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Steam. Apparently I'm supposed to be angry they are a locked down monopoly but compared to practically EVERY OTHER GAMING COMPANY IN THE WORLD they are frickin' saints.
Yeah, it's one of those things where one could argue that steam is successful in part to being entrenched (all of your friends are on steam and all of your games are on steam, so might as well continue using steam), but also.. other game launchers are just worse? The fact steam has a lot of useful features, as well as surprisingly few scummy incidents in its history just makes it not worth switching off for me :p
Do other launchers have the workshop functionality to add mods directly from their launcher? That's been something I love about steam
All the ones I can think of are for individual games rather than general launchers lol. And third party mod launchers that you have to add your own games obtained elsewhere :p
For me steam input the big one that pulls me towards steam; seamless proton integration too, but that one I could handle losing, steam input on the other hand I think is one of the best input remappers out there, I even added all my non-steam games to steam to make use of it too haha
I definitely have some games I need to use nexus mods for (looking at you stardew) but it's honestly such little hassle that I don't mind.
I buy based on trust, and at this time, steam hasn’t lost it.
They’ve made their drm more lax over the years while Sony and microslop have worsened theirs. Like how you couldn’t easily play your games offline before steam deck.
Still buying my games from GOG first though.
They've done so much for gaming on Linux I forgive them for having a convenient launcher that launches everything
Yeah, I saw an article about Epic's CEO having a gormless rant about Steams AI filtering and how but Steam was for them.
All I could think was: "well, make a better product then"
GOG Galaxy is the only launcher / storefront that comes close to competing with Steam, and that is because the one thing they do better:
DRM-free games.
The rest is about equal or slightly worse.
If Epic looked at the customer base and analyzed what people wanted I am sure they could build a better platform than Steam, but with a CEO as unlikable as Epic's and with his trackrecord it would take many years of hard work and effort to even begin to come close to Steam.
It would probably take some massive PE/VC enforced changes at Valve where they start to enshittify Steam and the loss of confidence in the platform that will follow to make the other platforms competitive.
Make no mistake, it's coming eventually. I held off on trusting discord for years buy finally they won me over. Now look where we are.
Never again.
Valve has been around since 1996, Steam since 2003
Discord has been around since 2015 and was funded on VC money.
Kind of different situations lmao.
Sure, but once Gabe passes the torch it’s just a matter of if the person(s) getting it gets a big enough blank check to walk away from it
That's true, but we're not at that point yet so... What is your point? They've managed to thrive as a private corporation up to this point, clearly everyone working there is making bank too and treated well. (From all accounts I've read) so I'd hope the incentive is higher to keep with the same philosophy for whoever comes after. Of course hard to say, can't undercut the greed some people have for making more money then they literally could ever spend.
I have decided to bite the sour apple, as we say in Sweden, and overpay for the last two hard drives for my NAS build to complete it, then I will grab every offline installer for my games I can find and keep a local copy.
32TB of storage that can loose two drives before any data loss, a solid start for backups, media and software.
Which games are DRM free on GOG but not on Steam?
When I say DRM free games, I mean those with a standalone installer containing the full game that can be downloaded for offline use.
If this is available on Steam, ai would be overjoyed
Installers are just fancy zipped folder. And AFAIK, all games that are DRM free on GoG are also DRM free on Steam. So you can download the game, zip the game data folder, copy it elsewhere, unzip it and play it there. I've done that with several games, in fact when I was trying to convince some friends to buy a game I did that so we could play it in lan with a single copy so they would try it and buy it so we could play it online later.
So, yeah, you can absolutely do that in Steam, which is why I never get the "oh, but GoG has DRM free games" appeal.
They don't have any monopoly. There are plenty alternatives and all are trash.
In comparison they are very good, however that can turn on a dime real damn quick.
Scenario: gaben ded, bilzzard exec buys steam and it goes public. Hello enshittification
This is exactly why I'll never own a house in a HOA, no matter how good the current board is....
HOAs are hell. I'll never go near one.
So? As opposed to what, a corporation that is impossible for someone bad to take over? That doesn't exist. Anything can happen at any time, but no use speculating about a 180 in policy. And they don't actually have a monopoly, people just love them so much that they but almost exclusively there. If Steam gets shitty, I will buy from a different PC game store.
I'd argue they do have a monopoly. My friends don't know how to get a game if it isnt on steam. They are scared if I show them a game on a website to get (like armegatron).
I'm just saying, do not trust steam, make sure your games are truly DRM free, and be ready to pay subscription pricing for downloads and steam cloud saves. With server storage pricing being insane and gonna keep climbing, they can't keep giving you unlimited downloads and storage forever.
First one is a quintessential skill issue.
DRM free would improve Steam, I'm with you there. But if we're talking about theoretical enshittification, there is nothing to stop them from adding DRM to existing purchases. And then you'd have to had to make a backup of every exe you downloaded, and not care about cloud saves, etc...so I'm saying I get your point kinda but there isn't much point in speculating because services like that can always change unless the law prevents it. Which it SHOULD, but I'm not holding my breath. So all we can do is reward good behavior with how we spend money.
Yep I'd agree. I just am wary of any walled garden, because once they lock you in and kill off everything else (ie, the goal of capitalism) youre fucked. See: apple, amazon, google, etc.
How is steam a walled garden? Thus far they've been acting in favour of compatibility, to the contrary.
Its better than others. But still, its "where all your friends are". No one is going to use anything else because everyone uses steam.
I've... Literally never heard anybody using the friend network as a reason to use steam. Most games with multiplayer have some way for you to connect with people outside of your steam friends.
Also, that's the network effect. That's not what a walled garden is.
You can't invite someone to a game if they dont have steam. On games that ive ever played anyways. I'm sure theres exceptions. I'd say its both really. Its more so a network effect yeah I was misusing the term.
True, but every option comes down to a hypothetical scenario which does speak of how it is at a decent place.
And pc being an open hardware open OS system makes it so people can just hop to something, and have alternative means like piracy if worst comes to worse.
PC benefit in the end is control over hardware, the programs we can run on it, and modifications that can be done to it. Something that requires hoping for jailbreaks when it comes to consoles.
Yeah, the only people actually upset at Steam are people who have money tied up in other platforms. Steam is nothing but good for normal consumers.
yeah but they support linux gaming!
and if you don't use a linux PC to game, you're a stupid ignorant complacent fool who is destroying society.
or so I have been told like every other day on lemmy. owning a playstation or a switch is like ragebait to the user base here. apparently if i buy a switch i might as well support blowing up babies in gaza and mass rape as a genocidal tool, according to these folks.
Linux becoming more user friendly and accessible is a plus though for individuals who like diy PCs, but stuck with Windows due to game support. Compared to then and now moving away from Microsoft is less of a hassle. That is pretty huge for long time Windows PC gamers. Not just for gaming, but regular usage of computers.
From the sounds of it you dont like pc gaming in general, and that is fine. Do hope you can see how a non corporate OS alternative is a win though. Just having an option that is not a huge downgrade to a trillion dollar backed OS is amazing.
You are on the fediverse after all which is an alternative from company run social media like reddit. Which also has its ups and downs when it comes to accessibility much like PC gaming, but there are similar pros to it too that some giving it a chance.
please lecture me more about how ignorant I am.
Um... Lecture lecture lecture.
Oh yeah that could be a whole different thread on here. I use Windows and Linux, I would love it if I could rid myself of Windows completely but Linux is not there, and I kinda doubt it will even be a total replacement for Windows. It's worth remembering Windows didn't become the monolith that it is for no reason, people wanted 1 application that could easily do... Well everything without needing a lot of manual fine-tuning. That ain't Linux.
windows became a monolith because of sabotage. and then! the network effect. microsoft is actively trying to sabotage linux, and they've got internal documents stating that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents (the actual link is not loading)
microsoft doing monopolistic anticompetitive FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) practices dates back at least to 1992: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code (yeah... i found out about this from a youtube video.....)
and when was clippit (colloquially, clippy) introduced? ... 1996. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_97)
thus, using a clippy pfp is stupid. q.e.d.
i don't even PC game anymore because it's just not worth the headache. i also work on a PCs all day at work, so I want to sit on my couch to play games and not sit in front of a monitor for more hours of the day.
And the reply is always 'you are a retard then'. Yes, clearly, I am.
There's no headache with PC gaming, this isn't the 90s. You can plug a computer into a tv and use a controller.