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Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

polygon.com

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Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#61

Post by lupusreal »

maverwa wrote: post #49
ectospheno wrote: post #2

Everyone I know personally still loves steam. We hate more than a few banks and strongly dislike the visa/mastercard duopoly but steam is great. Guessing the game drought is causing some news publications to reach for a story.

As someone who’s using steam daily for probably 50-75% of their lifetime now: I don’t love them, but it’s the lesser evil for sure. Sure, if GOG had even 20% of steams catalog and useability, it be no. 1 without question. But since we‘re sadly limited to this one reality, there is no alternative. XBOX GamePass is a trap I expect to spring every day, Uplay and EA Origin are just a splash screen I see when starting a g…

GOG is great but I'd like them even more if they did some of the wine/proton work that Steam does for Linux users. For the dosbox games at least it's not much to do (for them nor for myself to be fair.)

Steam is simultaneously hard to like, as a DRM service, but also hard to dislike as they put so much care into getting games running on Linux and have a very reasonable return policy, full refunds for the game not working makes it easy for Linux users especially.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#62

Post by darth_avocado »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #8
ectospheno wrote: post #2

Everyone I know personally still loves steam. We hate more than a few banks and strongly dislike the visa/mastercard duopoly but steam is great. Guessing the game drought is causing some news publications to reach for a story.

It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time…

Lord Gaben has almost a cult like following, so any missteps are going to be ignored. Steam is objectively great compared to other stores so it will barely see a problem. If the fact that children are gambling skins on the platform barely affects them, an issue they are in full control of, I doubt this controversy where they were pressured externally will cause any long lasting damage to them.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#63

Post by tracker1 »

dizlexic wrote: post #27
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time…

I'm one of those. I have a few reasons. Initially it was just wanting to keep things in one place as much as possible, but as a Linux guy it's morphed into fierce platform loyalty as a way to support Linux gaming.

I think it's entirely fair though. Valve has put a lot of its money where its mouth is on this. I get that it started as a hegemony against Windows' store, but it's been great for the Linux community as a whole. By some metrics, desktop Linux is sitting around 6%, and I think that Valve is almost solely responsible (along with all wine devs) for at least a full 1% of that.

It's started to even draw a lot of attention from more general gaming and pc streamers. So many videos of different streamers trying Bazzite lately.

Next year might actually see a tipping point where there can be real pressure to gain support from the likes of Adobe. I expect MS might make some offline version or Office 365 + Electron at some point soon as well.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#64

Post by huhtenberg »

vlovich123 wrote: post #23
abcd_f wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point being that even though this time the takedown targets were reasonable, the next time they might not be, but the mechanism will be already in place.

Reasonable by your standard. As others noted not necessarily reasonable by theirs, especially when you contrast it with other games that remain available. It also flies in the face of research that shows that games probably prevent those fantasies from taking place in the real world which seems preferable.

> research that shows ...

Hit us with the source. Would love to see the methodology used in it.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#65

Post by lupusreal »

creaturemachine wrote: post #36
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time…

Funny how we got here. Anyone with a 20 year badge remembers the hatred in the community over being forced to use it.

I remember that when HL2 came out. At that time I think it was fully justified hate of what was essentially DRM bloatware, not yet tempered by many years of Valve/Steam earning a good reputation for doing things right.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#66

Post by tracker1 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #51
kalaksi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's basically me. While Steam can always be improved (and has been), it has worked well and to me looks better than the alternatives. Additionally, I trust Valve and value it's products. So I don't mind paying more and it's also very convenient to use just Steam and not worry about anything else.

I know this is far from a hot take, but I really think people need to be more weary of what will happen with Valve once Gabe passes. No amount of profitability seems to stop people from demanding more even at the cost of longterm viability. Imagine a world where a PE firm gets its hands on valve

Kind of a terrifying thought... Not familiar enough with Valve/Steam's corporate structure to know if they have a governance model in their founding documents to help prevent this.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#67

Post by adolph »

pvtmert wrote: post #52

Which is why de-monopolization of critical infrastructure such as payments is important for sovereignty. Also which is why, I am happy to see V-pay and SEPA transfers in EU. Especially SEPA-direct transfers, allowing you to be free of CC-processing fees completely as they have been regulated to be free quite well...

If you don't like CC gatekeeping, you really won't like being dropped from your bank due to suspicious transactions. Financial institutions of various capacities are downstream from their chartering polities which seem very interested in holding sovereignty of geography over individuality.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#68

Post by J_Shelby_J »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #8
ectospheno wrote: post #2

Everyone I know personally still loves steam. We hate more than a few banks and strongly dislike the visa/mastercard duopoly but steam is great. Guessing the game drought is causing some news publications to reach for a story.

It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time…

It’s because steam is 100% an aberration in our modern world. The closest comparison is, maybe, Costco?

And we who are dependent on steam know how bad things would be if steam wasn’t this unicorn. Gaben is the rare feudal lord whose people show up to battle out because they know it’s good for them. All he had to do was not abuse his monopoly for the past 25 years, as the meme goes.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#69

Post by thewebguyd »

creaturemachine wrote: post #36
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time…

Funny how we got here. Anyone with a 20 year badge remembers the hatred in the community over being forced to use it.

People have now been successfully conditioned to not own anything.

Steam came out in 2003, in an era where PC gaming was still very much - go to the store and buy a physical CD. You owned the game.

I still feel uneasy about it, but Steam is the least evil (outside of GOG, but much smaller catalog). But our options for actually owning digital content have all evaporated, unless you sail the high seas.

The next evolution in our journey to non ownership will be game streaming, if latency can be solved to take the non-ownership a step further. We are halfway there with even single player games now requiring an always-on internet connection.

I miss the days of offline and physical media.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#70

Post by HolyLampshade »

ecshafer wrote: post #50
creaturemachine wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how we got here. Anyone with a 20 year badge remembers the hatred in the community over being forced to use it.

I love steam. A big part of my complaints 20 years ago was that I barely ran these games in the first place! Nowadays computers are a lot more powerful compared to games. Proliferation of credit cards, increased internet stability/speed, and more powerful computers have taken the warts away. Steam has also repeatedly shown to be on the side of the consumer, and also very offline friendly.

I completely agree with you. 21 years ago when it was released it was simply “yet another competitor” to the sort of overlay systems that gamespy and the like were trying to implement. You installed it because Half-Life 2 (and the litany of mods that became empires into themselves) required it, but it took years for it to develop in a direction that pointed to where we are now.

The first time I did a rebuild and now no longer needed the installation media for games, or the license keys in the manual/game jacket, and I was fully sold.

I don’t fully grasp the hatred, because almost every aspect of it is a vast improvement over what existed 20 years ago. But fortunately there are alternatives.

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