• @_stranger_English
    14•4 months ago

    The competition is trash. Other game stores spent their money on enshitification and they’re reaping the rewards of that choice.

    • @zoostationEnglish
      3•4 months ago

      There should be no middleman, period. You used to be able to buy a game and play it fully offline without a launcher. And you could sell it used when you were finished. Steam normalized digital “ownership” taking away those rights.

      • @_stranger_English
        2•4 months ago

        Ultimately I agree with you. Steam offered it, and people took it. I don’t have a CD-rom drive anymore, and I doubt you do either. I don’t like that aspect of it either.

    • 101OPEnglish
      0•4 months ago

      How did itch and Game Jolt do that?

  • @[email protected]English
    2•4 months ago

    I don’t see a cogent argument here. Valve is providing exactly what they say they are, money for a service, and very convenient too.

    Valve doesn’t prevent games from being sold elsewhere, they don’t enforce exclusives.

    This is like saying Costco is ripping me off because it won’t stock coke if the price would be higher than sam’s club.

  • BrikoXEnglish
    2•4 months ago

    This is not new, but it’s well sourced and easily digestible for most people. The issue is that Valve has de facto monopoly and when Epic Games (even selfishly) tried to address that issue gamers went for their throat instead of cheering.

    There are small storefronts that exist in the background, but they are either indie only like itch.io, Game Jolt or run by a publisher with primarily their catalog like GOG, Origin, Uplay (or whatever it’s called now), Battle.net, etc. And even then many of them eventually become available on Steam because that’s what gamers ask for. People are too stupid to help themselves, so unless some regulations force a change, we are stuck with this.

      • BrikoXEnglish
        -1•4 months ago

        They’re upset with Epic and their exclusives

        facepalm

        <…> their shitty storefronts that have extremely limited features by comparison.

        Have you used Steam in the early days? It took 5 years before they added basic community features.

        Plus we all know the decreased commissions is just their way of attempting to gain market share, as opposed to just making a better product.

        A better product means nothing if you have no users. Case in point all the enshitified platforms that still exist to this day.

        Steam is far from perfect, but it’s also far and away the best option we have.

        Only option. That’s the ultimate issue, which you prefer to ignore.