I don’t like that steam is a de facto monopoly but it’s up to their competitors to make a better product. Steam has features that benefit users, like steam input and remote play together, that other launchers are light years away from. Steam also doesn’t require drm, it’s just offered to devs to use at their discretion. Lastly, steam let’s developers generate as many keys as they want and sell them off platform. The only requirement is that pricing has to have parity.
For a monopoly, they are shockingly consumer friendly.
Exactly. And Steam invests in Linux as a first class platform. I have used Linux since well before Steam had a client, and they won me over by actually porting their client, and they continue to earn it by making more and more games available to me.
No other platform seems to care, so I don’t care about them. I’m pretty easy to please, just make your platform available, and integrate some way (that already exists) for me to try to play Windows games through the client. That’s it, and I’m not firm on the Windows games thing (e.g. I’d buy Linux games from GOG if they just port their client or officially mention support for Heroic, that’s it).
I agree. I would love to have an alternative, but there just isn’t one, and I don’t think it’s Valve’s fault.
Valve also hasn’t really done what other monopolistic companies have done, which is use their advantages to expand into other areas and crush the smaller players there.
I don’t like that steam is a de facto monopoly but it’s up to their competitors to make a better product. Steam has features that benefit users, like steam input and remote play together, that other launchers are light years away from. Steam also doesn’t require drm, it’s just offered to devs to use at their discretion. Lastly, steam let’s developers generate as many keys as they want and sell them off platform. The only requirement is that pricing has to have parity.
For a monopoly, they are shockingly consumer friendly.
Exactly. And Steam invests in Linux as a first class platform. I have used Linux since well before Steam had a client, and they won me over by actually porting their client, and they continue to earn it by making more and more games available to me.
No other platform seems to care, so I don’t care about them. I’m pretty easy to please, just make your platform available, and integrate some way (that already exists) for me to try to play Windows games through the client. That’s it, and I’m not firm on the Windows games thing (e.g. I’d buy Linux games from GOG if they just port their client or officially mention support for Heroic, that’s it).
I agree. I would love to have an alternative, but there just isn’t one, and I don’t think it’s Valve’s fault.
Valve also hasn’t really done what other monopolistic companies have done, which is use their advantages to expand into other areas and crush the smaller players there.