Man if a blog post like this makes the 2nd page I wonder what a proper rant would do.
Like I used to write them and always get banned on Steam forums, because criticism = lost revenue and we can't have that. My Steam account was banned so often that the next ban will last 2 years.
And I wasn't even offensive or insulting.
Meanwhile Valve did get a slight grip or maybe I have changed?
Whatever the case it has lead me to not spend money on their platform and in general.
If it's a b2p game I pirate like I always have. Because if you want my money you will not silence my opinion and feedback of your game.
And you will not restrict resale of the games I bought.
Despite court ruling that Steam has to open up and enable resale of licenses, shit all has happened. And they're not the only platform where it's not possible to do so.
So good job game industry - you have lost a paying customer for good.
Valve's Steam is extra predatory and anti consumer.
A little story. Back in the day I was very active at the game Meridian 59, the 1st MMORPG. But not on the official side, on the reverse engineering side. Later when it got abandoned by 3do a compiled server exe leaked along with resources and configuration.
We learned a lot from that, wrote tools, created new art, etc.
My point is I knew a lot about the software, so I posted on Valve Steam's Meridian 59 forum with detailed knowledge about something only someone familiar with the software could know, which lead to a ban, because someone was apparently harassing the moderator there and he thought I was him. So I was unjustly banned because the moderator saw ghosts where none were and I appealed to Valve.
The response was "be that as it may there's nothing we will do about it".
So the case was clearly in my favor but Valve hands all power to the forum moderators. And the rule like dictators. One especially terrible Dictator is SamBC terror moderating 2k affiliated forums.
If you write anything negative about a game of theirs and see all the paid white knights jumping in to defend the company sales and you call them out for what they are you will get banned.
Accumulate a few bans and you will get an account ban.
But to finish the story, I then contacted the moderator outside the game and the ban was lifted, not by Valve but by him. That didn't change the fact though that it counted as 1 ban point towards an account ban, which eventually lead to a 1 year ban on Steam.
I'm 47 years old now and I will not be silenced or told what to write especially if what I write is not offensive.
I once got a ban for disagreeing with the choice of a female protagonist in the "For Honor" game, because it's so far from historical facts that I cringed every time I tried to play the game. When something is so wrong that it upsets me I have to write about it. And the moderators there didn't like that I returned to the thread and continued to write about how historically inaccurate it was and how unrealistic this was. Nope can't have someone voicing their opinion and literally telling them what a shitshow their produced.
That's bad for business and must be banned.
I for one am done with buying games and you can thank your overzealous moderators for that, game industry.