I dont think a single more based company has ever existed.
Hyperbole much? I like Steam as much as the next guy but lets not pretend the guy that owns 6 yachts is a good person just because he’s better than the next worst. Steam DRMs the shit out of games sold on their platform and if you’re an indie dev that wants to sell your game Steam is THE place to do it.
Steam made $10bn last year, they have about 100 employees (their parent company Valve has about 400). I used to be a bigger fan of GabeN but more recently really started considering him and looking into it and realized he’s just another unethical billionaire. This video by Coffeezilla is a good jumping off point. regarding the intentional targeting of youth with addictive gambling mechanics in loot crates and circumventing gambling laws. It’s all very purposeful and continues to this day.
Paying someone to do that kind of work is the opposite of Valve’s ideal, if I understand them correctly.
They prefer systems working well enough with as little human assistance as possible—see: review system with reactions and surge detection; user-defined game tags; front page recommendations completely based on trends; the market; and so on.
That’s not to say these are bad, but they could often be improved, if only Valve was willing to pay the human cost. But part of the reason Valve remains small is they try to automate as much as they can (and if it can’t be automated, it might never get done, specially considering their corporate structure).
N.B. I still prefer them over majority of companies in this space, but let’s not ignore their issues, e.g. gambling. As an aside, I also appreciate GOG’s “no DRM” stance, but I use Linux and sadly native support isn’t there. Kudos also to Itch.io.
Hyperbole much? I like Steam as much as the next guy but lets not pretend the guy that owns 6 yachts is a good person just because he’s better than the next worst. Steam DRMs the shit out of games sold on their platform and if you’re an indie dev that wants to sell your game Steam is THE place to do it.
Steam made $10bn last year, they have about 100 employees (their parent company Valve has about 400). I used to be a bigger fan of GabeN but more recently really started considering him and looking into it and realized he’s just another unethical billionaire. This video by Coffeezilla is a good jumping off point. regarding the intentional targeting of youth with addictive gambling mechanics in loot crates and circumventing gambling laws. It’s all very purposeful and continues to this day.
Steam’s DRM is completely optional and is among the least intrusive DRMs available for developers to use. Many games are sold 100% DRM-free on Steam.
Yeh plus they let neonazi groups usw their forums for recruiting and hate speech, because they don’t want to pay any mods.
Paying someone to do that kind of work is the opposite of Valve’s ideal, if I understand them correctly.
They prefer systems working well enough with as little human assistance as possible—see: review system with reactions and surge detection; user-defined game tags; front page recommendations completely based on trends; the market; and so on.
That’s not to say these are bad, but they could often be improved, if only Valve was willing to pay the human cost. But part of the reason Valve remains small is they try to automate as much as they can (and if it can’t be automated, it might never get done, specially considering their corporate structure).
N.B. I still prefer them over majority of companies in this space, but let’s not ignore their issues, e.g. gambling. As an aside, I also appreciate GOG’s “no DRM” stance, but I use Linux and sadly native support isn’t there. Kudos also to Itch.io.