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Is discovery a dumpster fire? I mean sure it could be better but I dont think its a dumpster fire. It seems there are constantly new small team indie games doing wild numbers on the platform. If discovery was truely bad we would be seeing the charts dominated by big studios.
The regular Next Fests have probably been the single best thing for game discovery I’ve found in s long time. Nothing beats an actual hands-on demo for deciding if I’ll wishlist a game.
I guess he talking about the search system, which is a dumpster fire relative to other Steam features.
Are we using the same product? There’s a vast array of quality tags that seem to genuinely work to find stuff?
You can’t filter using more than one tag as an “and” filter, only “or”. That’s pretty basic for a filter feature, isn’t it? It’s just surprising given how well implemented other Steam features had been in my experience.
He wasnt talking about search it was about algorithmic recommendation.
But you can filter by multiple tags. When you click search select the advanced search at the bottom of the dropdown. It does all the things you mention and far more
I just tried the advanced search, and that feature worked exactly like I said. Selecting multiple tags work like an “or”, not “and”. I tried the tags “RPG” and “Pixel Graphics” and the first search result is Digimon Story Time Stranger which doesn’t have pixel graphics. Did you confirm that it works like an “and” search before you replied to me? Is there maybe a different way to use the tags where it works like that?
Mr biggest problem with tags is that it’s user curated and you can recommend an unlimited number of them.
Just because a game has a few funny moments, doesn’t mean it gets the comedy tag. Just because it has a brief driving sequence doesn’t mean it gets the racing tag. Just because there’s some reading involved doesn’t mean you get the visual novel tag.
It’s getting to the point I feel like there’s a conspiracy where there’s teams of people intentionally sabotaging the tag system and teams trying to counter it, all so they can control views and sales. It’s really noticeable when a publisher stops marketing and moves to another release.
I don’t think you can create new tags can you ? At least I have not seen a place to do that.
But I do also think that there could be more specific tags.
And yeah, being able to AND / OR would be hella good.However, I would not describe it as a dumpster fire, it’s pretty good all things considered.
I’m the opposite, I find user assigned tags to be far more accurate. Otherwise every game would be put into the most generic categories. From my experience the tags are generally accurate.
Did I really missed such a feature? I’ll try it out later.
Competition keeps them honest, and right now we need more real contenders, not just storefronts throwing money at exclusives.
Then the competition should put in the work.
That’s kinda his point.
The competition is at work, but too many fanboys blindly bashing on anything that isn’t Steam is making it very hard for them.
Which competition are you referring to?
Steam took years and years earning customers trust slowly but surely. Why would we greet Epic, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard with anything other than suspicion?
Looking at how other tech areas have all consolidated into monopolies or oligopolies, valve is the best case scenario for PC gaming.
Imagine anyone else being in control. Activision? EA? Ubisoft? The gaming industry is not immune from disgusting money hungry corporations stepping on the users to squeeze out every little penny they can. Valve has never done this and has kept others in check for the longest time. The day we lose the current version of Valve will be disastrous for the industry, I’m pretty sure.
I think you might reconsider what qualifies as “best case scenario” if you end that statement with “when this thing goes, it’s taking the industry with it”. Like, best out of a bad bunch, for sure, but the best possible outcome?
My personal opinion is that better than this in a money driven capitalistic economy is not possible. The pressures to keep growing and to make more are too great and most companies will do anything to make line go up. Valve has been very steady and metered in their ways over the years compared to any other company I am aware of.
If we change the external pressures, as in change our entire economic model, then sure, better can be had, I assume for all companies everywhere not just valve.
This is a bot ^^
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And it will last til Gabe dies. Then I guarantee it enshittifes so fast it will make your head spin.
As long Valve doesn’t become publicly traded they will be fine. The problems start when companies optimize for shareholder value rather than customer value.
Private equity buyout would be the same problem but even faster.
So tencent or a saudi prince buys them and it will be fine guyyyyssss haha
Nothing ever bad happens under private ownership either right?
You think there aren’t a bunch of greedy finance whores biding their time until Gabe dies in order to take over and enshitify everything so they can squeeze as much money out of Steam as possible?
Na. Even privatly traded companies can enshittify when it gets inherited to people not sharing the same vision as the one that made the company successful.
If you want to prevent enshittification more long term, convert it to a non-profit cooperative, with a work ethic that promotes providing the best service over short term profit.
That would be amaze balls, but hard to see happening in reality.
How cool would it be if Steam split* into a non-profit, giving rebates back to developers for platform fees collected in excess of costs (including generous salaries for their employees, of course) with directives to make the platform as good for gamers and developers as possible?
One can dream.
- I’m assuming a split because game development and sales don’t really mesh with a non-profit in the same way. Hard to make competitive multiplayer-only live-service games (let alone The International for DOTA 2) and loot crates your business model that way, at any rate.
Well yeah, that will be the potential first sign to look out for. If that happens no need to think it won’t get worse like everything else.
You’re right that going public would virtually guarantee they enshittify, but staying private does not guarantee they remain customer focused. It’s still a business, and right now the only thing making it so good for customers, IMHO, is an ideological vision that favours long term stability, and steady profits. That is not the norm in the business world (of tech platforms).
Maybe. I’ve heard Gabe’s son is set to take over when the time comes, hopefully he’s been raised right.
Hmm. The founder’s son usually just squeezes the company for profit.
citation needed
points to all of human history
Maybe this will be one of the exceptions. At least I hope so.
There are millions of successful companies and businesses on this planet and a lot (historically almost all) are taken over by the children or protégés. I‘d argue that nepo babies who got pampered up until adulthood (like probably Gabe‘s kids) have a worse track record of leading a business, that’s probably the examples you’ve been thinking of.
But you don’t have to do anything at all to get rich off of steam
Really!? Gives me hope!
He should turn it into a non-profit right before he dies and put the ip under a foundation or something so it can’t be sold off in pieces.
He wont though
OpenAI is a non-profit
A non-profit which owns a portion of OpenAI, the for-profit company.
OpenAI started as a non-profit and pivoted to being for profit whether the paperwork has kept up or not.
Pretty sure that was the plan all along though.
100% this. He’s definitely keeping a bunch of bad stuff at bay.
I think Valve has a lot of good people there. Hopefully succession has been planned and leadership will go to someone as good as GabeN.
As soon as the business people gain control they will pivot everything to maximize profit. Enshitification is just a euphemism for business.
I only buy games on Steam, GOG and ItchIO. The main reason I don’t give a cent to stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic Games anymore is their services and terms are horrible. I’m all in for supporting competition when it’s good competition.
I would buy from GOG too, if they provided Linux support in form of an official launcher. And if available also official Linux builds. Back in the days GOG did that, but they stopped doing it. And before someone comes after me, I know there are alternative launchers on Linux. But I don’t want to give GOG money for work others doing it for free. I don’t want support a company who only cares about Windows.
In the past, before Proton, if a game was available at comparable prices on GOG and on Steam, I’d buy it on GOG, also because no DRM meant better compatibility. After Proton, my purchases from GOG went way down.
You can run GOG games via Proton these days btw!
You always could, but they don’t get to take credit for that
I bought Resident Evil 0 on GOG yesterday but Heroic wouldn’t download the game for some reason (stuck at 0%). Refunded, got it on Steam for cheaper and it launched right away.
Sometimes I purchase on GOG out of principle and for some reason they always punish me for it.
I used to be the same.
I have changed to prioritizing GOG though since I try to limit purchases from US companies and I despise how Steam knowingly profits from making children addicted to gambling.
I could understand this sentiment for any pc-platform but GOG. After all, they are the only ones (afaik) that make their launcher optional. And while i do ocassionally use launcher-functionalities from for example steam, i would much rather not have to bother with it if i didnt have to.
Yeah they were ahead of Steam there for a while.
You can just add it to Steam as a non-Steam game and launch it from there
This does not address the issue I brought up in my reply. Besides the brought up point, it would not solve all other issues I would have. I know the functionality to add non-Steam games since I am on Steam over 12 years ago.
Oh cool then just be a prick about it for no reason. Go fuck yourself, I was just trying to help you.
I told you that it does not address my issue. No need to be mad, I have no bad intentions. I expressed what issue I have and adding the game as a non-Steam game does not solve the issues I have.
It came off as hostile but maybe I misread.
How does it not fix the problem? You can buy a gog game, add it to Steam and launch it with Proton. You’d just be using Steam instead of the gog launcher you want.
The problem is the launcher. He does not want one.
stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic
Better yet, games
I bought Anno 1800 through uPlay and, to be fair, the app is not too bad, but now that I’m on Linux idk if I’d be able to get it working again. Not that I necessarily have interest to play again.
Is there a place that highlights these bad terms in the ToS?
Steam is the very, very rare case of a major company that is both not beholden to shareholders, and has a pretty good guy at the helm.
Steam kinda killed gaming piracy for many. Hope they won’t go the Netflix way in the future.
it’s crazy how you offer people convenience and they willingly pay for it. I remember steam killing piracy before DRM or anything like that existing
You make it sound like drm didn’t exist before steam or like steam isn’t a form of drm itself. Old drm was more basic and far less nefarious, like entering a cd key or codes in your manual. This later escalated to online activated cd keys. At the very least, these forms of drm didn’t run all the time like steam did- I remember steam getting huge pushback (from myself included) because it ran like absolute dogshit. Later forms of drm got worse with checks in the discs that collected data on your pc (securom, anyone?). Steam did a lot of good things but it did not erase drm- it merely created another form of it (I.e. You no longer own your games, you are buying licenses they can revoke at any time)
I remember CD keys but that’s about it
I’m curious what you mean by this.
Netflix only went the way it did because they were liscensing shows and movies from other publishers/studios who could have, and finally did, take their shit back and start their own subscription service.
It’s not just Netflix that sucks now; it’s the whole of legit streaming video services becoming what cable was that got Netflix popular to begin with.
This is unlikely to happen with Steam, given that competitors are already trying to do what they can similarly and it has yet to actually do anything.
I mean that although the good shows got removed by the other competitors and streaming got downhill with that, they increased prices, put ads, removed account sharing and their only focus is profit.
Edit: also they removed shows by themselves to countries that the particular shows were not that popular just to save money. That started before the rise of other streaming platforms.
Yeah streaming has an assumption of an exclusivity deal whereas in gaming it’s unpopular and financially not worthwhile (though subscriptions would rapidly change that).
If Netflix and HBO and everyone else all were equally able to buy content and no service was the primary sponsor of content you’d get services competing on price, quality, and selection rather than each of them aiming to always have something worth the subscription price coming out.
i kinda agree:
but its still possible to pirate some Steam games without the Steam Client,
and some still require it.They did for me, then my cost of living went up along with the cost of games. Now I’ll only buy games that I intend to play multiplayer
For me cost of living went up but cost of games down. I mostly play indie games now since i find big AAA games not that interesting with one maybe two exceptions per year.
Depends on what games you play. I play lots of studio games and don’t play a lot of indies. Now I just pirate. To paraphrase a wise man “this may or may not technically be legal… But 105aud for a new video game is a straight up crime”
Yeah, it sucks. A major reason that I abandoned Nintendo’s Switch 2, and returned to PC after playing in Switch for some years. I used to pay 30-50€ for AAA, but they wanted people to jump to 70-80€.
Yeah, from what I’ve heard Nintendo earns their pricetag by making some of the best games you can buy. That being said they are essentially luxury products at this point and just because they’ve earned the pricetag, doesn’t mean I can afford it.
I feel like they’ve earned it because they’ve put in the most work. They are the best in the game because they make the user experience the best there is. EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft have/had their own storefronts or launchers but they are clunky and unpleasant to deal with and the only benefits they had were exclusives. They’ve never put any effort into user experience and were mainly doing it to make themselves more money and it definitely showed. The only one that’s ever been a real competitor is Epic Launcher. And while it has gotten better over the years, the user experience is still not anywhere near Steam. And even now the Epic Launcher is still unpleasant to deal with in a lot of cases unless you just use it to play Fortnite.
With Steam everything just works and is basically seamless. Not only that, before Steam the modding community for most games had an immense learning curve and most people just avoided it save for Minecraft. And as far as I can tell you can’t even mod games you buy on the Microsoft Store because their file structure is atrocious.
The only storefront I wish was better/more popular was GOG. It’s not bad and has a lot of benefits (Like no DRM and offline installers), but Steam just makes everything so easy it’s hard not to get stuck with them once you’ve started.
Offline installers are the reason I only use my money on gog. I like to have control over the things I own, though it’s getting harder and harder these days. But where it’s still possible I use it, and gog is the only storefront that offers this service (which beats every other service I could think of).
The only storefront I wish was better/more popular was GOG. It’s not bad and has a lot of benefits (Like no DRM and offline installers), but Steam just makes everything so easy it’s hard not to get stuck with them once you’ve started.
Well the no DRM/offline installer part is the most important part. I buy a game, I download and install it. If I need more features I may be better off with Steam anyway.
As far as I know the Steam DRM is not mandatory to use for developers.
Yes, I still need to go through Steam for every install.
Non-drm steam games can actually just be copied around like you would copy the installer
I still need the client once (RIP Windows 7), and installations are not guaranteed to be portable.
While Steam is more or less the best big solution we have, it does leave a lot to be desired. The only reason they are the best is because they clawed their way to the top early, kept themselves “good enough” compared to the competition, and haven’t yet sold out their entire customer base.
At this point, they completely dominate. It’s insanely difficult to compete with them. So long as they make half of an effort to improve things and continue to be somewhat benevolent they’ll likely keep their crown.
However, Valve is not ideal. They are still looking out for themselves, primarily. Many of Valves improvements have just been reactions to competitors and other threats not an inherent desire to deliver the best product possible or do the right thing. It’s just the fact that most competitors are more obviously greedy and immoral that makes Valve look like the heroes.
Without Epic and others throwing cash on the fire trying to compete I doubt we’d have seen even the slow upgrades to the Steam experience we’ve seen in recent years.
Without the Australian lawsuit, we’d have no return policy.
Without the clever abuse of arbitration by a group of lawyers, Valve would still have forced arbitration in the agreements.
Steam OS was only a thing, and Proton only got backed by Valve, when Microsoft first started positioning itself to eat Valve’s lunch by exerting control over Windows and pushing for things like UWP and the MS/Windows/XBOX storefronts on PC.
The vast majority of Valve’s storefront improvements are algorithms and crowd sourcing solutions. They want to be as hands off as possible because being hands on is hard and comes with liability. The whole skins market and gambling fiasco kind of shows that they’d much rather just not get involved if possible - same risk/reward cost/benefit analysis used by every greedy company. If that means lying about how aware they are of it that’s what they’ll do.
Don’t get me wrong. The least worst is, unfortunately, the best we’ve got. I love gaming and use Steam a lot. It’s just that the other big players are just so terrible that I think Valve gets a free pass. Hell, much of the tech industry is swallowing tactical nukes hoping that the radiation will somehow mutate them into a good business. In the meantime they are using the illusion of “expansion” from the resulting explosions to make themselves look bigger for investors. I support anyone not doing that.
Steam had been one of the good companies so far. Until they showed clear signs of enshitiffication, I will patronise Steam.
While many accuse Valve of monopolising the PC gaming market, others argue that Steam’s dominance is simply the result of doing things right.
These assertions do not contradict. I cannot overstress that.
This whole article is ‘Valve’s monopoly is fine because they did things right.’
Having one good store is not, in itself, a problem. But it does mean we’re one fuckup away from having no good stores.
And if his yacht sinks, we’re boned.
lol I’m imagining a line item on all transactions like
Subtotal 13.21 Taxe 6.02 Platform fee 6.33 Yacht fee 10.00 --- Total $35.56 CAD
People feel good about Valve because they don’t rely on anti consumer behavior. It does what I want and doesn’t enforce me on other crap.
I’m a fan of Valve and Steam too. But you cannot deny that Valve does shitty stuff too. In example Valve is the company who either invented or popularized Loot Boxes. And they don’t do anything about the Black Market for the item trading and selling, such as Counter Strike skins and so on. And there are other little things that could be done, but nothing else upsets me as this.
But besides that, for the most part I love Valve. The commitment to support on Linux is unmatched in the gaming world. As a private company, Valve can do whatever they want. I genuinely think that PC gaming wouldn’t be this good without Valve. If anything, Microsoft would have the power… which in an alternate universe people have to suffer.
The skins and loot boxes is the only negative thing I ever see brought up about steam, and it is a completely voluntary system that applies to a few of their own games. In fact, I keep forgetting they even have them unless someone brings it up and despite being a terrible thing people apparently love them and would be mad if they went away.
So I’ll forgive them for one stupid thing they do and appreciate the other 99% of things they do.
Devs are still free to sell their game outside of Steam and charge whatever price they want for that version
Alan Wake 2 didn’t make its money back for a year despite being a huge game on the second-biggest service.
Steam doesn’t care about other stores because other stores do not matter. They can let other stores sell Steam keys, and it still doesn’t threaten their untouchable market share.
I think you’re not allowed to “sell” it for free with the same version and features. Which should be unsurprising.
You can, and plenty do
Steam’s “most favored nation” contracts with devs explicitly prohibit this
And yet it happens
Krita is open source but paid on Steam
Same with Aseprite. You can buy it from their store or Steam. If you’re cool enough you can compile it yourself and get the full program for free.
Not and keep their listing in Steam they can’t.
You can though
Steam’s “most favored nation” contracts with devs explicitly prohibit this
I provided the example of Krita in another comment.
You’re only required to match deals outside Steam if you sold Steam keys. I haven’t found any other clause online.
I think valve has the absolute worst skins market out there but their store is really good.
i think personally Steam’s/Valve’s dominance is really good here’s why:
- Improving Linux gaming,improving Wine and DXVK for gaming,so you dont rely on Microsoft for your OS.
- Great client(i like the: inbuilt Chromium based browser,Community features)
- Not so awful and maybe simple DRM methods(eg, needing the Steam client doesnt tank the performance that much,compared to something like denuvo which i think makes modding impossible,needs consistent internet connection,and tanks the game’s fps alot )
- I can buy with cash giftcard to buy games(I wish GOG had that)
- Workshop for modding on supported games.(ik some games have workshop and dont let you mod everything)
- Makes/has good games(Half-life 2 is the best game i ever played)
but the bad things:
- Steam Client is still 32 bit and Steam doesnt target ARM(E,G. For like M1+ macs,those need rosetta )
- third party clients arent a option
- You dont own anything you buy on Steam.
- Having the Steam client open at all times(ik not all games have this, but i assume CEF based Steam will lower the performance like slightly)
- TF2 neglect
- lootboxes/battle pass in some games(i am aware Valve was the first company to have a battle pass and fortnite popularized it)
alright thats what i think of the Good and bad of Valve/Steam
Edit: Fixed Paragraph break.
I think you switched to cons without saying.
I admit I haven’t tried very many, but I think you can launch any steam app “normally” without steam running. If you can find the executable or startup script, you can just point a shortcut to it. Some games will need Steam Services to run, but it’s not blocked or anything.
There’s a ‘but the bad things’ buried in the middle, desperately wanting a line break.
I did the same thing initially and tried re-reading it as sass. Especially if “TF2 neglect” was considered positive.
There’s a ‘but the bad things’ buried in the middle, desperately wanting a line break.
Thanks for the feedback, i have fixed it
they said it but there’s not a paragraph break do it’s easy to miss
I admit I haven’t tried very many, but I think you can launch any steam app “normally” without steam running. If you can find the executable or startup script, you can just point a shortcut to it. Some games will need Steam Services to run, but it’s not blocked or anything.
I think i mentioned this,? but there are Steam games that dont let you use it without having the client open, but yeah there are Steam games that work without the client.
I think you switched to cons without saying.
Its there but i didnt have a line break.
I will say they were less weirdly invasive than whatever it was EA had me running just to play sims 2 in 2017ish. Why tf do you really need to protect you IP that hard for a game that old with newer sequels for???
How to explain Steam’s success on PC for console players: “Think of it like the X1 vs PS4 era. Steam is the PS4 and every competitor was the Xbox One”
That’s far to generous to other companies, they were far more like the WiiU.
I was thinking more along the lines of being proud of shit features that consumers despise, to the point it becomes an ad for your main competitor, like the PS4 “how to share a game with a friend” video
Finally someone with a voice said it.
Epic gives so many games away, but their launcher and store are so bad that I don’t even play their free games.
I don’t care if Uni wants to run a store. But forcing me to use their store when I buy the game on steam is pretty af. So I don’t play Ubi games either.
Their shit launcher made the games run worse.
In present day. I dont want to use Windows. So I simply cannot play much if the new games from the other shit companies because they have some vendetta against Proton / Steam Deck.
Now they’re literally doing it to themselves.
If I could testify for Valve as a customer I would.
