Remember when PC gaming was dead according to every outlet for two solid years?
Being customer friendly. What a novel idea.
20 years ago, the exact opposite was said about Steam and they didn’t change much. People just got used to it.
They haven’t changed much? They have like literally a million more games available on their store now.
I feel like this is not rocket science here, this is like business 101.
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Make the customer happy
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Enjoy increased sales and revenue
N,o, it is economics and at some point over the last decade or so companies decided that the customer should be subjected to a constant shift of quality until it arrives at a level where it is the worst they are possibly willing to accept. Quality down profits up. Welcome to our new world.
This is the new “the customer is always right” attitude.
profits down but stocks rise with increased investment.
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I never got a PlayStation but I was holding out for a PlayStation 6 once it finally got released. If there is no version for physical discs I will definitely not be getting one. Nothing worse then wanting to play a game you haven’t played in a while and then having to redownload it because you had to delete it to free up space for other games.
So much nicer just to be able to throw a disc in and go.
Or run into weird licensing issues you have no control over and the $80 game you bought no longer exists.
Or you still have the game but they just removed the sound track and changed some of the character’s faces.
I wonder what playstation would be like if it had embraced linux rather than fighting it.
don’t quote me, I might remember things wrong but, there was a version of PlayStation 2 or 3 that had Linux, freedom spooked Sony Source
yeah. this is what im talking about. imagine if they encouraged it and yeah maybe they would have to stop selling at a loss but still if they just made their own system based on linux. I mean microsoft was their main competitor at the time.
Sony is way too into proprietary lock-in to have allowed that long term. Hell, I’m astonished they ever allowed the release of their games to PC. They’ll never do that again.
see that is just the thing. If they had went linux and relases their pc games as linux compatible but not windows compatible. I mean im thinking in that their box just became a kind of sony linux distro with their whole system made around it. Then like windows users would have to use a linux compatibility thing. I think this would have been a better play.
Now I’m imagining a parallel time line where they went full in on linux and even put a custom linux build on their experia phones, sony viao laptops and the psp.
One appears to actually like their customers and the other two are actively hostile towards them. I’m sure somebody at Microsoft/Sony are scratching their heads trying to figure out what’s wrong.
Sony’s disc move just screams of a corporate accountant trying to improve the financials and they pick one of the dumbest options to cut costs on. Retailers are obviously upset as digital download cards probably sell like crap compared to physical copies. Outside of gifts I have no idea why anybody would bother.
Also worth mentioning Sony’s CEO and CSO sold 56% and 18% of their shares 2 days after the disc announcement to the tune of millions.
Sony has a 457m lawsuit against them for antitrust issues which they’ve historically defended with…physical disc sales. So I’m happy to see that decision blowing up in their face and I’ll wait for the outcome on that.
That’s the point. It’s not about the disc. It’s about cutting out retailers.
Games sell at the same price or cheaper at the retailer as they do digitally, and the retailer takes a cut. Games sold through PSN or the Xbox store make Sony and Microsoft way more money.
And that’s before we get to used sales.
Don’t get me wrong - not to argue. Hate the fact that they’re doing this but asking this genuinely objective point of view.
Why should retailers’s business would be concern to Sony? Isn’t this similar if I was an iron supplier and decided to not sell my materials to one manufacturer that I’m not tied with an agreement, just because I’ve decided not to?
Tell me again how many discs valve is selling? What happens to your steam account when you die?
I like valve, but don’t fool yourselves, Gabe N does not give a shit about the customers any more than Asha or Hideaki.
Well, that’s just objectively incorrect. Gabe at least recognizes that piracy is a service problem and being consumer friendly is more profitable in the long-term. People like Asha and Hideaki can’t seem to figure that one out no matter how much evidence is given to them.
i love steam but he does raise a good point. vavle explicitly said that steam acc is legally not transferable. there’s no second hand market and your library is legally gone for good when youre gone.
no matter how good valve is right now. the threat of enshittification is real, and will remain so until the discourse of the right of owning digital game is settled.
Oh yeah, Steam is not perfect by a long stretch. It mostly looks good by comparison with it’s competitors who appear to take being gently asked NOT to shit directly down their customers throats as basically a death threat. Was just pointing out that saying Gabe doesn’t give a shit is incorrect, as he does give a shit insofar as giving a shit has actually turned out to be the best long term strategy for Steam’s profits.
That said, Steam actually does have a history of honouring wills to transfer a dead persons library to someone else on death, despite that technically being disallowed by their ToS. So they aren’t bound to do it legally, but they do currently tend to. Which honestly might get them into some legal hot water if they ever try to enforce that term.
Valve is one of the few companies that has historically honored people’s bequests and allowed bequeathing their libraries to others after they die. Unlike say Apple who has outright said that your iTunes purchases disappear into the ether when you die.
Valvle is the only only one supporting Linux!. The rest are greedy fucks.
Treating your customers decently can lead to profits in the long run. What an insight. They should teach that at business schools.
Valve has fundamentally different goals from Microsoft and Sony
Microsoft and Sony want to increase profit a couple percentage for the next quarter
Valve wants to be profitable 10, 20, 30 years into the future
Thing is, they have been doing this for over a decade. Publicly traded companies can’t compete long-term, if there’s a well funded provate competitor
Thing is, they have been doing this for over a decade. Publicly traded companies can’t compete long-term, if there’s a well funded provate competitor
Of course they can, they can use the same aim. Problem is it’s more profitable to grind a company down, let it bankrupt and do the same to the next company. Hence enshittification arrived, venture capital has a full playbook for dismantling companies from the inside.
There’s still a few old bastions wanting stability, Coca Cola Group is the most obvious example of this
its not actually more profitable though. its only more profitable today, at the expense of future profits. this is more a problem caused by personal gain being directly linked to short term corporate gain. its only rational behavior from the perspective of the individual executives benefitting from the crazy compensation packages for laying everyone off and enshittifying the product. literally everyone else loses unless they get lucky and bail at just the right moment.
Publicly traded companies can’t compete long-term, if there’s a well funded private competitor
That’s why these companies love the idea of purchasing half the industry or using their resources to operate at a loss and squeeze out private competitors.
If they can’t compete, they can consolidate.
The gaming industry is fine. The “wall street gaming industry” is not.
It’s about time these corporate feral hogs start to feel the pain of the free market but they deserve much worse, bankruptcy. Xbox still exists, no leaders were laid off, their parent company still supports genocide, and this is all a problem.
Do you really want your games to pay for 8-10 figures a year for a hollow executive team’s risk free compensation? One where they have 0 liability, $0 of their own money on the line, literally not even gamers, to be the last word on what games make it into our hands and how they wring our wallets dry?
Best I can do is create shareholder value by making our product shittier and more expensive. Take it or leave it kid
maybe someone should tell them we’re leaving it. it doesnt seem like theyre noticing.
But I need a return on my investment now! Short term profits! Short term profits! SHORT TERM PROFITS!
Online subscription is a joke at this point
Who would have thought that eh?
Fuck yeah, love you Valve.
Love your contributions to Linux more though.
Gaben-kun will notice you
Ew. That’s a corporation. Stop.
If a corporation does something good, it’s OK to say, “Hey, good job. I love that!”
If a corporation does something legitimately shitty, it’s definitely OK to criticize them mercilessly too (I do it all the time, would recommend).
What’s not OK is trying to tell people what they can or can’t praise/criticize.
You said “Fuck yeah, love you Valve.” Loving a corporation is weird. Loving the actions is less-so.
Maybe you’ve have enough Internet for today but before you go, allow me to explain:
When someone says something like that, they don’t literally mean it.
“I love tacos” does not actually mean that I have genuine feelings of love for them (even if they are delicious).
It’s just a phrase.
The echo chamber on this platform is spacious.
I dunno, even if it results in billions or even trillions of humans deaths, I’d rather corpo die than let one thrive. The best form of economics that is not only financially but morally sounds is that of anarchy
You probably should stop having your own opinions, you really suck at them.
You’d rather the entire human race be wiped out than a corporation do well?
The key is being consistent and transparent. We got gut punched by the Steam Machine price, but it was an expected and transparent outcome. XBOX and Sony are so volatile that it’s making Steam look like a saint. From laying people off, to constant price increases, to the disc situation. Both these companies need to chill tf out.
Add to this MS buying up all of these game studios to do nothing with them and then kill them because they’re so inept.
Their actions look like a typical monopoly. Buy competition to destroy it later so you’re the only one in business.
Microsoft, monday morning: “how the fuck do we buy Linux?”
That is the entire content of the Microsoft’s Guide to Business Practices.
One page, one sentence.
Embrace, Extended, Extinguish.
In case anyone’s not clear as to why: Sony has announced that they’ll stop producing discs and that they can take your content at any time for any reason.
Historically, Steam has promised they will never do that and will offer DRM-free (clarification: they’ll remove the Steam DRM) downloads.
Also, all of them have jacked prices up. Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam have raised hardware prices around 35-40%. However, Steam runs on PCs they don’t sell, as well as Macs, and they have a Linux distribution they provide for free called Steam OS.
and that they can take your content at any time for any reason.
Its less that they can and more that they definitely will. The fact that they can has been fear-mongered and pearl-clutched over since the dawn of online sales.
Until now its been handwaved away as obviously nobody would actually shoot themselves in the fucking face like that. But then they did.
Steam has promised they will never do that
Can you give us a credible source? I want it to be true, but I don’t want my only source to be hearsay.
If you reach out to Steam support, you’ll get a response like this.
(Not my support ticket, this was stolen from Reddit)
But who knows what measures are in place and if that would include all games.
Edit: I’m dumb and misread the convo. My response is about if Steam went away, you would still be able to access your games but the convo is about would Steam remove games from your library.
I have never seen anyone back that claim up, despite it being a very popular one to make. People like to pretend they own their steam games but until that gets enforced by law; you don’t.
You don’t own any software! All software is licensed, yes, even FOSS software. The only software you own in a traditional sense is public domain which not only is a vanishingly small portion of software made, but is also a category that is difficult or impossible for software to be made a part of, depending on the laws in your country.
This is no different for Steam vs. anywhere else you can buy games, even with physical copies. The only benefit of physical copies is that it’s much harder to remove access to those games after you purchase the license, unless there is online activation or DRM.
Edit: I should clarify the only other software you own is the software you create or paid to have created. Then you can license its use for others, or not, as you choose. So MS owns Windows, and I own some small number of applications I’ve created, and other companies or individuals own the software they produced. But none of that has any bearing on games on Steam or anywhere else where you’re spending money to get access to a copy of a game.
Tekinukly. Software might still come with a license, but that license has no teeth without some form of DRM. This is a stupid way to try justifying the DRM steam has. In all practicality, you own whats downloaded to your drives without DRM.
I already addressed that. Steam has DRM, because Steam wouldn’t exist without it, and the physical copies publishers sold instead would still have DRM. There are DRM-free games on Steam - they don’t require publishers to use it. Direct your ire where it belongs.
Maybe it is better expressed as degree of control you have over the data on your drive, disk, whatever. When you choose to buy a game from steam, especially if it is on a website like GOG, you are choosing to have less control over your data. With large companies like Sony moving towards anti-consumer practices, it isn’t wise to believe that valve would never do the same.
As Gabe said, piracy is’nt a pricing issue, it’s a service issue. This problem has been addressed before and it will be again, if need be.
The ESA won’t thank you for spreading their rhetoric, you know.
I would think that the ESA would be happy for free support of their opinion. Unfortunately, the law is on their side. If you don’t like it, you have two options: try to change it or pretend it isnt true. One is easier, and I suspect both are about as likely to change things.
I want to say I read it in an interview like 15-20 years ago
Valve has not jacked up prices: Their game prices have been consistently among the cheapest and the only reason their hardware is expensive now is because part manufacturers are mostly price gouging (lying about AI being the cause of ALL the increased costs, which isn’t true, just like it wasn’t entirely true with the bitcoin mining craze).
It’s also worth pointing out that Valve has made massive contributions to Linux gaming (and Linux in general), which enables people to game on potato-spec machines and compared to other gaming platforms, they are far better than almost all of them except for GOG.
Well, if the Steam Deck hasn’t gone up in price where you’re at, you might wanna buy a couple. Keep them sealed, you can sell them for a profit later. Most places, they’ve gone up quite a bit.
Being a scalper on the internet? It’s more likely than you think
The cost of making the Steam Deck has gone up. Valve can’t sell them at a massive loss or they’ll go out of business. That’s not Valve jacking up the price, like I already pointed out:
Go re-read my post, because you clearly missed an important part
the only reason their hardware is expensive now is because part manufacturers are mostly price gouging (lying about AI being the cause of ALL the increased costs, which isn’t true, just like it wasn’t entirely true with the bitcoin mining craze).
Building a PC for yourself has skyrocketed in price too, blaming Valve is just ridiculous and anyone making that argument is just showing everyone that they are wildly ignorant.
Even if Valve promised DRM-free downloads if they go belly up there’s no chance in hell they’ll ever actually do that
I’ve heard it requires a DLL to disable steams basic drm, and it’s been that way for 20+ years.
You can do this right now with the Goldberg Emulator, but it doesn’t work well for games which are deeply integrated with Steam’s API (for example, to do things like Cloud Saves).
Why do you think that? Turning off DRM would be trivial and they might even end up being legally obligated to do just that either because of laws or because of how whatever hypothetical bankruptcy they go through might be structured. Never mind Valve going belly up seems highly unlikely to begin with. If it does ever happen and it happens in the way you describe, piracy will absolutely skyrocket and people will stop buying games online after they’ve had their trust shaken.
DRM is up to publishers, not Steam. Valve doesn’t enforce or require it, and it’s unlikely publishers would lift DRM from their games because Valve asked.
Steam does have a DRM mechanism - it’s optional and easy to circumvent, but it’s there
Yes, and Steam doesn’t force it on a publisher. They can opt out.
Steam itself is DRM
Not by my definition. Not in the same way as denuvo or dvd movie drm is.
It is in the sense that you can’t play the games without it.
You can. Many of steam games you can just archive or copy over somewhere else and they’ll still work just fine.
And you can get a crack for most DRM out there (nowadays, even Denuvo).
Being weak and possible to work around for those with sufficient technical skill doesn’t make it any less a DRM.
Steam’s DRM is clearly only trying to stop the people with average and below technical skills from installing and running the games outside steam, not trying to stop the people with higher technical expertise from going around it (and in fact if you use something like the Goldberg Emulator there are even more games which can be made to run outside Steam than just the “many” you talk about).
By comparison the no-DRM posture you see in with GOG is not only “here are the offline installers to download” directly from the page for the game in your library but even “CONTRACTUALLY game publishers cannot sell games here with ANY DRM”.
“The rules are there but we don’t enforce them” is a very different posture from “we make sure there are no such rules”.
How have Epic and GOG been faring?
Epic is run by an idiot.
GOG had its ups and downs, but I’ve been able to build a sizeable library there.
GoG appears to be around 2.5% market share as of November 2025. For contrast, Steam is around 75%.
Frankly, I don’t give a shit about Epic Games. Tim Sweeney can go suck-start a shotgun for all I care, complete piece of shit human being.
Funny to see articles like this after the wave of steam machine bad press. If you visit console based subreddits there are so many bagging in Steam.
Meanwhile you’ll never own a PlayStation disc again after next year. Great contribution to the industry Sony!
Gosh I wonder if it is to do with the fact that I can (and do) run steam on a €250 second hand pc running mint
More importantly, the entire software (shops, operating system) and hardware are not a locked down platform and controlled by a single company. And the Steam prices (one word: sales) and rights (refund policy, games never get rewoked) are the best among the industry.
I would like to think people cared about that but I don’t think it’s true.
What exactly do you mean people don’t care about? I mean which part of my reply, as I brought up multiple points. I think people care about all points I brought up.
All of them
How do you come to this conclusion that nobody would care? About game prices and refund policy? I’m baffled.
Mint is cool, but have you tried Bazzite? I just switched a while back and it’s been a pretty solid gaming experience.
Its clear that PC is the future console. I’ve been buying in GOG primarily, and Steam only when it is not available there and has no chance of ever being there. Even your Android TV can play light games with GameNative installed
The only issue is that Trump can cut you off from your steam library if his regime targets you with arbitrary sanctions.
That is bad but so far Players in sanctioned countries can still play on Steam, just not make purchases. Countries like Russia and Iran still have Steam players as long as their governments aren’t blocking external internet.
Imagine if the vast majority of the world does not live in america haha
People use steam outside of the USA
Exactly my point my friend.
Valve corporation is an American company. America has used visa and mastercard to target ICC judges who also live outside the US. If the government wants they can try and strongarm Valve to do their bidding
for some time yes … but when valva looses the world, and is left just with the us market … they will change elegance real fast.
The federal government can prevent an American firm from serving a foreign customer.
Sure. And we can simply download our games off off steam or any other web page and continue playing while that company decides to move off of that country to a normal country. There are solutions to everything.
I agree there are workarounds. But it would be a massive heartbreak to lose the game collection that took years to build.
yep, anything digital is not yours.
I have a theory.
The “casual” or “mainstream” crowd, the one that used to buy CoD, FIFA, Madden, Sims and such yearly like clockwork, has transitioned to phone apps, or sports betting/fantasy.
Their attention has been robbed from consoles.
Meanwhile, “games as art” gamers that treat them more like movies are less affected, especially with the state of smartphone app stores. That segment continues to grow on PC, and maybe even consoles, but the attrition of the first group masks that for the console crowd.
I’d postit that another factor is Steam’s rising market share coming at the expense of other PC gaming storefronts. For market purposes, it effectively is PC gaming now.
Then explain the worldwide sensation that is the Switch. Logically speaking, that thing, if you can even call it a thing, shouldn’t have worked, it made no sense financially nor economically.
It totally does. My sister got it to play Pokopia and Animal Crossing. I know of families that have gotten it for their kids, for similar reasons.
I’m not saying it’s a smart buy, but not everyone is a seasoned, mature gamer. If you have a decent budget, zero spare time, no experience with PCs, and your young kid is dying to play Pokopia like all their friends, a Switch 2 makes sense. As a plus, it’s not a tablet where you have to deal with straight up scam apps, nor a expensive PC where you need some technical know-how and a lot of oversight to make it safe for one’s kid.
The Xbox and PlayStation, on the other hand, have lost that niche, as they aren’t strictly needed to play Fortnite or whatever media is en vogue these days. It’s not like when I was a kid and literally my whole grade had Xboxes to play CoD and Halo.
