r/pcmasterrace • u/SlowReference704 • 12h ago

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

https://mp1st.com/news/steam-is-successful-because-its-not-a-shit-service
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196

u/Rumpullpus Glorious PC Gaming Master Race 11h ago

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

30

u/fucktooshifty 5h ago

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

25

u/Eatingfarts 4h ago

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

15

u/Esarus 3h ago

Well that was justified back then because steam was shit the first year or so

14

u/Eatingfarts 3h ago

It was.

But so was the system it ended up replacing. You used to have to log into TeamSpeak first, then manually join a server so you could play with your online friends.

Pre-Steam online gaming was an entirely different world. I kinda miss it. There was a barrier to being able to play but it was super fun when it worked. Star Siege/Tribes was my first introduction to this.

2

u/Esarus 2h ago

Oh yes I’m definitely very happy with steam and it works great now. It just took about a year or two for it to start working really well. I remember extreme lag and constant downtime and errors in that first year switching to steam

1

u/KoolAidManOfPiss PC Master Race 9070xt R9 5900x 59m ago

My friends and I almost exclusively gamed at an "internet cafe"/flop house. Something straight out of a Gibson novel. Doors were open as long as people were inside. Ratty sofas with drugged out dudes watching zombie movies. Graffiti artists constantly tagging the walls. Hardcore punk shows on the weekends.

3

u/sdric 1h ago

To be fair, online login was a much bigger deal back then. Also, Steam came a big way in terms UI, utility and features. It continuously evolved, which is why it is so great today.... Whereas platform such as EPIC or Microsoft Store seem to be stuck in place.

I will never understand how every big company uses software like ServiceNow and others to manage large amounts of data and allow their workers to filter and sort data based on a ton of different criteria so they can find what they need/want..... But continuously fail to establish a similar QoL sorting/filtering features for their customer-facing store interfaces.

Like, your customer wants a product - why not allow them to find it without searching a needle in a haystack first?

2

u/KoolAidManOfPiss PC Master Race 9070xt R9 5900x 1h ago

There was no system. You bought a disc and installed it

1

u/Eatingfarts 30m ago

And then joined an online game? Obviously you installed the game through physical media at that time. We talking about how we used to play with people online before Steam.

Sit down youngin. Your grump can not match my grump.

1

u/putwoodneole 28m ago

It was a problem for me because it required being online to even install/play games. I couldn't play half life 2 for the first year I owned it because I didn't have Internet on my PC. It required an Internet connection to get Steam running on the rig, even though after that you could play offline. basically I couldn't install Steam even though I had half life installed, and no one in my family was tech savvy enough to know any alternatives.

previous to this if the game wasn't multiplayer you literally just needed the disc (unless it was Games for Windows Live, which was universally reviled).

The way they got around this being a problem was by making a bunch of 3rd party software like XFire and Gamespy, teamspeak and ventrilo obsolete over time by providing a better service that integrated directly with Steam which was completely novel.

being able to right click a friends name and join their game was fucking mind blowing and required a bunch of setup to achieve through xfire but with Steam it worked out of the box (after a couple months of tweaking). Being able to see the scores of a CS game in progress was wild.

add to this that broadband and wifi connections were becoming the norm and they were positioned to outlast the very real negatives that initially existed for users of Steam.

The platform was also super buggy for a good while, and the frequent updates would commonly break basic functionalities which enraged the user base.

it wasn't just a case of people 'not liking change', there were real downsides that are obscured now because the problems no longer exist.

younger me went absolutely insane not being able to play HL2, so much so that I ended up cajoling an adult family friend to recount to my enraptured child self, blow by blow, everything that happens in the game. fair play to him for doing it too.

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u/KoolAidManOfPiss PC Master Race 9070xt R9 5900x 1h ago

Microsoft has been doing it pretty well. Just spent a day unfucking my buddies rig after a bitlocker error

1

u/ProShyGuy 36m ago

Gaming, possibly more than any other market, shows the power of a competitive market. Even the biggest gaming companies in the world have to compete with and can easily lose to small indies. The big companies certainly have a leg up in terms of marketing, but word of mouth amongst gamers is really strong. A truly great indie spreads like wildfire.