- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
- games@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
- games@lemmy.world
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Steam gets all of my gaming money until other vendors support Linux.
Yup. I didn’t use Steam until they came to Linux, and I don’t have any loyalty to them. I’ll buy from any platform that supports my OS of choice.
If I used Windows, I would probably use GOG because I value DRM-free games. But I desire convenience more, and GOG isn’t as convenient as Steam on Linux, so I don’t. It’s pretty simple.
Not only does Steam support Linux, they’re growing it.
Not sure anyone in this thread knows what the word “monopoly” means. Steam has competition, it all just comparatively sucks.
On the one hand valve having a monopoly is bad for the industry and it’s consumers.
On the other hand nobody seems to be trying to provide a truly competitive service without also being far more anti-consumer than valve from the get go.
Yup, I’m with Steam because it’s better, not because I like Valve or something. If someone else provides a better service for my use case (Linux with a mix of PC and handheld PC), I’ll use them.
I avoid Epic on the principle of hating exclusives (I give Valve a pass on their games because they don’t make many), I avoid UPlay and EA because I hate their stupid DRM, and I don’t use GOG because they don’t have an official Linux client and they don’t support third party clients. Any of those could win by business if they catered to what I care about, for example:
- make a Linux client
- make their games offline capable
- offer a good selection of games
That’s it. They don’t even need to beat Steam in terms of investing in Linux, I just want to be a first class citizen on their platform.
So GOG doesn’t exist?
If Steam could just ban 3rd party launchers in Steam - that would be great.
Need to login to rockstar/uplay/gog/EA account? Do it in-game…
EA would pull their own games from Steam before they would ditch their own launcher…
But, counterpoint: EA would pull their own games from Steam before they would ditch their own launcher.
Yup, sounds like a win win to me.
My biggest problem with Epic store is their push for exclusives. I understand exclusives on platforms (PS vs XBox) - those are physically different hardware and are closed platforms. But we are talking about PC games, it is the same platform. I want to chose the best product (best delivery system - STEAM or Epic Store, or whatever), and not being forced by the power of monopoly to use a particular launcher.
It would be extra cool to separate licenses from delivery. So I could buy a license from Rockstar directly or through my service if choice, and then play it on another delivery service if I wanted. That way, if Steam or EGS goes under, I can move my games elsewhere, just like I can today with stocks at a brokerage. In other words, I’d have a Rockstar key, not a Steam key.
I imagine store fronts would then charge some fee for access to their network to download games or whatever, and that would trigger price competition on the delivery end. I imagine stores would end up with a “free service if you spend $X/year” or whatever.
I can do that occasionally, but it’s far from the norm. For example, I bought Factorio directly from the devs, and they provided me a free Steam key as well. So I could download it from them directly or through Steam, at my option. I want more of that.
I don’t see the problem with exclusives considering it’s a guarantee for the devs that they’ll have an income instead of playing the popularity with influencers lottery by releasing on all platforms.
After that I’ve got a link on my desktop so I don’t give a crap what launcher is running in the background.
OK, your choice is different than mine. You see how good to have a choice?
I’m just pointing out that being mad about exclusivity when it can actually be what keeps devs afloat is a pretty bad argument.
Do you have a job or do you beg for money and spend it on lottery tickets?
I do get your point, I’d rather have an exclusive game than no game at all, but that isn’t what’s happening with Epic exclusives a lot of the time. Most of the time they just buy exclusive rights to games that were going to come to PC anyway, sometimes right before release date.
It’s still the devs that agree to it in exchange for guaranteed income instead of releasing at large and hoping for success, Epic is just playing the game… Heck, in my mind it’s the devs that should take the flak in this situation!
They’ve also confirmed they wouldn’t do it for games where the devs promised to release on other launchers after the backlash with one of the games they bought exclusivity rights to.
I do not understand this point. If market can not support the game, then there should be no such game. There are many publishers and venture capitalists that invest into game making and only like one of them (Epic) requires exclusivity on PC space.
That would work if all quality games were successful (it isn’t the case at all) and if devs didn’t need to eat or pay rent (it isn’t the case either).
Exclusives aren’t exclusive (lulz) to Epic either, you see them on other launchers even for very successful games (you can only get Minecraft from Microsoft for example and it’s not a game that was originally developed by them). Sure some people invest in developers in exchange for a share of the profit made, these people are in the investment business, not in the publishing business.
It’s funny how people agree to give their employer exclusive use of whatever they produce for them in exchange for money, but if a developer does the equivalent then the same people are angry at the “employer”…
I say good for the devs if it guarantees that their studio will stay open and they’re able to produce more games instead of spending years on a project only for it to lead them to bankruptcy when it releases to little interest from the public.
All other “exclusives” are simply companies selling games by themselves. Your example of Mojang (creator of Minecraft) only confirms that since Microsoft purchased Mojang. There is no exclusivity of Microsoft with … Microsoft.
Again, I do not understand your argument about devs paying rent, etc. Majority of games are not exclusives on Epic (or any other store, except if they sell it themselves). Thus, there must be a way to do so without being exclusives. And if you are talking about support in terms of investments and advancements - publishers do that. They did it forever for PC games, nothing was broken to fix it by exclusivity.
publishers do thatYes, and the game’s publisher has an exclusivity deal in place and the devs can’t turn around and decide to give their game to another publisher.
Exclusivity deals has been part of art history (and employment in general) forever. There’s nothing new about what Epic is doing. You see it for music composers, visual artists, poets, even writers! But somehow PC game devs are in a different category and are supposed to just hope for the best and release on platforms that doesn’t give them a guaranteed compensation for their work… Well I say good for them if both systems exist now!
nothing was broken to fix it by exclusivityIf it was the case, devs wouldn’t sign those deals. They’re not new and there’s nothing to be happy about that the biggest distributor on the market doesn’t have to give any income guarantees to the people that put in the hours to create the product that they sell.
How hard is it to understand that it’s guaranteed income and that is important to some people? There’s a whole lot of things that the majority of people do that a minority isn’t comfortable with, that argument is extremely weak.
Go check /r/gamedev and you’ll find tons of discussions of people that thought they were releasing something that would financially compensate for all the time they spent on it and for having to leave their job to work full time on their project only to see it fail miserably because no one paid attention to it no matter the quality while they saw another product of similar quality get picked up by a steamer and it just exploded in popularity.
You never answered the question, do you have a job or expect to make it by winning the lottery?
I bought an Index bc I thought it was truly promising. It certainly delivered with games like Alex and Boneworks. I’m sad that there is so much proprietary bs and I don’t get some really good titles.
Still better than Meta vr headset
Indeed but I’d love to play Asgard’s Wrath 2 ever.
Steam has got to be the most loved monopoly ever. It’s inherently toxic to the gaming community in ways that aren’t instantly apparent but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s not a great thing that every game you buy isn’t yours, it’s effectively an unlimited time rental that can be withdrawn for a multitude of reasons. GOG and the like actually sell you the game proper such that it’s yours to keep forever no matter what happens to GOG. But still they sit at single digit market share for anything that’s not their own game and even Cyberpunk 2077 only sold 10% of copies on GOG…
Steam doesn’t enforce anything. They provide a very weak opt-in DRM that they literally tell developers they should expect will by bypassed. There are plenty of actual DRM free games on Steam.
People use Steam instead of GoG because Steam works and provides a wide array of value adding features and GoG doesn’t.
Ddgewddtrfft
If it’s actual ownership instead of availability, then according to GOG’s own EULA, you don’t own the games there either.
Wouldn’t even matter anyway. If either service dies the games are gone unless you go through the hassle of manually backing up every single one - which you can do with the majority of games on Steam too.
No, you can’t.
And that’s a big “unless”. I actually do have a stored backup of my GOG library installers (of the ones where I don’t own a physical copy, anyway). GOG could disappear into thin air tomorrow and I would lose zero access. Not so with Steam.
Many steam games already have no DRM and ones that use Steam Launcher presence can be launched using a Steam Launcher emulator.
Ones you have to worry about are Denuvio games that aren’t cracked (you can keep track of them here).
You know what? You guys keep making the same argument, I guess I’ll just have to keep giving the same answer.
How many is many? PC Gaming Wiki lists 1000 DRM free games in Steam’s library. That is 2.6% of the service, by their count.
And all you get from those is the ability to rip loose game files, which is not the same as having an installer or a portable installation. GOG will let you download a backup installer of every game on the service. Not the same thing.
Yes you can. Just because you don’t make a backup of one over the other doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. lol
I don’t think people get what I’m saying.
On Steam you can back up game files only in the tiny fraction of games that ship with no DRM. Cases where you have to break DRM to make a backup are not “making a backup”. If that’s your standard you may as well just download a cracked copy later.
On GOG you specifically get an option to download a stand-alone installer for every game in the service.
Not the same.
Adam af af AC f fe
How could I possibly have it backwards? I manually backed up my installers. I don’t even know what you think “having it backwards” means. You think I’m misremembering downloading the installer files and backing them up? You think I did that on Steam and somehow forgot?
No, I don’t have it backwards, that’s how it works. There are terabytes of data on my backup drives to account for it.
Wfbwrhwrhqbqdb
“You know what I am talking about colloquially”
I must not, because I see zero difference between Steam and GoG in this regard other than the fact that Steam provides a bunch of side services that GoG does not. Otherwise they’re both just selling you a revokable license to play a game.
Wfwbwfnwfnwfneg ge
It kinda sounds like you dont either, tho
“I’m right and you’re wrong”. Colloquially, of course.
People prefer Steam to GoG because Steam is a massively better product than GoG. It’s not complicated.
My issue is that I use Linux, so I either need to download games from their website (no automatic updates) or use a third party client like Heroic launcher. If GOG had first class support for Linux, I’d probably buy most of my games through them.
But Linux users are a small minority, so the main issue is probably selection. Steam has pretty much all of the popular games, whereas GOG only has the DRM-free games. It’s the same problem Linux has had and continues to have, why would you use platform A if platform B is the same price and has more of the games you want to play? Splitting your library across services sucks, so most people will go with the one has most of their games.
The solution here imo it’s make licenses portable so you can easily switch platforms. If I want to move my brokerage, I just need to fill out a form and wait a few days. If I want to switch game platforms, I need to repurchase or abandon my games. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is a real reason people don’t switch.
What’s wrong with Heroic launcher? Being a linux user you should be used by now to workarounds and alternative solutions to various problems, so why is that tool (that is pretty good and can even be used on steam deck) a deal breaker? That small inconvenience pales in comparison to benefits of DRM-free games and not supporting a monopoly IMHO.
My experience with Heroic has been… okay. I think the big issue is that a lot of tools are built with Steam in mind and not Heroic, which unintentionally adds friction.
Or maybe the solution is to use the right tool for the job? I don’t complain that I can’t play PS5 games because I made the choice to buy a Switch or that I can’t play the newest AAA game because I bought a Chromebook or that I can’t go see my friend that lives 600km away over the weekend because I made the choice to only own a bike!
A lot of Linux users talk like entitled children wherever there’s a discussion about Epic. I can’t count the number of times their gripe can be summarized to “Fuck Epic for not supporting Linux!” They made the choice to use Linux instead of Windows, that means they were ready to make some sacrifices when it comes to what’s available, they can’t complain about GOG or Epic not supporting their favorite OS when they never said they would! And why would they? Nvidia hardware works when it feels like it, AMD is better but still not as user friendly as on Windows and who’s getting shat on when a game won’t work? Who’s asked for a refund because a game won’t launch because of an issue with the user’s Arch install? All that trouble for what % of gamers compared to Windows?
When you run a business you don’t go chasing after that extra 1% of clients unless you’re very well established and at the moment there’s only one distributor that is in a position where it’s worth it to give themselves all that trouble and it’s Valve, the others have much more to gain from trying to take a bite from their 70% hold on 96% of the market.
Windows being a monopoly isn’t a good thing either.
In fact, I’d say it’s almost worse than steam having a monopoly on video games, because windows is an operating system.
You sound like you dont understand what linux, or windows for that matter, even is. As if you just hear the name a lot online, and think its like a form of digital diet.
Dude, I’ve been building computers since Windows 3.0 and I’ve run all types of OS. If I choose to buy a Mac tomorrow morning who am I to bitch that company X doesn’t support OSX? Well it’s the same if you install Linux and in the vast majority of cases the arguments against game launchers that aren’t Steam that come from Linux users are either outdated stuff (no shopping cart, no friends list…) or pure entitlement like they were owed support for their OS. Well no, you knowingly make the choice to install an OS that is historically known not to have much support from gaming companies, that’s on you and it doesn’t justify being mad at them. As I said, I can’t be mad at Valve if I can’t play my Steam games on my laptop if I bought at Chromebook, well that’s exactly the discourse of most Linux users that are mad at Epic or GOG.
The only one who comes across as mad here is you. Saying “if you don’t support the system I use I am not going to give you money” is not mad, it is just common sense.
There’s a difference between saying “I won’t give you money” and “Your product is a piece of shit”
I mean it’s not technically a monopoly. Steam’s advantage is that Valve is a private company and can do what they like, it’s not without problems, but it does a great job where it needs to.
Steam also sells DRM-free games, so that’s just mis-information. You can copy the files anywhere and use them without Steam running, it’s entirely on the developers/publishers to make that decision. Cyberpunk 2077 is DRM-free on Steam, just like GOG. Steamworks just has an incredible feature set for developers to use, so for multiplayer games it’s unlikey to see DRM-free anymore as people would rather invite via a friendslist than sharing IPs directly, having to open ports etc.
Not misinformation. GOG requires games to be DRM free to sell there, Steam provides first party DRM (being crackable doesn’t make it not DRM) and it actively encourages developers publishing on Steam to double down with more GaaS features and secondary DRM in their instructions to developers.
Why do people feel the need to shill for billionaires? I don’t get it.
Nobody is shilling. It’s completely up to the developers/publishers to sell DRM-free or not - CDPR aren’t the holy grail company you think they are.
every game you buy isn’t yours, it’s effectively an unlimited time rental that can be withdrawn for a multitude of reasons. GOG and the like actually sell you the game proper such that it’s yours to keep forever no matter what happens to GOG
This is mis-information - every game you buy on Steam is not DRM and thus is not subject to the ‘digital license’ approach.
Look, I like GOG, I will buy from there if I can’t get a DRM-free version on Steam and the deal is good, I own many GOG titles.
Steam 1000% needs to label what games have DRM or not and embrace that with a category.Nobody is shilling? This entire post is called “Steam keeps on winning”, sharing a link to an article about how other competitors are becoming less relevant. The shilling is gleeful at this point.
And hey, no, I don’t claim that CDPR is “the holy grail”. You want me to give them crap? I have multiple active grudges. Why is Galaxy so slow when fully packed? Why can’t I cull games imported from integrations if they’re not gonna bother to cache the DB and insist on auditing on load? Why is the browser in their launcher slower than opening their own store on Firefox? Will they ever stop with the surveys about the Discovery view? It’s bad enough that you started inserting ads in the launcher, you don’t need to pester me about it every time I open the thing.
I don’t need GOG to be perfect to tell you Valve isn’t your friend. GOG is, though, actually DRM free. Steam is not. They will let you upload a DRM free game if you want, but they don’t recommend it, they actively want you to use Steamworks, and even when you do that, they recommend you add a second layer of DRM to your game.
That sucks.
They also overmonetize their games aggressively, insist on rather toxic MTX and aggressively crowdsource as many parts of their business as they can, just like any other tech startup.
And they have the most feature-rich launcher, great controller support and it’s cool that they want to safeguard against Windows having a monopoly on PC gaming.
Neither of those big companies is my firend or yours and if they want either of us to sell their product they should pay us for it.
We’ve been really lucky that Steam hasn’t been enshittified yet but it’s just a matter of time, so I am happy that alternatives like GOG exist, and yes = even alternatives like Epic. Doesn’t matter if my library is spread around if I can just launch anything from playnite anyway.
I think it says something that people still prefer Steam in spite of all that. Even people who pirate games appreciate it. Convenience is a wonderful thing and most people don’t really care to own if the game they want will be there when and if they need it.
Convenience is paramount. It’s why the in-app purchases that are most likely to be bought in games by the most people (not counting whales) are ones that make the game experience more convenient, rather than just giving special currency.
I think the points about GOG being DRM free and selling you the game (not just a license) need to be made as often as possible.
I am going to try to look there first from now on because of this.
Valve’s VR efforts have cooled—the all-in-one Meta Quest 3 is the headset to get right now
Fuck Meta, Valve Index is still better
I should really start pirating copies of games that I buy on Steam. Servers and licenses don’t last forever.
I keep meaning to buy a dvd writer…
I still have a couple in operation, but mostly it’s for ingest. These days all my backups go into a NAS, including my GOG installers. Honestly, given the increasing waves of (sigh) enshittification it’s becoming more and more justifiable to keep your own home network services, storage included.
Steam feels like a library with a store attached. Epic feels like a store with a library attached. If they changed the way they presented the epic app then I’d be more inclined to use their services.
Been collecting games since 2007 - I love my untouched library.
Amass ! AMASS !!
meanwhile ive finally stopped using steam! very happy and proud to say i only purchase on itch and GOG now! (as well as a few indie stores) hope i can get a few friends to join me.
edit: i do not think less of people for using steam! i just like the idea of having friends who share my personal philosophies. im aware that im abnormal, lol.
whats your reason(s) to ditch steam? (honest question)
Philosophically, obviously I’m against DRM blah blah and no matter how easy it is to crack I just don’t really like the idea of spending money on a license to play something instead of the something itself. I also don’t really like contributing to the online services monopoly steam seems to be maintaining. There’s a myriad smaller stuff that drives me away from steam that I don’t really feel like explaining, but those two are the main philosophical reasons.
Practically, for reasons I obviously won’t disclose, my account is at risk of spontaneous termination if they wanted to, so its not really worth investing more money into my walking time bomb of an account.
I get why steam makes sense for most people and I don’t have any intention to shame people for… well, being normal where I’m not. I just like having friends who share my personal preferences!
Whwthetnetfn
Is that not also true of itch and GOG?
You gain access to the installer files. This means that, if you wanted, you could back up them up on as many hard drives as you want and have them for the rest of the your life. Steam, on the other hands, you are purchasing a license to play the game.
This depends on the game. The DRM is opt-in. A lot of the games that are available on GOG are also DRM free on Steam. For other games, they may have DRM, but its usually because the publisher isn’t willing to sell without, meaning its not on GOG anyway.
Ubisoft has proven itself to remove games from the market and become unplayable. You also legally agree in the Steam User Agreement that all games in Steam don’t belong to you. This isn’t a legal copyrighted material but the concept of ownership of the game at all in Steam is legally prohibited to own.
That sounds like a reason to stop buying Ubisoft games, not switch from Steam.
You also legally agree in the Steam User Agreement that all games in Steam don’t belong to you.
Pretty sure that’s in almost every game EULA ever. May be a 1-up for Itch but I’m pretty sure almost all games on GOG have similar terms.
That’s every license of every commercial game no matter how it’s sold, unless it’s open source. So technically even with GoG you only get the license to play. You can only use the installer to install and play the game. You can’t resell it or decompile it for commercial use since you don’t own the binary code.
Yup, but there’s no DRM to lock you out a few years down the road when the DRM servers go down, and you don’t need to login to their service to play your games.
Yes, the license has restrictions and Steam has been a good actor so far, but you don’t have to look far to see how they could flip (see Sony revoking Discover video purchases, which they have since postponed). GOG wouldn’t be able to do that since they have no mechanism to remove things you have already downloaded, they can merely revoke future access to it.
Same for much on Steam. They wouldn’t be able to go erase stuff off your hard drives.
Many of the older games on Steam don’t have any DRM. Typically if they’re on GOG, they come the same way on Steam.
That said, I like GOG. It’s one of the few services I buy games on. But this argument that Steam games are locked down by DRM is is silly. Most games that are released on both platforms are identical.
What is it about people here thet worship this company. I can remember several years ago people screaming about how much they hate them.
I use Linux, they’re pretty much the only ones that support Linux, so they get my support. It’s pretty simple.
I used Linux before Steam on Linux was a thing, so I went from pretty much no games available to lots of selection to almost partity with Windows, all because of Steam.
I’m not sure about others, but that’s my reasoning.
It feels really weird how so many people here seem to just…be okay with steam being to gaming what chrome is to browsers? Its for all intends and purposes a monopoly and just because they barely support linux its all happy sunshine and roses?
People should have a sledgehammer pointed at them at all times just in case, cause yall know, no matter how good the intention may or may not be for whoever gaben selects as the next big boss (not like hes that all good saviors either), once gaben is out, hes out and things will get worse sooner or later.
They have hardon for Gabe.
