Yes, they have a pretty dominant position, but they’re not abusing it, at least not like many other companies, and that makes the difference. For example, they don’t make anything exclusive to their own hardware or their own OS, their software can run on any distro, and their OS can be installed on any adequate hardware. And they don’t lock the Steam Machine to run only games sold on Steam. And a lot of work they do under the hood is made open source (Proton DXVK, SDL, GameScope, driver work etc). It’s mainly Steam itself and stuff part of it that’s kept proprietary (and that’s been relatively resistant to enshittification).
Of course, the thought of Valve starting to abuse their dominance is every PC gamer’s nightmare.
Yes, they have a pretty dominant position, but they’re not abusing it, at least not like many other companies, and that makes the difference. For example, they don’t make anything exclusive to their own hardware or their own OS, their software can run on any distro, and their OS can be installed on any adequate hardware. And they don’t lock the Steam Machine to run only games sold on Steam. And a lot of work they do under the hood is made open source (Proton DXVK, SDL, GameScope, driver work etc). It’s mainly Steam itself and stuff part of it that’s kept proprietary (and that’s been relatively resistant to enshittification).
Of course, the thought of Valve starting to abuse their dominance is every PC gamer’s nightmare.