I did not realize they were trying to compete in the first place.

  • @[email protected]
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    -803 days ago

    Steam is a platform that happens to also have a storefront.

    I would like to see government intervention to break up Steam to remedy this

    Though arguably Epic is way bigger of a platform since it goes from developer to end user

    • @Voyajer
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      443 days ago

      I’d rather see competitors actually try and be better than steam rather than make steam worse.

      • @[email protected]
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        -263 days ago

        How did you get “make steam worse” from that?

        Everything else still exists, just not controlled by Valve

        • @Voyajer
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          233 days ago

          …Breaking steam up would make it worse.

          • @[email protected]
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            -132 days ago

            How? If any feature is necessary then it will be filled by someone else

            You aren’t losing anything

            • @[email protected]
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              72 days ago

              Apart from all the non-profitable features divorced from meaning.

              The forums would go in the blink of an eye.

              And then each section would try to make itself complete in itself to hoard user time, and at least one would start selling advertising space.

                • @[email protected]
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                  2 days ago

                  Negatively.

                  In money for servers as well as time. And that’s for something with far less users than Steam.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    118 hours ago

                    That’s the point

                    It’s done because you want to do it not to make money

                    Maybe you have 10-20 forums installed into your client to cover the games you play

        • @d00ery
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          113 days ago

          Because each independent section would try to make more money and end up breaking things and adding new shit users don’t want but marketing execs think are good.

          • @[email protected]
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            -11
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            2 days ago

            Then find a different workshop/forum/launcher to pair with the Steam store

            In no world is it worse than what we have now

            • @[email protected]
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              52 days ago

              He literally just said how it’d be worse. Although that’s probably not how it would get worse, splitting up the services of steam would make them inherently worse.

            • @d00ery
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              32 days ago

              Name an example of a better workshop, I’ve used nexus mods and it’s a complicated mess that requires a subscription to get normal download speeds for content created for free by other people

              • @[email protected]
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                -42 days ago

                If steam is a client not a store then whichever steam allows to be built into their client

                • @d00ery
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                  11 day ago

                  So, no answer then?

                  • @[email protected]
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                    118 hours ago

                    The answer is whichever one works for you, software is supposed to work together not do everything by itself

    • @NocturnalMorning
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      423 days ago

      What exactly would you be breaking up? Steam isn’t a mishmash of companies…

      • Altima NEO
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        423 days ago

        And they have plenty of competition. Just that none of the competition tires hard enough to be compelling.

        • @Zorque
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          203 days ago

          Because they’re trying to compete on a product level, not a service level. They want your money, but don’t want to have to put forth the effort Valve has to get it.

        • @carl_dungeon
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          293 days ago

          The forums company will be where all the money is at, think of the profit!

          • @[email protected]
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            3 days ago

            If your software is profit motivated then it doesn’t need to exist

            Not that it would make any difference for the end user because it should all be modular enough for the user to mix and match any of those services with any other services

    • @[email protected]
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      3 days ago

      Steam is hardly a monopoly.

      There are plenty of successfully competing stores. The only real thing Steam has going for it is network effect that every gamer has an account therefore it’s decent for socialising, but even that is being challenged by Discord and a multitude of others.

      GamePass is probably the closest we’re seeing to a potential monopoly. The purchase of activation should never have been permitted.

    • @[email protected]
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      203 days ago

      No don’t break up Steam. Standardize DRM and make digital games licenses ownable/transferable. I could see the EU eventually doing this.

      I say this as someone who loves Steam but wants more ownership, in the games I “own”.

    • @[email protected]
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      113 days ago

      They offer keys which allows for third party sellers to exist, and there are a handful of legitimate sites that sell keys for steam.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 days ago

        Yeah, but where do you have to go to redeem those keys and then subsequently have to open their program every time you wish to use your purchase (which you don’t own). Steam is very good at promoting itself and locking people into their platform, it’s a constant free advertisement program where they have total control and no competition.

        I understand the “Steam is fine” position, but I also wish we weren’t always turning to this ONE supplier for a goods or service because it always hits the hardest when corruption takes over. Would love for these threads to be filled with multiple conversations of all these great different gaming services everyone personally loves for one reason or another, instead of comparing the crappiness between these few huge mega-corporations.

    • @[email protected]
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      73 days ago

      It’s a launcher successful on the most popular OS in the world that they don’t even own that anyone can come in to compete at. And had decades to do so when “PC gaming was dead” so was wide open for anyone that wanted to try to reach potential customers over fixating on the console demographic. What more do want.

      It doesn’t even come pre-installed with Windows.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 days ago

      Nobody else has a platform that comes close to competing and most of my games are already on there. From my pov this looks like an awful idea.

    • @d00ery
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      22 days ago

      Sounds like a free market proponent.

      Can I give the classic example of US healthcare where for very minor benefits, the absolute richest can afford to have great healthcare whilst everyone else seems to be crippled (financially) by even minor ailments.

      But the industry is worth billions, the line goes ever up, and the shareholders are happy. Just fuck the customer.