Something I’ve noticed in this community is that whenever I criticize Steam, or point out something I don’t like about the platform, I tend to get a ton of downvotes.
And honestly, I’m just curious why.
This is a piracy-oriented community, so I find it kinda interesting that Steam seems to have such a strong positive reputation here. I’m not saying people shouldn’t like Steam, obviously everyone has their own reasons for using it. Steam is convenient, has huge sales, supports Linux, has a massive library of games, etc. I completely get why people use it.
I’m just wondering where the line is for people.
For example, do you like Steam despite the DRM because the convenience outweighs the negatives? Do you see Steam as fundamentally different from other forms of DRM? Do you consider Valve one of the “good guys” in the industry? Or do you simply see Steam as a convenient storefront and don’t really think much about the DRM side of it?
Or maybe you actually agree with some of the criticism of Steam, but just think it’s being exaggerated.
For me personally, I don’t use Steam because I don’t really like having my games tied to an account and a platform. I’d rather have the actual files, be able to back them up, move them around, mod them and know that I still have them years later. That’s basically what I was getting at in that video I made about Steam as well.
But I’m not trying to start another “Steam bad!” argument here. I’m genuinely curious because sometimes the reaction seems surprisingly pro-Steam considering the nature of this community.
So what is it about Steam that you guys actually appreciate?
There are a lot of Valve stans on Fediverse. I think here it’s mainly because Valve boosted Linux so there’s stronger emotional attachment than your average Valve reddit stan using Windows who are more focused on Valve’s pathetic PC gaming client competition like Epic, Ubi, EA, etc.
I appreciate:
The gaming compatibility boost enabling me to not have to use Windows hopefully ever again and compared to their competition when it comes to store design, modding, and community features it’s not even close.
I like their hardware even though I wish they’d compete with consoles and subsidise asking prices and be far more friendly to international customers. Since Microsoft’s Xbox is dead, Sony is getting too comfortable. I own a Steam Deck which sees regular use during idle time at work, and I run two gaming desktop computers on Linux because of Proton.
Valve being privately owned has been helpful for long term stability so far.
Since there’s rarely physical game releases on PC it’s nice there’s so many regular sales and demo events. 3rd party keys still being allowed is also nice, I do routinely find games cheaper in CAD on legit sites like greenmangaming or instantgaming etc. Regional pricing headaches idk.
I don’t get attached to brands though like some people do going out of their way to white knight for Valve-kun in this case. This meme: https://quokk.au/static/media/posts/gU/wJ/gUwJWXxHFUmyAHH.gif
I have dislikes. Some of them longstanding:
Notifications are still broken on Linux, rarely appearing at the correct x/y coordinates either partially off screen or no where near the bottom right. Idk why, X11 legacy debt?
In-game overlay DPI is a crap shoot on a 4K TV. If it even opens at all on Linux. Usually fine, much less usually fine than on Windows still.
The Steam Community and Profiles feel stuck in 2008 and have barely improved beyond animated themes/backgrounds. Images and screenshots in general are sluggish to load. Sometimes embedded chromium just randomly dies and doesn’t respond to any input until you manually refresh a page. That happened on Windows too, it’s annoying.
Videos still lag for me on within Linux Steam client with AMD GPU. Nvidia is fine I have two desktops like I said, the AMD one is living room and both run CachyOS. Acceleration enabled/disabled doesn’t help with dropped frames confusingly.
The item gambling and trading features are a big blight upon Gabe’s reputation IMO especially due to enabling children to gamble on jpegs.
Steam didn’t used to force us to update a game before launching. I know how to manually edit manifests but this is lame and I’ll hold this anti user change against Valve for as long as it’s a thing. I like modding games, annoying headache.
Why is Tuesday maintenance downtime still a thing?
Workshop is half baked and I usually avoid using it unless a game actually incorporates it well like Killing Floor 2 did or Golf It! Mainly because updates didn’t usually break old user made content. Shitty to navigate, never cleaned up so it’s full of broken mods, and has a frankly quite shit search engine. One benefit of Valve’s total lack of attention is copyright infringing mods often stay up!
The Store itself is okay but Search still lacks of a lot of sorting options including in the Wishlist.
Valve is American, so that’s a negative point because the USA is in decline and Steam can be more easily censored by nutjobs in powerful positions. I try to buy from GOG first these days because of that.
Lack of Discussion moderation. Full of Nazis and 4channers. Valve doesn’t lift a finger unless it’s a horny anime game. Praise be Visa. Holy art thou Mastercard. Bend thy ass over.
Discussions get deleted after a certain amount of time. Big loss was shutting down the old proper bulletin board forums instead of updating them and incorporating them into Steam Client. Discussions are a shitty replacement even if they were properly moderated.
Steam Deck compatibility tiers and notes on Store pages are half assed. Maybe not as useless as a Nintendo Seal Quality but in the same ball park.