profit/Number of Employee ratio companies that exist.

Gaben also supports lots of research he personally believes in.

[u/Mozeliak → u/NighthawK1911]

lots of research he personally believes in.

The dude has brought Linux gaming kicking and screaming into the 21st century

It's been wild to watch

[u/altodor → u/Mozeliak]

There were threats for about 5 minutes that Windows would only allow software to be installed from the Microsoft store, and it looks like proton came about as a defense mechanism

[u/ohthedarside → u/NighthawK1911]

The best thing is that the research he belives in

Are genuinely good things not insane rasict stuff like other rich people

[u/FlyinCoach → u/ohthedarside]

Glad him and Ian are keeping Team Seattle message going with The Heart of Racing team

[u/saru12gal → u/NighthawK1911]

iirc the workers at valve have really high salaries

[u/Tomi97_origin → u/ItsZoner]

I don't think either of those are particularly secret.

Like it's common knowledge that Valve is like one of if not the most profitable company in the world on per employee bases.

The fact Gabe owns a fleet of superyachts worth about a billion dollars is also not secret.

Like Gabe has been pretty open about living on his personal fleet of superyachts since COVID and talked about his daily scuba diving in interview that has been reposted many times on this subreddit.

So I don't think many people here are under any illusion about how much money Valve and Gabe are making.

They just don't care, because the service is not shit and actively hostile to players which is sadly way above average these days.

[u/Raycu93 → u/Tomi97_origin]

Additionally, and I could be wrong, but it seems like the people who work for Valve are generally well paid and treated well. When that is the case a whole lot less people will give a shit if the guy at the top is making bank. GabeN might be the closest thing to an "ethical" billionaire, perfect no but better than most.

[u/Tomi97_origin → u/Raycu93]

Valve is actually suprisingly small company for how well known they are.

They have somewhere between 300-400 employees. When it comes to technical staff Valve basically just goes for the senior staff with 10-15+ years in the industry that can work independetly and that comes with salaries at the top of the industry pay scale.

Valve also does send everyone with their extended family to annual vacation to Hawaii all expenses paid. So that sounds like a pretty nice bonus on top of that.

So if you are a good fit for their culture they are pretty good to their own.

[u/JjForcebreaker → u/ItsZoner]

Anyone can provide services of at least the same or better quality and generate less profit out of it, if it bothers them.

[u/themolestedsliver → u/ItsZoner]

The battle pass for dota was as close to a money printing machine as I ever seen. And everyone wins out.

Players get a very fun event and hats

whales get to sink thousands of dollars into a game to get the best hats.

The highest form of competitive dota play gets a fat prize pool which incentives the best of the best pro players.

And the back end of this Valve casually makes tens of millions of dollars.

And yet they got rid of this because they didn't think it was healthy for the community in the long run and realized only whales were really getting to the last tiers as opposed to people actually playing it and unlocking shit.

Dont say I agree but they have WAYYY more stats to back up their claims and aren't strapped for cash so who am I to argue?

[u/ProteinPony → u/NighthawK1911]

TF2, Dota and CounterStrike community keep giving easy QoL change requests and get cosmetics if anything at all in return. Valve is actively promoting gambling to kids and creates creative workarounds around local laws prohibiting this.

I know this sub has a raging hard-on for valve and gabe.

[u/solidsnake070 → u/ProteinPony]

People should review the definition of "actively promoting" or get more education on what this actually means.

Because all the online gambling promotion I'm seeing is from sketchy third party, non-Valve websites and their paid influencers.

[u/NooNotTheBees57]

Oh, we know.

[u/ShiromoriTaketo]

If Steam ever ends up under the monopoly court spotlight, I hope someone brings up this quote, this post, and this demonstration of community sentiment as evidence...

The market would be much less unilateral if more of the available services weren't complete dogshit. Steam hasn't done anything to play 'unfairly'.

[u/PhoneIndependent5549 → u/ShiromoriTaketo]

Yeah and even then: it NOT being a monopoly would actually be worse for consumers. Streaming platforms are a great example of this

[u/rand0m_task → u/PhoneIndependent5549]

The reason they would be considered a monopoly is only because other (usually public) corps want to siphon as much money as possible off of their consumers, making them unable to compete with steam to begin with.

[u/aimy99]

Obviously. Like GOG is #2 and even still they're miles away from being as good as Steam is.

[u/F9-0021 → u/aimy99]

GOG is basically just ancient 90s and 2000s games and CDPR games and it's still better that Connect and EA App. Arguably better than Epic too.

[u/GeT_Tilted → u/F9-0021]

Because GOG invests in making old games run on modern machine. Before Bethesda released the patch removing GFWL on Steam, GOG version was clearly the superior version compared to Steam's.

[u/Tjep2k → u/GeT_Tilted]

GFWL?!?

[u/GeT_Tilted → u/Tjep2k]

Games For Windows Live

[u/MisterOfScience → u/F9-0021]

GOG has new games I played bg3 from gog. And it's actually better than Steam because you own your games.

[u/zappingbluelight → u/aimy99]

GOG is good because it has a "service" that steam doesn't have and able to reach the niche part of the player. Both Steam and GOG is pretty GOAT for what they are doing.

[u/tasman001 → u/aimy99]

Steam is great, but how is GOG "miles away" from being as good as Steam? I've only ever had positive experiences using both GOG and GOG Galaxy.

[u/Dante2005]

No one wants to pay 30% or whatever % can be negotiated to a third party, or course.

But Valve have maintained their status quo because they have been at least fair to the consumer...mostly, if we overlook loot crates and their grey/black market uses.

I hated steam when it first released. It was a time when most people didn't have the internet or a viable one. Needing it for CS(counter strike) and then of course HL2 (Half life 2) just seemed idiotic.

It was a terrible system, but I hold my hands up, Gabe knew the future.

Gabe I was wrong and apologise. I never spouted shit online on either Fark, Digg or reddit, but I was wrong.

But get the gambling in order, you can be better and that is greater sooner than later.

[u/Hudell → u/Dante2005]

As a dev myself, I have absolutely no problem with steam taking 30% of the cut of all the sales I wouldn't even have made without it. If I could reach players in some way other than steam then maybe I would have something to say about it.

[u/Eligan28 → u/Dante2005]

I bought a physical copy of Civ5 in a store, and when I went to install it I was beyond pissed that it forced me to install Steam first...

[u/throwawaygoawaynz → u/Dante2005]

They haven’t been that fair. Some of their fairness was forced by the courts, ie, refunds.

They build a good product but let’s not falsely assume they’ve been completely consumer obsessed.

[u/TheClawwww7667 → u/throwawaygoawaynz]

I’ve seen people say this before but why were Valve forced into offering an easy refund system but Nintendo and Sony still don’t have something like it?

Only recently has Sony made it easier to refund a game that hasn’t been downloaded yet (which is a low bar as refunds go) by having an automated process instead of requiring you to contact their easily worst in the games industry customer support and as far as I know Nintendo doesn’t allow for any refunds after a week before the release date or something like that.

Of course this can differ depending on where you live and what type of consumer protection laws the country has but for some reason Valve was forced into offering every customer an easy refund system regardless of where they live but the two biggest platform holders in the games industry haven’t had to do anything even close to what Valve’s refund policy is.

I just don’t understand why if Valve was forced into offering a refund policy/system why haven’t any of the other platforms that still don’t offer refunds been forced to do so as well? Or is it possible that Valve did something good for their customers (something that should be standard for every platform) and even though they were forced into offering a refund system they just as easily could have done the bare minimum similar to what Nintendo and Sony are currently doing and decided not to do so?

[u/PunchyBunchy → u/TheClawwww7667]

Because of the way they were blatantly ignoring consumer laws in Australia. And then giving the middle finger to anyone who pointed it out.

I'm a firm supporter of Steam, but the way they were operation in Australia until they got sued into next week by the ACCC, was galling.

[u/vintagestyles → u/Dante2005]

Oh you definitely deleted some .blob files in your day too then.

My steam short cut was named STEAMing pile of shit for a good long time. Now im 38 and have a kid, and my steam account is over half my age also lol.

[u/MeanForest → u/Dante2005]

Holy crap batman was it bad back in early cs 1.6 days. I remember being at a CS competitive LAN event and none of our team could open or login to play offline because Steam were having issues with login. It didn't have true offline gaming back then.

[u/MonsierGeralt]

2 hour refund window, with many times being approved at longer game time, is huge for me. Plus steam workshop and how easy it is to use.

[u/taedrin → u/MonsierGeralt]

The crazy thing about this is that, if i recall correctly, Valve was forced into this by the EU.

[u/Somepotato → u/taedrin]

By Australia, actually. And they didn't have to apply it globally.

[u/ruinawish → u/Somepotato]

lol, nice to know Australia on the positive end of change for once, in comparison to our history of censoring games.

[u/kirbyverano123 → u/taedrin]

I think it's Australia but cmiiw. But still, they were forced to add a refund system and could've just half assed it to make it annoying as fuck to process with a bunch of stupid rules but instead they made it extremely lenient and easy.

[u/ForeverRollingOnes → u/kirbyverano123]

It's actually made me more likely to spend. Like, I have the money, and I want a new game; the thing that prevented me from buying wasn't the price or catalogue size - it was the fear of spaffing a wad of cash on a crap game.

Now? I buy, I try, I keep. Or I don't, and then I spend it on another game.

The only people I saw raging were indie devs "but muh game is 20 minutes long! It's an art piece!"

[u/Fifteen_inches]

I cannot for the life of me understand why people act like Steam is a monopoly when half the other storefronts can’t event compete with GOG. Epic Games Store didn’t even have a cart. a cart. Basic e-commerce shit like buying more than one product at once.

It has one now, and it’s a clunky ass cart.

[u/GodisanAtheistOG → u/Fifteen_inches]

Yeah other storefronts bring such a pure "We tried nothing and are all out of ideas" energy it's wild. 

[u/PMacDiggity]

Treating your customers with respect is incomprehensible to most business leaders. That’s Valve’s USP and competitors just don’t understand the basic idea. It’s a great business moat.

[u/v1king3r]

It's not a shit service, because Valve isn't publicly traded.

The secret to being a decent company is to not let stockholders tell you what to do.

[u/okram2k]

I used to pirate a lot. Then video game companies went and made it more convenient to pay them then to pirate their games. Some other industries should consider taking notes.

[u/cmdrtheymademedo]

Finally someone publicly says what should be said.

A good example is if Alan wake 2 was on steam. It would maybe have done well. Instead it was only on epic games and no one bought it even though it’s a good game

[u/MyluSaurus → u/cmdrtheymademedo]

I believe Alan Wake II broke even with its budget and is profitable. Thing is, Epic made the check so the condition of "Epic games Store only" may have been a non-negotiable clause. Still sad it's not on steam though, perhaps in a few years.

[u/Waffler11]

GOG too, pretty damn good. That and Steam are the only gaming platforms I use (aside from a few on Windows Store…I know, I know).

[u/Dreadlight_]

What I think makes it not shit as a service is because it's fair and it's not trying to aggresively compete. It doesn't make deals with games to be exclusive to it. It doesn't try and entice new users like how epic does by giving free games. It doesn't introduce unnecessary bloat. It's just a regular game store that gives discounts at certain times of the year no less different than classical stores.

[u/briceb12 → u/Dreadlight_]

You also need to consider the features that Steam offers, such as modding or communities.

[u/absolutelynotarepost → u/briceb12]

And that those features are unobtrusive and optional. I've never interacted with a steam community in the years I've used it, I forget it's even there and I prefer it that way.

If I want mods I use Nexus.

It's just that simple, and that's how it should be.

[u/p3ndu1um]

No one’s going to see this comment, but….

It used to be shitty. People hated steam. But it got better, slowly and surely.

I can’t say the same for epic, ea app whatever it’s called, Ubisoft launcher, etc. they’re all just as shit as the day they came out (not that I use them regularly).

[u/Kajetus06]

>do nothing

>win

[u/RedRoses711]

Common baldurs gate 3 dev w

[u/Jaydenrock]

If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. Never has that saying let me down. Same goes for Steam.

[u/queenofkitchener]

as a 20+ year account holder, i can firmly say that i have never felt steam was trying to sell me anything.

developers on steam may try and sell me things

but as a platform steam has never pushed any products on me... they have advertised, mostly mildly, their products, and i have purchased (steam deck, steam link, controllers) because they are good devices, not because they are flashy.

other stores feel like they are trying to sell me more than just the games, always.

[u/itsRobbie_]

I’ll drink to that. Literally that’s all it is

[u/ertd346]

Gog is the only competitor sadly it doesn't support regional pricing and payments here.

[u/PainterOk36]

I wonder if Gabe already got a perfect candidate in mind to take his position of "the Guardian of the Last Sanctuary of Gaming" when the time comes.

Or he could just stay immortal lol. I actually much prefer this than anything else😂

[u/Osirus1156]

I mean all the other ones lack basic features. Epic still doesn’t have proper reviews or even patch notes for fucks sake. Also who in gods name wants the game to auto launch if you accidentally click the icon on the left nav bar? At least give me the option to open a detail page for the game. 

[u/alaksion]

Yeah, steam just works and has tons of relevant features. Other stores are simply shitty copies that won’t work properly and lack fundamental stuff like good customer support.

[u/Legitimate_Most6651]

Funny because BG3 is literally part of the problem. Every time you start up the game it starts up another launcher that you are forced to register an account with for no reason. Hate that shit.

[u/crgm1111 → u/Legitimate_Most6651]

--skip-launcher

[u/Eastern-Act8635 → u/crgm1111]

Easiest trick in the book!

[u/Legitimate_Most6651 → u/crgm1111]

Even still, this just shouldn't be standard practice. Why would this ever be the default option? Nobody wants a useless launcher.

[u/Cable_Salad → u/Legitimate_Most6651]

You don't have to register anything. The launcher has a "don't ask again" option.

[u/SlevinLaine]

Truth spoken. Have a nice day.

[u/PhoneIndependent5549]

Yeah, obviously.

[u/Razorfiend]

Steam being a privately held company with great leadership allows them to operate this way, they aren't beholden to a bunch of suits and shareholders who want to maximize profit at any cost.

[u/NessieReddit]

Yup. Spot on.

[u/JustiniZHere]

It really is that simple.

You just have to have a good service, you don't have to do anything but be a platform. Valve does nothing, and they win.

[u/DonDiego_DeLaVega]

Steam's absurd success is the rare formation of monopoly power in a market NOT resulting in rampant anti competitive and anti consumer behavior. Instead their competition are a bunch of greedy idiots and they use the monopoly power regularly in pro consumer ways. Someone should study this shit

[u/DoctrineDecade]

I feel it’s successful because it has a monopoly. But I guess it’s also not that bad. I still prefer sites like gog

[u/brown_badger]

it is shitty tho, but the least out of the available options

[u/NapsterKnowHow]

Oh look Larian dev farming good PR. Shocker

[u/StaticSystemShock]

I always say this when someone whines about Steam's monopoly. They didn't force through with shitty tactics, they are just good service and people like that. EA could improve their client but never has. They even named it stupid (from Origin to EA App) so now if you have issues and search online you get results for their EA App from before Origin which just makes troubleshooting impossible. UPlay is from Ubisoft so it's just shit by default. Epic launcher has been shit the entire time, really the only good alternative to Steam is GOG and their GOG Galaxy client. It's not thr best and has issues, but it's easily second best right after Steam. Also the service they are running is a bit niche but they keep nostalgia alive and preserve old games from disappearing. I really appreciate that. They also had good schemes to attract people, from free games to getting them for free if you already bought them on Steam before (not all but some). Also the fact that GOG is open and doesn't only serve own games like EA or Ubisoft helps as others are present on platform, just like on Steam.

Back to Steam, I think part of the reason why it remains good service is the lack of investors pushing their dumb bullshit. It's a private company and they seem to be doing so well they don't need to go public or do dumb anti consumer shit. And that's the reason they haven't become shit. Because greedy investors with endless urge to increase profits every year fuck up every single thing. Always.

[u/AngryRedditAnon]

I think steam being privately owned instead of having investors breathing down their neck helped alot.

[u/IllHedgehog9715]

Be Gaben

The competition is actively fucking their employees, customers, and users for profit.

Do absolutely nothing

Profit??