Meanwhile Steam is a feature rich platform with a bunch of features that regular C-suite types would never green light because they don’t have a direct ROI.
Direct profit is the main driving factor for decision making by C-suite types. EGS is a great example of this: it has the very bare bones of what constitutes an online store, you can see products and make purchases. Almost everything else is half assed and tacked on. It’s frankly amazing that a system like Steam exists when they could (and still could) enshittify really badly.
I don’t see how SteamOS is any different from iOS in this regard. Apple spends a ton of resources developing APIs to support all kinds of optional functionality that 3rd party developers can take advantage of. None of it earns any direct profit.
Apple directly makes money off iOS apps and in most of the world you can only buy via their store. On the other hand, I can and do buy games from GoG and run them just fine on my Steam deck and can still benefit from proton.
The only reason I buy most of my games from Steam is they make things even easier than buying from GoG.
To quote an old comment of mine:
Direct profit is the main driving factor for decision making by C-suite types. EGS is a great example of this: it has the very bare bones of what constitutes an online store, you can see products and make purchases. Almost everything else is half assed and tacked on. It’s frankly amazing that a system like Steam exists when they could (and still could) enshittify really badly.
Link to my other comment.
I don’t see how SteamOS is any different from iOS in this regard. Apple spends a ton of resources developing APIs to support all kinds of optional functionality that 3rd party developers can take advantage of. None of it earns any direct profit.
Apple directly makes money off iOS apps and in most of the world you can only buy via their store. On the other hand, I can and do buy games from GoG and run them just fine on my Steam deck and can still benefit from proton.
The only reason I buy most of my games from Steam is they make things even easier than buying from GoG.