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?
I very much am of the opinion that piracy is a usability & accessibility issue. I believe that if someone spends a lot of time on a quality product that I very much enjoy, I should pay for it. Even from a completely selfish point of view, if I never pay, the gaming industry will be based solely on the dummies that don’t know how to pirate properly, and will thus be filled to the brim with trash. I’m not going to do moral grandstanding on a piracy subreddit if people disagree, this is my personal view. I remember not having any money. I still don’t have much really but enough to support some of the creators I like. I still pirate some games that I may enjoy, but do not want to support the terrible corporations that churn them out.
Steam is one of the best ways to buy games in existence. Would I prefer them to not have DRM? Sure. Would I prefer a few other things, like not allowing third party launchers, kernel level anti-cheat, or any Ai generate content? Sure. But the fact remains, they’re one of the last companies that seem to remember UX matters. They also are dumping money into rapidly improving Linux as a whole, especially for gaming. If they were not so good, I would not give them money. It is really as simple as that.
Your 2nd paragraph sounds just like GOG ! I tend whenever possible to get my games from GOG than Steam.
After their recent Nazi symbolism affair I’m not really feeling like spending any money there.
They knowingly used runes associated with Nazism in a promotional newsletter in a manner that only Nazis are using them - and they knew they were doing this, because this e-mail was deliberately not sent to users who had set their account to German; this kind of thing is illegal in Germany. If you had set your account to English, you still received the mail, even if you were in Germany. What followed was a dishonest non-apology, while the developer of the game they were promoting was utterly befuddled why gog had done this to their title.