steam is just so based.
I dont think a single more based company has ever existed. It rivals the greats like linux, with a touch of gambling.
I dont think a single more based company has ever existed.
Hyperbole much? I like Steam as much as the next guy but lets not pretend the guy that owns 6 yachts is a good person just because he’s better than the next worst. Steam DRMs the shit out of games sold on their platform and if you’re an indie dev that wants to sell your game Steam is THE place to do it.
Steam made $10bn last year, they have about 100 employees (their parent company Valve has about 400). I used to be a bigger fan of GabeN but more recently really started considering him and looking into it and realized he’s just another unethical billionaire. This video by Coffeezilla is a good jumping off point. regarding the intentional targeting of youth with addictive gambling mechanics in loot crates and circumventing gambling laws. It’s all very purposeful and continues to this day.
Man I love it when people glaze objectively bad companies just because it’s popular opinion to like them.
Remember steam started the business model of not actually owning your games.
Gabe has made billions by stealing profit from the workers that actually make games.
They had to be sued just to offer refunds.
They host tons of malware and shovelware and outright scam games and even protect them from “”““review bombing””"
They pushed “early access” into the mainstream.
And because of people like you that would literally suck Gabes dick for the meme, they get away with it.
Remember steam started the business model of not actually owning your games.
GOG exists, go use GOG. Steam is popular because they don’t fuck over buyers, and they run a good business model, people are ok not “owning” things if the service is reasonably well put together.
Gabe has made billions by stealing profit from the workers that actually make games.
steam takes a 30% cut, which isn’t all that high, especially when you consider that they develop things like proton at zero cost to anybody, including developers. You’re also getting the single largest and most widely used publishing platform, period. It’s really hard to beat something of that caliber, so it’s definitely a tradeoff. There are also cases of devs making games that become so popular they pull in millions of dollars worth of revenue.
They host tons of malware and shovelware and outright scam games and even protect them from “”““review bombing””"
in defense of steam, if they specifically curated high quality games people like you would accuse them of gate keeping the platform. Scams are definitely a thing, malware, technically is. I’ve not seen malware ever in my personal experience, and i doubt most people have, and whenever it does happen, steam responds accordingly so i’m not sure its a fair statement.
They pushed “early access” into the mainstream.
there’s nothing necessarily wrong with early access, i actually think it’s a really productive way to provide tons of play testing and development potential for smaller dev teams. Does it also incentivize shovelware? Sure, but it’s a platform you can make money on, that’s not abnormal. And again, it’s usually very well known when games are abandonware.
And because of people like you that would literally suck Gabes dick for the meme, they get away with it.
surprised you didn’t mention gambling, that’s probably the most significant argument against steam right now, they effectively run what can be considered an online casino.
G*mers have been too Stockholmed by Steam’s monopoly to recognise that everything they complain about with EA or Ubisoft all started with Valve.
While I think capitalism encourages unethical business practices, keep in mind that Valve actively supports the development and popularization of the kernel as well as other projects like Wine from their profits.
I sometimes feel an anxiety when pondering what will happen when daddy Gabe isn’t here to keep the wolves at bay.
gabe is a very smart person, if he doesnt have a post death plan for steam i would be immensely surprised.
Depends on who inherents his shares
GOG Galaxy isn’t bad to use. It has cloud saves, and update checking - which is useful for some people. And games installed using the offline installers still show up in galaxy (and can be updated etc.) In fact, you can download the offline installers from the Galaxy app itself if you want to.
@cupcakezealot wasn’t Itch also American?
yeah it wasn’t necessarily an alternative; i was just saying they’re better because they tend to support indie devs and/or are more drm free than steam. i didn’t know of a purely non american one that i use :(
Apparently GOG is Polish. DRM free, too; the one time I used it it literally just gave me the raw game files, like back in the day.
I love my Steam Deck and Proton, but it pisses me off how many Steam games are spyware / DRMware and won’t start without internet on this PORTABLE console, and especially that Valve allows this kind of toxic shit.
So, my Steam Deck stays blocked from the internet in my firewall and I either buy from GOG when available, or there’s this girl on the internet who shares a huge library of games that require no internet connection.
Also, Gabe can STFU about piracy being a service problem until Steam bans DRM and spyware.
You can just not buy the games that have stuff like Denuvo etc. If you keep buying them, of course they’ll keep including the DRM etc.
Steam is the storefront, and they have plenty of games you can buy without that crap.
I’m literally installing windows right now. I feel disgust, but I need it for one application that I know will never have a Linux version. I got tired of the slow as shit virtual machine I used for it before. I can’t replace it with an alternative either, for business reasons.
It’s crazy how it’s absolutely impossible to criticize steam without getting bashed to oblivion by so-called gamers. The amount of free balls sucking Steam gets is just ridiculous. They have sub 100 employees , take 30% of every god damn games sold on the platform and you don’t own you games. Yeah it’s a cool platform, but in the end it’s just another nasty capitalist business.
take 30% of every god damn games sold on the platform and you don’t own you games.
they also provide both proton completely for free, and the entire steam marketplace, as well as any other additional functionality, steam networking for ex, with that 30% cut.
It’s a large cut, but you’re not really going to find a better option. Sure you could release on GOG, i think like 12 people use GOG though.
they also provide both proton completely for free
Yeah,I mean Proton is basically Wine - A free and open-source project developed by hundred of people over the years - with some extra patches. It’s great, but the only reason they did it is to sell steam decks.
Steam does certain things really well, but in the end it’s just a capitalist business. I don’t get why gamers can be that bitchy about studios, that employ thousands of devs and artists, people who just wants to make good games but needs to deal with executives, but will rip their shirt a soon as someone criticize steam. They do no care about you, your experience, or even video games, they only care about money.
Boy are you gonna be surprised as hell when you find out what sort of percentage other publishers take, especially for physical releases!
Shockingly enough, infrastructure requires money to run!
You mean like Epic who takes 12%? Or Itch that let you chose your contribution? Or Humble that takes 25% but give half of that to charity?
BTW steam is not a publisher…The infrastructure argument is just BS in 2025. Just admit you’re an official gamer, meaning you will do anything to protect a soulless capitalist business that make millions everyday but employ like 83 people. Ubisoft bad, Steam good, I know lol.
The infrastructure argument is just BS in 2025
Why? Do we have free electricity and data centers? Sign me up for my share of both.
Lol, in 2022 steam had profit margin of 70%. That makes it the most profitable company per employee in the United States, check it out. But obviously, they’re not in it for the money, they just want players like you to be happy.
As a Linux gamer, steam has done so much to make it incredibly easy. They didn’t have to make proton, but they did and it’s great.
The few games they’ve made have pretty much all been incredible.
The family sharing means my wife has access to my whole account on her steam deck.
Sure, they take a big cut of sales, I’ve heard not a great place to work, and probably some other reasons to not like them. But the good far outweighs the cons. It’s hard to hate them compared to other huge companies.
Well I mean, proton exists pretty much solely because of the steam deck. I will agree that it’s been really nice switching to Linux as a result of proton’s existence but they didn’t just magically do it out of the goodness of their own heart either. It’s basically the nicest version of a monopolistic gaming environment that doesn’t really allow you to actually own anything that you buy.
It’s kind of funny to watch the news with them; they’re like two different companies struggling to coexist. One is just as greedy and evil as every other corporation and the other one fights for the consumer, so you end up with a news story one day saying that they’re stifling competition by forcing price cuts on only their platform, but then they also are banning all games that force players to watch advertisements. Make make up your mind Steam 😂
Well I mean, proton exists pretty much solely because of the steam deck.
proton existed many years before the steamdeck, and it’s evident they intended it to be used WITH the steam deck, but it also exists outside the steamdeck, even then, it’s still a huge incurred cost for a console that is actually super cost competitive for what it is. They don’t even have that significant of a console market share, it seems like it’s been nothing but a pet project to make gaming on linux more accessible, presumably because valve doesn’t really like windows. Steam is 100% still WAY in the red on proton, and will probably continue to be for the whole lifetime of the project, it’s unlikely they’ll ever break even on it.
How do they not allow you to own anything? Steam has drm free games, and if this is about licensing that wasn’t different 30 years ago.
Valve is absolutely not perfect and I buy from gog when possible, but my god do I hate that argument. Using steam’s drm is the choice of the publisher.
How do they not allow you to own anything? Steam has drm free games, and if this is about licensing that wasn’t different 30 years ago.
its the perpetual license thing, every platform that doesnt directly sell you the product does the same thing, it’s the industry standard.
Family sharing is just replicating a feature of the disc age that valve killed of only owning 1 copy of a game and installing it one multiple people’s computers. If it had DRM requiring the disc to be inserted to play (which many games did), only one person could play it at a time.
I had a couple of classmates who’d take turns buying each Sims 2 expansion because you only needed the last installed expansion disc inserted to play so that way they’d each have a fully expanded Sims 2 install at half the price. My dad would always have the latest expansion installed and I would have to wait until they got the next one before I could get that one. Certain expansions were exciting enough that I’d find times to play on my dad’s computer to play the latest expansion though
It’s a testament to how much worse every other company is.
I still don’t understand why the company is so highly regarded. They enable underage gambling. Life must be easy for a company. You just have to be a little bit better than the others and you are regarded as a hero.
i mean, out of all things a company can do that are bad, underage gambling is probably one of the better ones, and the argument in favor of it is that it’s on games like csgo and cs2, where the age range is obviously higher than an actual child.
Realistically, i think you have to be kind of stupid to get caught in gambling, but it is also definitely predatory, and there’s a reason it’s a heavily regulated industry. There’s definitely a better solution than we currently have, but it’s not as bad as it could be either.
Yup pretty much it.
Gaben is pretty chill, ngl
Accurate and warranted.
Steam ils not cool. Steam is a monopoly position. This egemony need to end. We need many actors not just one.
I never gamed, so…
- Fuck gambling
- Fuck walled gardens
- Fuck billionaires (nobody needs that much dough)
- Fuck Valve/Steam (it’s easy for me to say)
Steam isn’t perfect and I sure as shit won’t be the one defending a corporation, and this isn’t a good excuse at ALL, but if you’ve never gamed you wouldn’t believe how much worse it is on the other side (GOG being the only exception).
And as far as corpo rats go, at least Valve employees own 49% of the company.
Honest question but why is a monopoly that takes a massive cut out of others labour cool?
They’re not a monopoly, and they provide good and valuable services to their customers. That’s for both gamers and developers. There’s a reason why EA Play, Origin, uPlay, Epic Games Store etc… fail to take off compared to Steam, and it’s not just the availability of games.
They’re also very friendly to indie developers, any dev can make and publish a game on Steam for a fairly small fee compared to what you get.
They also heavily promote and contribute to open source software and Linux in general.
But fuck them for needing to make a profit too I guess?
Just because Steam is not an evil corporation doesn’t mean we can’t criticize them too. Both statements can be true, there is no way for an individual person to ethically own a billion dollars and Steam is for the most part an example of a business treating it’s customers, workers, and suppliers with respect and dignity. Those statements are not mutually exclusive.
In what way is Steam a monopoly?
Waiting to see what excuses people bring up to keep using steam
Do I need any other excuse than liking it?
I reduce US stuff and buy more local, but I’m not dealing in absolutes here. Maybe some day I’ll stop using steam but I’m going one step at a time.
I’m not using it since I’m not gaming, but I absolutely love how much they’re doing for Linux. With Proton they broke windows’ pseudo-monopoly on gaming and are now working on making Linux gaming mainstream with the steam deck.
windows’ pseudo-monopoly on gaming
don’t forget that they are one of the reasons that pseudo-monopoly exist to begin with
Doesn’t matter, they’re clearly working for Linux now (against Windows’ used-to-be pseudo-monopoly)
Also don’t forget that their main product is a proprietary third party software launcher
And yet the world (or linux at least) would be worse without it
Liking Linux is apparently their reason to support one of the biggest child gambling websities.
how is it any different than any other lootbox system that allows trading of items? That they officially allow payment in real money?
it’s not and that’s the point. People dunk on other lootboxes and gambling all the time but steam gets a pass because “I like linux support.” It’s a double standard that these people are showing.
What are some good alternatives to steam? Because as it stands currently i’ve had technical difficulties with gog (should probably try and see if they are still present) and don’t know about any other non-american site which would fill that role
You don’t really need a third party software launcher to play games to begin with
No, you need a third party torrenting site and a third party to crack the game and a third party torrent client… that’s somehow much better… No matter how you slice it, you still need at least one middle man between you and games.
you still need at least one middle man between you and games.
No you don’t, videogames are software
If you wish to have a game without a middle man you must first invent the universe.
