For a multi-billion dollar company with a somewhat-dominant market position, I’d say they’re pretty fucking good. They’re to PC gaming what Netflix did to broadcast TV, without the enshitification. Steam made games available globally, when it was a hard and expensive task to get the bloody originals on CD/DVD in many countries, which forced most people into piracy because it was the only way. Because of Steam I stopped pirating games, too. I say it’s fine.
My Steam profile is 22 years old and I’ve been gaming on PC since the early 80s.
The first couple of years were dogshit but then again so was a lot of things back then. It was the infancy of contents distribution networks, bandwidth was insanely expensive.
For a multi-billion dollar company with a somewhat-dominant market position, I’d say they’re pretty fucking good. They’re to PC gaming what Netflix did to broadcast TV, without the enshitification. Steam made games available globally, when it was a hard and expensive task to get the bloody originals on CD/DVD in many countries, which forced most people into piracy because it was the only way. Because of Steam I stopped pirating games, too. I say it’s fine.
My Steam profile is 22 years old and I’ve been gaming on PC since the early 80s.
Now, yes. 15+ years ago, no.
The regulations requiring returns were amazing and necessary — and not just to prevent scams (which were super common).
The first couple of years were dogshit but then again so was a lot of things back then. It was the infancy of contents distribution networks, bandwidth was insanely expensive.