Steam has cultivated an absolutely stellar image of being the “good guys” of gaming
How are they cultivating this exactly? I mean other than just doing consumer-friendly moves like free updates, supporting open source, etc. This makes it seem like Valve is out there pushing out pro-Steam propaganda or something, but does Valve even market Steam at all? They don’t do interviews or put out commercials or buy billboards. They put up a few silly YouTube videos to advertise a sale or new product and then it’s radio silence for the rest of the year.
Well I’m not going to be eternally mad at Coca Cola because they put cocaine in their soda a century ago, there’s got to be a cut-off point somewhere. If I’m going to hate them it’s because of the things they are doing right now. Valve over the last eight years has been pretty well-behaved considering their market position gives them the capacity to be way worse. There’s nothing stopping them from
buying up exclusivity contracts
making a DRM that actually functions
developing only proprietary software
making their games pay-to-win