cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/15970074
Valve:
- popularized DRM on PC
- killed the used games market on PC
- bans people for selling their Steam account
- contributed to popularizing microtransactions, loot boxes and Battle Pass
- forces you to run a proprietary app to play your games
- forces updates on you
- pretends they invented Wine
- ships devices with a proprietary SteamOS
- forces devs to use proprietary libraries to use Steam’s features
Gamers:
Yes uncle Gaben more of that please!!!
imo, those are pretty weak reasons to criticise valve – they’ve definitely done worse
afaik, they took years to crack down on csgo gambling websites, and still massively benefit from it. the whole portal64 thing still feels wrong to me. i don’t like the fact that they walked back on their anti-ai content stance. the people make game documentary on working at valve highlights some pretty bad discrimination stuff happening behind the scene imo.
i don’t think it’s fair to criticise them on not providing an open-source client to download games, or open-source library to access their features - you wouldn’t gain much from those being open-source anyways, since the games you play on stem are pretty much always closed source. i don’t think it’s fair either to say that it’s bad that they ship devices with a “proprietary os” - they are the game console manufacturer selling them most open-source device on the market currently, they’re doing much better than the alternatives in that regard. i don’t know where they’ve said or suggested they’ve “invented wine”, but i’ve never heard of that - they could probably disclose more openly how proton works and its relationship to wine, but i don’t think they are maliciously behaving as if they created wine/vkd3d/…
i don’t think valve’s a perfect company, but they’re still probably the best one to get most games from. and i don’t think it’s fair to hate on them for exaggerated reasons, it’s much more productive to scold them for stuff they actually did wrong.