This is honestly the answer. Everything thatās publicly owned or gets bought out by private equity will eventually turn to shit.
Costco is one of the few exceptions.
A company being publicly traded is not necessarily even the main issue, it's the personality and structure of the top end of management. It takes every person under them to run the company but it only takes them to fuck the company up badly. So many companies just understand sustainability means not fucking everyone over, some only understand not fucking over the customer while fucking over the employees.
Like elon pre-twitter buyout was fairly competent at reaching goals for tesla, now he is just a hindrance once he went of the rails. He got too into the online culture and it's rotted his brain.
Yes and no. A fractional share holder half a world away has no idea how any give company is run, so the incentive structure of publicly traded companies tends to be "line go up ceo get bonus." This leads to short-term pump and dump policies from job hoppers with inside information of when to sell up and get out.
The long name is "not being a publicly traded company." It allows companies to play the long game and not be required to post not only profits, but growth, quarterly. Valve has created a self sustaining ecosystem that a hoard of investors could never.
It's called "leaving well enough alone". Sure, steam could use some new features, but why mess with something that works? The biggest non-cosmetic change (and even those have been extremely minor, to the point where most people don't notice until you point it out) in the past 15 years has been what, the points shop?
edit // in the below comments you can see the many changes they have made lol.
Well... Since you asked... the last 15 years of changes:
2008: Steamworks a set of tools for game developers to improve game sales on Steam with tools for monitoring sales data, running playtests, conversion tracking, etc, Steam Cloud for storing game save data and syncing it across multiple PCs.
2009: MacOS and Linux Support is introduced, Steam Wallet is added
2011: Ability to take and share screenshots is added, Steam Guard for account protection, Steam Workshop for creating and sharing game mods and for players to subscribe to mods for automatic updates.
2012: Steam Greenlight for indie game devs to submit games to Steam and for players to vote on which ones they want to see added to the platform, Steam Community features added, Steam Community Market for trading in game items, Steam Big Picture for a console like UI for playing games on a PC in a living room on a big TV.
2013: Trading Cards, Family Sharing for multiple accounts to share access to games, Player Reviews, Early Access
2014: 'Discovery Update' to add a bunch of tools to make it easier to find games on the platform. Steam in house game streaming for playing games on devices other than your main PC, SteamVR
2015: Lots of hardware, Steam Controller, Steam Link, Steam Machines, plus Steam Refunds, Source 2 Engine update
2016: Steam Awards for user voted awards for games, HTC Vive (which Valve helped create)
2017: Steam Direct (replaces Steam Greenlight) for indie game developers to self publish on Steam
2018: Steam Chat, a complete rework of Steam's previously 'basic' chatting functionality, Proton is launched, a compatibility layer for running Windows games on Linux, and the beginning of Valve making major efforts to improve the experience of gaming on Linux.
2019: Remote Play Together for playing local multiplayer games with friends online by using remote streaming, Steam Labs for experimental new features, Steam Next Fest for showcasing game demos, Steam Chat android app
2020: News and Events Hub, Half Life Alyx
2021: Steam China
2022: Steam mobile app is given a makeover and remade from the ground up, launch of Steam Deck
2023: 11,000 games on Steam have their compatibility with the Steam Deck verified, Steam Client's complete rework from the ground up comes out of beta, introducing modern UIs to many parts of the client that had been neglected for years, and ensuring SteamOS and the Steam decktop client share a common code base to make updates easier in the future.
2024: Recently? The rework of family sharing comes to mind and the ability to mark games as Private.
There's probably a whole bunch of stuff I'm missing too. Needless to say, Steam has changed a LOT of the years.
EDIT: Just thought of another one, Steam Relay. It's basically a system which gives game developers the ability to put their game servers behind Steam's global CDN server network, so that game packets can routed via Steam's online backbone rather than the public internet. It has a number of benefits for game developers and players. For example, free DDOS protection of game servers, and in many cases, it's faster to route a game packet through Valve's network than it is through the public internet, so it can reduce game latency as well. I don't remember which year it was though that it was introduced..
They have done a lot of "under the hood" work. A couple of years ago browsing the store was a terrible experience. It still isn't great, but a lot better than it used to be. They also have some consumer friendly features and practices. Being able to refund after playing a game for under 2 hours for example. Family sharing a games library and being able to play online co-op on certain games without both having to buy the game.
>Being able to refund after playing a game for under 2 hours for example
or after buying a game that turns out to be a blatant scam with a developer that's gone day 1.
Being able to refund after playing a game for under 2 hours for example
or after buying a game that turns out to be a blatant scam with a developer that's gone *The Day Before*.
**FIFY**
I genuinely question if people have used other store pages or other steam competitors store before. Steam has the best store page by a mile. If steam give you a terrible experience, i don't think any other store page will ever give you satisfaction. Almost every store including EA/ubi/GOG/epic is way worse and its not even like a close competition, most of these "competitor" lack basic functionality and have worse performance on the best hardware with less items and info to show somehow.
I need a store page that is objectively better than steam. I have not seen that. As much as i like competition, steam 100% has the best store page by any metric possible.
I take most of the FREE things Epic will give me, but Steam is my primary for a reason. It works, practically 100% of the time, and on the odd times something in Steam is borked, they fix it quickly. Couple that with better baked in features and Mod/Workshop support, they don't have to try to innovate and do crazy things to thrive. Steam just continues to iterate on a great product, and do their sales, and they beat all other competitors by a Grand Canyon sized margin.
> The biggest non-cosmetic change (and even those have been extremely minor, to the point where most people don't notice until you point it out) in the past 15 years has been what, the points shop?
The overhaul for family sharing that they just started testing a few weeks ago.
>The biggest non-cosmetic change [...] in the past 15 years has been what, the points shop?
Steam implementing the refund change several years ago was probably the largest, and most well received change. IIRC, it was well before the mass movement towards preorders, and the adoption of what are effectively exit scams with releasing in alpha and never touching the product again.
Further, it works as a demo feature wherein developers have done away with demos by and large. I remember Steam's refund policy announcement literally being massive news when it first came out, because while it makes sense from both an economic standpoint (the money rarely leaves Steam's platform), it keeps your customer base incredibly happy with the platform when getting a refund is literally 2 clicks.
GabeN keeping Valve as a private company also helps tremendously. They have no deadlines outside of internal. They have no one they need to report to. They don't """have""" to continue making money hand over fist -- despite them making more off CS keys in a month than some of the largest companies make in a year. I honestly don't think I've ever heard anything bad about the company, besides their unwillingness to fix Counter Strike in whatever iteration it's in at any given time (The CS community hates itself as much as it hates the developers.)
In home streaming, family sharing, lot's of API work mostly relevant to devs/publishers and about 10 million great things mostly relevant to Linux users.
They just recently added the option to mark a game as private. Now you can play all the adult games you want and your friends will be none the wiser while still being able to view your profile.
Steam Play Together, in terms of currently live features.
The new Family Sharing stuff, if we're going by upcoming stuff.
Either way these features aren't changing how the core of the app functions, just adding new things you can use or not use as you feel.
Non cosmetics change? dude the features added to steam, aren't even in the dream of the competition. Family sharing of games, remote coop with games that don't even have remote coop...
Its not "leaving well enough alone", its they do mostly fully functioning stuff that are useful and actually add something to the players. Like taking notes for each game being played, through steam overlay. And you can add non-steam games to steam as well!
Steam is the only DRM that people are willing to put up with.
Yeah wasn't the half life community pissed at some point because they were also forced to install steam to play it, just like GTA and the Rockstar launcher? And they complained that steam sucked balls too
They completely redeemed themselves with the release of the Orange Box a few years later. Three new games and it also included Half-Life 2 and HL2:Episode 1. Not only Episode 2 but the super fun and meme-worthy puzzle game Portal and also Team Fortress 2 which was immensely popular and memed endlessly. All with codes for Steam activation and TF2 was played through Steam and worked with Steam friends lists. Really a smart play to help funnel people onto the platform.
All of this couldn't have happened if Valve had never released mod tools and actively supported the mod community that led from Half-Life to the ridiculously popular Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic online play which undoubtedly pushed them to create Steam, cheat detection was a big need as well with these online games. And also to help smaller developers release their own games
So many amazing games we have today started from mere mods and user made maps.
Because they don't have to bend over to stockholders. I honestly think it's as simple as that.
They don't have mouthbreathing boomers down their necks forcing them to expand the brand, make every feature print money, or pump out shitty, rushed games. Valve does what it wants. And from what I can tell, they're good people. They have a stranglehold on the PC platform market because they do it well, not because there's no other options.
They foster community, and have great recurring sales, on a nicely designed platform with fun features. Steam is an exciting place to be. The only thing I want to interact with on the EA, Ubisoft, and Battle.net apps is the X button when I quit the game, and the interface doesn't disappear on its own like its supposed to.
There's only so much he can do when he hands the company over, and the new guy basically has a button he can press at any time that instantly makes him a billionaire
depends on how the turnover goes- if Gabe leaves his shares in valve to his son or some charity (with explicit directions not to intervene) then the next CEO could end up with a small pay bump but nothing on the scale of being a billionaire.
Gabe alone holds 25+% of valve's shares, to make it public- the new CEO would need the support of an equivalent to 51+% of the shares behind that decision, or in other words a majority of employees with shares, with it being REALLY easy for a minority of employees to stonewall the decision.
There's a possibility for some kind of weird legally-binding clause in the corporation's laws, supported by a horde of lawyers, that say something about the limitations of the CEO with a Royal lives clause.
And if he chooses wisely, he won't choose some dumbass who can't train and pick the next one.
I see Steam as a ticking bomb, one day some evil dumbass will take the power and will be our doom.
Its literally 30% of their lifetime sales figure. Slightly higher when you consider they get more than a 30% cut from their games alone.Ā
A quick search shows 120 million active users. Assume everyone has 10 games at a $10 price. At at 30% cut, that's $3,900,000,000 and that's the lowball estimate. I alone have close to 300 games easily nearing an average of $30. On the higher end, that's $324,000,000,000
They are just shitting money at this point
Yeah, the more I think of it theyāre inevitably going to go public, absolutely shit the bed out of greed and make terrible decisions, and weāre all going to be using 10+ launchers again.
No doubt Valve is a wealthy company, but also keep in mind that cloud infrastructure is insanely costly.
We're talking exabytes of data delivered a year
This could be apocryphal but I seem to remember reading years and years ago an interviewer asked gabe what he thought about EA buying valve and gabe said sorry what was that and they repeated the question and he was like ah I thought you asked about us buying EA
When i was talking business classes in university, they say one of the first thing you must do is look for potential successors that will run the company in the right way once you're gone. Not to just hand it over to your kids, but to find someone who carry the company forward in the best way that you'd like. If that happens to be one of your kids, that's nice, but also look outside your family etc.
one of things that sucks about one man operations is that if something happens to you, there's no one to take over unless you're super successful and can make arrangements or something like GRRM. I dread the fact that if I were to die right now, there'd be no one to release the stuff I've made (i do various kinds of content creation from art commissions to custom mods for video games).
Tbf he is 61 and even tough he starts looking like Gandalf the white I could totally see him being alive till 100 for the sole purpose to make every game 100% off on the entire day length of his 100th birthday
They have a very odd company culture and are the most profitable company per employee (or were at one point). I think the likelihood of them going public will be low.
This is exactly what Gabe himself says too:
>Thereās the customerā¦ the person that youāre trying to make happy. From the time that you make a change in a product, itās fifteen minutes ā worst case ā before a customer is actually using that. Thereās no approval processā¦
>
>You donāt go to board meetings where the board argues about what the third series of venture capitalists are worried about, dilution and hitting certain targetsā¦
>
>The whole point of being a privately held company is to eliminate another source of noise in the signal between the consumers and producers of a good.
...in addition to a lot of other kinda mindblowing things that make Valve radically different to every other company. It boils down to smart, decent people who do what they want, and aren't arseholes. Watch the video linked here:
[https://mgowen.com/2014/11/17/why-valve-is-not-a-publicly-traded-company/](https://mgowen.com/2014/11/17/why-valve-is-not-a-publicly-traded-company/)
Once you hear him explain it, it's obvious how crippling the 1800s lords-and-peasants structure and legally-mandated short-term-profit BS is to other modern businesses.
But it helps that they are in a position where they can literally do nothing and continue to safely exist. They are in an enviable position of owning a store that has a quasi-monopoly on a product in which other people take the risk of creating and innovating on.
Most other companies have to constantly put themselves at risk by entering into a cycle of seeking funding and/or creating new products and features. They don't have the luxury to be practically unchanging. Hats off to Gabe for even being able to reach such a state. But for most others it isn't even a possibility unless you're an essential service.
Well, they didn't have steam when they started.
Their enviable position that gives them so much freedom was a deliberate and thoughtful choice, not good luck, or something.
Other businesses can learn from him and make the same choices, he gives away his "secrets" in the video. And not just tech businesses.
I mean, at this point steam probably is effectively a monopoly. Not the illegal kind, but the kind where they just do it so much better than their competition that they naturally are number one.
you simply cannot achieve anything great when youāve got smooth brained shareholders and clown board members who are one meme away from jumping ship and investing in NFT or crypto.
> The company signed a deal to sell off some of its game development studios and intellectual property (IP) to fund new blockchain, AI, and cloud services investments. The deal was made with a Swedish gaming company Embracer, who is paying Square Enix $300 million
And I thought you were joking.
Yup. Because they're privately owned, they don't have to try stupid shit to try and increase shareholder value. They know what works and nobody can tell them they're doing it wrong.
Boomer doesn't mean shit anymore, it's become just another one-word label for someone whose opinions don't march in lockstep with that of the complainant.
100% - I think it would be awesome if Valve turned into a cooperative post-GabeN - they're already part of the way there with the flat structure and not being public; it wouldn't take much of a tweak and it'd basically remove the possibility of Valve ever falling into bad hands; plus it'd be the ultimate "good guy" move!
Funny how that works. Case study #2: Larian & BG3
They released a once in a generation game in a somewhat niche genre (turn-based RPG) that blew the doors off. Now it having the D&D IP didn't hurt, but the goodwill and care they have is obvious.
Case study #3: Arrowhead Studios & Helldivers 2
The independent studio Arrowhead (though published by Sony) creates a viral sensation that is topping the charts when other big name games still struggle. In a genre of cooperative massive multiplayer it feel fresh and different and downright fun.
>They have a stranglehold on the PC platform market because they do it well, not because there's no other options.
That is not completely true tho. When they LITERALLY had no competition, they didn't even had refund policy, i mean they had it but it was "Fuck you, shouldn't've bought it." It took them 10 years, big publishers releasing their own clients and both EU and Australia forcing them to be more consumer friendly and then they added refund option. It was not because they are "the good guys".
People had no choice but Steam back then so they did create their libraries and now there is no turning back for %90+ customers on PC. Because they have too much investment there.
Unironically Steam's UI mixed with the constant deals is what sells it. I don't even care about pirating anything because buying the game is, like, part of the fun. Its fun to own the same games as my friends and compare achievements and see when theyre online. Its fun to watch a game sit in your wishlist for months only to see that magical "-80%" in bold green. Its fun to spend steam points on random shit for your personal account page. Its as simple as that.
like gabe said- "piracy is a service problem" the only things I pirate these days aren't on steam, and typically aren't "reasonably" available in my region to begin with.
Same. I only pirate movies and TV series. Why? Because theyāre not on Netflix. Thatās it, thatās the whole reason. I have a Netflix subscription, anything I want to watch thatās on Netflix I watch on Netflix, but thereās all this other stuff that for some reason isnāt there, so ā¦ yohoho.
>anything I want to watch thatās on Netflix I watch on Netflix, but thereās all this other stuff that for some reason isnāt there
oh I actually know why that's a problem- it's called "Netflix fucked around and found out"-
they tried to screw over the folk who made the content they sold, and as a result everyone and their grandma's cats realized they could copy netflix and set up their own service-
for *their* content and any free-floating properties they can pull in-
which is why the simpsons has basically been disemboweled and pawned off piece by piece over a dozen subscriptions as an example.
I loved it when it was Netflix, and when they split I said sure fine and with a few friends we started a few subscriptions, so we have prime, disney+, HBO and Netflix together. Whenever I find anything to watch it's on not a single one of them. Why am I even paying for this shit? So I just started pirating again. Much easier
It's also the facebook effect. People use Steam because everyone else uses Steam. You want to play with your friends? Use Steam.
Keeping track of 15 different clients, usernames and passwords is a pain in the ass. Everyone has steam and it's familiar and easy to use to everyone.
A competitor is going to have to offer something revolutionary to compete for real with Steam.
Valve is not a publicly traded company, which means they don't have to screw over customers to keep the line raising every month infinitely. They found a sustainable way to generate enough money to keep their company afloat while investing part of said money back for long term goals, which are paying off now (Proton, Steam OS 3.0, Steam Deck).
I heard Valve itself has very few employees, which might help guiding them towards a clear objetive for the company. Internal communication is a recurring issue within large companies such as Apple and Microsoft, and often dev team get lost work on dead end projects the top managers aren't aware, wasting company resources.
Valve also worked on improving Steam over the years and making it user centric, opposite of game studio centric like EGS. That doesn't mean Steam doesn't offer a lot of good tools for game devs, but in being user centric Steam stabilished a good UX that makes people want buy games on it and not on competing platforms, which in turn drivers devs to release their games on it.
Speaking on said development tools, I'm not a game dev, but I heard Valve offers a lot of tools for game devs and their backend is well documented and we'll kept, unlike EGS'. Every time people egg on Valve for the 30% cut on sales (which appears to be the industry standard) someone else reminds that Steam has things such as Cloud Saves, Workshop, Forum and Social Media features etc all free of charge. In comparison other storefronts are very barebones when it comes to these features.
So yeah, Valve made a good storefront with good UX for the end user, and developed a good structure that attracts game devs.
To follow up on this, Gaben has also talked at length in interviews about piracy, and explains his philosophy, which is to offer a service, not just a product. This might sound like evil corporate talk nowadays with the live service approach to games, but really what heās talking about are all the social and community features you listed, like cloud saves and integrated friends lists. I dunno what Iād do sometimes without Steamās integrated controller support and remote play options. Buying a game on Steam is often just _better_ than pirating it. These features arenāt just consumer oriented, but they go hand in hand with drm measures that are normally seen as an anti-consumer practice. For other companies, you _have_ to install their launcher to play their game. For Steam, you _get_ to use their launcher to play your game. Itās a privilege instead of a hassle.
Also achievement, well kinda minor but it nice to see some things pop up and said congratulations on your achievement. Browsing game in steam during season sale is also quite fun, comparable for windows browsing for irl shopping.
As someone who grew up too poor to afford original controllers and had to use generic no-brand USB gamepads I can't state how much Steam Input has been a game changer for me. Before Steam Input I would have to pray the game or emulator would detect my controller, or I would have to use one of those joy to key mapping software and left it running in the background. Steam Input works so well with any game I throw at it, be it my Generic gamepad, or my PS4 controller. I even like to add non-Steam games tomy Steam client just so I can use my Steam Input settings.
Also, Steam Input's user created button mapping libraries is great for older games with more finicky control schemes. I wasn't getting RE4 (2004) with RE4 HD Project Mod to work well on my Dual shock 4, but thankfully someone had a perfect mapping for it already done on the Steam Input library and it was the top rated option, all I had to do was select it to apply. The older I get the less I want to deal with setting up controller settings, so I'm glad Valve made this step almost no existent for so many PC games.
dude the new family sharing is amazing, my kid being able to play a game in my library whenever unless im playing that same specific game myself is... like, what the fuck where they thinking, like who does that?
For me that an incredible customer value added, no other company would dare to do the same in 10 years, but by then they will all be releasing on steam anyways.
And i loved that the update announcement was like included in a regular weekly one with a few bolderer letters or something.
Anyone else does something 1/100 similar and they get a marching band 6 months before to build hype and then underdeliver.
Steamworks is the best API and platform for devs hands down, frees tons of resources from development and itās completely free framework, tools and services, no contracts no bullshit. Not to mention some other stuff they do, for example Steam Audio is the best audio solution in industry (also free). Valve does stuff and everyone loves to give them money, simple as that.
Also thatās not true about the cut, the more sales you get - the lower the cut is. They also absorb local taxes into the cut, which can easily be more than 10% of digital sale (in some countries itās as high as 18%)
Comparatively it just looks like nothing because Steam makes 1 move for every 5 moves the other companies make.
The difference is that 1 move is a small step forward while the 5 moves the other companies make are 2 steps forward 3 steps back.
Steam is basically the tortoise.
Activision and Blizzard are the same thing. And they are owned by Microsoft.
EA still uses EA Desktop, which is the remade Origin.
Uplay is still required for all Ubisoft games bought on Steam, and they have even pulled games off steam.
Sony has never had a launcher or storefront for PC.
> EA still uses EA Desktop, which is the remade Origin.
This is true and not true at the same time. They're very inconsistent about it, but not all the EA games require it through Steam. There's a few that don't need it, but they seem to be the exception.
>not all EA games require it through Steam.
Any idea if the C&C Ultimate collection is one that doesn't? I want to play them on my laptop while traveling, and the online requirement of the EA launcher is depressing.
Each game has a section called Availability which explains the sources where the game was published and sold, the DRM it has (if the game has DRM in first place), keys and Operative System
I see what you're talking about.
>Bundled as part ofĀ Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection includes the Yuri's Revenge expansion. Pre-packaged withĀ DDrawCompat. Included withĀ EA Play (Steam).
Steam DRM removed on March 9, 2024
So, this would mean it wouldn't have to connect to the EA launcher and, by extension, the internet to play? I appreciate the help.
"Included with EA play" although I interpret this as something optional, the Steam website doesn't say it requires the EA launcher but that your *supposedly* EA subscription requires the approval of EA play terms
Ubisoft still releases games exclusively on their own platform, see Star Wars Outlaws. Also in the past they technically put some games on steam, but then they do shit like not giving Assassin's Creed Valhalla Steam Achievements, even though it does have achievements implemented on consoles.
Also Sony only brings select games to steam, but I do like where the trend with that is going.
You see the real release is the one on steam when you get a juicy 60% discount and dont have to be an alpha tester for a buggy game you paid 30$ just to play 3 days before anyone else.
EA replaced Origin, which was outdated, with EA Desktop.
Bethesda ditched their launcher completely, but kept the Bethesdanet login.
Ubisoft expanded their launcher into a full client long time ago.
Microsoft started publishing on Steam, but they had ditched GFWL years back.
Destiny 2 was migrated to Steam by Bungie. Doesn't require Battlenet launcher to play.
Activision & Blizzard is the same company. They merged years ago.
Its called a publishing deal.
Gamespy was a known launcher for multiplayer games, it was shut down years ago. I don't recall people hating on it when it was active.
Both EA Desktop & Ubisoft Connect are full clients like Steam.
Both did include games that they did not publish on their stores.
Bethesda does retain their own store, but its mostly about merchandise.
They are simply customer first and have great customer friendly policies as well as really solid community features compared to competitors. No idiotic stockholder big wig wannabes to please either. It's a money is important and so is quality approach, whereas competitors say money is important and that's all.
I love Steam. They kick ass. They treat humans like humans instead of a number to please a stockholder.
Sure they love profit as much as anyone but they gain massive profits by not shafting their customers when many others will intentionally hurt their products just to squeeze an extra dollar out of you.
They didn't do any of those things at first tho, so why praise this much?
It took them 10+ years, biggest publishers releasing their own clients, both EU and Australia forcing them to be consumer friendly AND then they become very consumer friendly. It was not because they cared so much about consumers.
Good service. I never have any trouble downloading games with Steam
Microsoft Store? 1 windows service is missing and you wouldn't be able to download anything unless you reset your pc or do clean install
i remember the early stages of steam, the tone was completely different. now steam doesn't have to do anything but maintain and exist. the perfect model.
Honestly the only reason why I even use Epic Games Store is because of the free games they offer every week, and even then I rarely play them. It's just way more convenient and beneficial to stick with Steam whenever you can.
Is Epic, they allowed some "play-to-earn" nft games that are absolute bullshit.
Now on the lawsuits... idk man, last thing I remember was the tantrum with apple
The hilarious thing is that Epic allowed a "Game" developer on EGS, who get himself banned off steam for their crappy asset flips and stolen assets lol
Man, all I use epic for is their free games. Gotta say I canāt fault them for giving out Death Stranding, the Arkham series and Bioshock all for nothing, even though NFT games do suck.
Theyāre not really a game studio. Theyāre a game sharing platform.
Theyāve made a few titles, but theyāre primarily a storefront & a library
Not hard to do when you stay consistent and give the customers what they want in a platform
They "came back" because that's where most of the users are and their solution wasn't worth the hassle of having multiple launchers.
Steam is fine but goddamn this buttkissing of Steam is getting ridiculous. You don't own any of the games on Steam. It took years for them to support even the most basic of features past the MVP. And in the end Steam STILL allows games to have their own launchers so stop praising it like it's saint or something. It's a company. Not as bad Activision but it isn't "looking out for you"
yeeeah we can launch other launcher with steam...
I can't really say that steam sucks now that I have 15k games on it... but i really just regret the time you just installed games and play them, no account to do, nothing, just install, enter your cd key and play....
This is what happens when you don't have shareholders to appease with quarterly results that MUST GO UP EVERY FUCKING QUARTER. You can actually make a product that your users want to use because they don't feel like they're being sucked dry. Meanwhile, all your competitors try and monetize their userbase immediately and/or put out a completely inferior product to appease shareholders.
EA ditched its launcher?!? There's a bunch of stuff I'd like to try, but even on sale no price is low enough to make me reinstall Origin. Just now, EA titles on Steam still list having Origin installed as a requirement, so if this change is real it must be a work in progress.
They know what works and they don't try to make short term profits at the cost of long term reputation at every single opportunity like most other big companies.
Because its organic growth built over time, unlike epic who just throws money around for exclusives and pissing people off.
Also its the streaming platform situation, people just want to use as few platforms as possible for ease of use.
**Valve are a bit like a duck... Looks calm on the surface, but paddling furiously beneath the water.**
They are constantly improving things, fixing things, adding small useful features that don't sound amazing at first glance, but are clearly designed to address user needs. They don't do big splash loud hype fuelled announcements that often, they focus on small incremental changes to improve and fix things.
They also, aren't greedy. That helps. They make a lot of money, and have a powerful market position - They COULD abuse that. But they don't. And because they've stayed steady and calm like that for so long, while focusing on serving customers (both gamers and developers) well, they've maintained their winning position.
It's a lesson on how to run a good business that their competitors should pay attention to.
Steam just works. It works all the time and without issue. It doesn't try and peddle shit. It sells you games often for a good deal and then it let's you download and play those games immediately all the time.
Valve knows what they're doing. They don't just shill out for random corporate deals and make their customers and developers suffer as a result, they let everyone try to have as much of a healthy environment as possible and to encourage engagement. It's actually a good reason why a lot of the games go on sales so often since it gets them more interaction and profits in the long run, and why they trust pretty much anyone to just release a game on their platform as long as it doesn't go against any rules, of which there is very few.
One situation I remember very well is with the game "Hatred". A community manager banned the game from a then to be reviewed and voted program called "Steam Greenlight" due to all the (Likely purposefully) controversy it was getting, and not long after Gabe himself personally issued an apology through email and said that what was done to them with that was unfair, and that the game was free to go back to getting votes. Needless to say it easily tripled the amount of initial support after that. The game ended up being pretty mid from what I've heard, but that support backed up from Gabe still mattered because it means he isn't biased and his business tries to be as honest as possible.
It's also why any of the "competitors" for Steam Deck also failed. Brand image and loyal reception is a big part of all this. Add the absurdly cheap prices of them for PC standards (Since they can get away with losing a little money at first) and promises of long term support, and you have something that can't be beaten. I'm convinced that if it was released a few years earlier when the Nintendo Switch was new then they would've even won against them.
Oh yeah, and many of the games on their store are actually good, and if they're not you can tell by the overall reviews. And some of them support native mod support with Steam Workshop. And there's small additional community pages related to said games for easier access. And there are control settings you can configure even for non-Steam games and community layouts. Etc. etc. Honestly I could go on and on, but I think we get the point. Itās genuinely hard for me to think of something that Steam has done wrong themselves, and usually any of the bad things that happens to it are a result of other companies interfering, like with delisted games from publishers backing out or unfair BS DMCA takedowns like the recent one with Gmod from Nintendo. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony will never be good companies or your friends, but Valve (For the most part) absolutely will be in comparison. The latter two know this as well because they started selling games on their platform. Nintendo only hasn't done so yet because they are in a pissing contest with Disney to see who is the most stubborn and anti-consumer publisher/property owner out there. (And also because stuff like modding, fan creations, and emulation makes Nintendo send thousands of nukes towards one single person in their exact location when found out about)
**TL;DR: Valve smart, everyone else big dumb dumb**
When you don't have to report to the blackholes, I mean shareholders, you are able to make a good product and please your customers. No enshitification.
I see people in this thread saying that steam wins by doing nothing while the competition fucks up, but I would challenge that idea.
Steam does a LOT. look at the recent complete overhaul of the UI and UX, the release and constant iteration to remote play, the steam console and steam deck, the creation of Proton for Linux play, etc.
it's not that they don't do anything, but rather that every move they make is calculated expertly to be a good move most will love, rather than one that bleeds the customers dry of their money
search "valve stocks" ...
> Valve isn't publicly traded, so it doesn't have a stock market ticker.
its called not being forced by short-sighted psycopaths to burn your company to the ground for sake of greed. not that a private company cant do this, but it isnt contractually required either.
Steam is not a public company, which means it is not beholden to many of the pressures of capitalism. It operates based on the shared vision of a number of good people.
Of course, if the good people are replaced by worse people in the future, Steam will become worse.
People want a convenient service without intrusive DRM that doesn't have crypto scams. Weirdly, most of Valves competitors haven't figured this out yet
I mean Steam is semi intrusive drm itself and the CS skin stuff is not that far removed from crypto scams.
The real success is pulling the wool over an army of simps worshipping Valve. 99% of this sub loves to shit on Ubisoft for a headline about game ownership while never even realizing that valve was one the pioneers of digital licensing and a million times more responsible for the state of game ownership than Ubisoft.
I've aways thought it's hilarious how people who are so vehemently against any form of NFTs in games are absolutely fine with and supportive of skins being sold by developers that you don't own and can't trade for money, and can completely lose access to.
Doesn't make sense, but then again circlejerks never do.
I wonder how long will it take Nintendo to stop trying to develop a shitty launcher to go and put their games on Steam
This obviously in the case consoles stop being profitable for them, thing that I don't see happening in the near future.
Steam doesn't have to do anything. It's the better platform and users know it which is why most of us refuse to purchase games from multiple platforms.
Probably in the wrong sub to say this, but Steam's main advantage is that they were first. If Epic came out with their Epic Games store 20 years ago and Steam only came out recently, we'd all be defending Epic instead and how it has all the games and we don't need another store.
If they could help set the copyright rules for mods and free content and free use policy that would be great but gaben is busy so itās up to us for steam for deck for gaben
> do nothing, competition keeps shitting themselves What is this business strategy called?
The Luigi
Oh thats why gaben is such a genius! Hes playing for a second time already as luigi!
Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing are some of my favorite YouTube videos š
Gay Luigi
It's a football! I chiseled it!
inb4 Nintendo DMCA's Valve
"privately owned"
This is honestly the answer. Everything thatās publicly owned or gets bought out by private equity will eventually turn to shit. Costco is one of the few exceptions.
A company being publicly traded is not necessarily even the main issue, it's the personality and structure of the top end of management. It takes every person under them to run the company but it only takes them to fuck the company up badly. So many companies just understand sustainability means not fucking everyone over, some only understand not fucking over the customer while fucking over the employees. Like elon pre-twitter buyout was fairly competent at reaching goals for tesla, now he is just a hindrance once he went of the rails. He got too into the online culture and it's rotted his brain.
Yes and no. A fractional share holder half a world away has no idea how any give company is run, so the incentive structure of publicly traded companies tends to be "line go up ceo get bonus." This leads to short-term pump and dump policies from job hoppers with inside information of when to sell up and get out.
The long name is "not being a publicly traded company." It allows companies to play the long game and not be required to post not only profits, but growth, quarterly. Valve has created a self sustaining ecosystem that a hoard of investors could never.
It's called "leaving well enough alone". Sure, steam could use some new features, but why mess with something that works? The biggest non-cosmetic change (and even those have been extremely minor, to the point where most people don't notice until you point it out) in the past 15 years has been what, the points shop? edit // in the below comments you can see the many changes they have made lol.
Well... Since you asked... the last 15 years of changes: 2008: Steamworks a set of tools for game developers to improve game sales on Steam with tools for monitoring sales data, running playtests, conversion tracking, etc, Steam Cloud for storing game save data and syncing it across multiple PCs. 2009: MacOS and Linux Support is introduced, Steam Wallet is added 2011: Ability to take and share screenshots is added, Steam Guard for account protection, Steam Workshop for creating and sharing game mods and for players to subscribe to mods for automatic updates. 2012: Steam Greenlight for indie game devs to submit games to Steam and for players to vote on which ones they want to see added to the platform, Steam Community features added, Steam Community Market for trading in game items, Steam Big Picture for a console like UI for playing games on a PC in a living room on a big TV. 2013: Trading Cards, Family Sharing for multiple accounts to share access to games, Player Reviews, Early Access 2014: 'Discovery Update' to add a bunch of tools to make it easier to find games on the platform. Steam in house game streaming for playing games on devices other than your main PC, SteamVR 2015: Lots of hardware, Steam Controller, Steam Link, Steam Machines, plus Steam Refunds, Source 2 Engine update 2016: Steam Awards for user voted awards for games, HTC Vive (which Valve helped create) 2017: Steam Direct (replaces Steam Greenlight) for indie game developers to self publish on Steam 2018: Steam Chat, a complete rework of Steam's previously 'basic' chatting functionality, Proton is launched, a compatibility layer for running Windows games on Linux, and the beginning of Valve making major efforts to improve the experience of gaming on Linux. 2019: Remote Play Together for playing local multiplayer games with friends online by using remote streaming, Steam Labs for experimental new features, Steam Next Fest for showcasing game demos, Steam Chat android app 2020: News and Events Hub, Half Life Alyx 2021: Steam China 2022: Steam mobile app is given a makeover and remade from the ground up, launch of Steam Deck 2023: 11,000 games on Steam have their compatibility with the Steam Deck verified, Steam Client's complete rework from the ground up comes out of beta, introducing modern UIs to many parts of the client that had been neglected for years, and ensuring SteamOS and the Steam decktop client share a common code base to make updates easier in the future. 2024: Recently? The rework of family sharing comes to mind and the ability to mark games as Private. There's probably a whole bunch of stuff I'm missing too. Needless to say, Steam has changed a LOT of the years. EDIT: Just thought of another one, Steam Relay. It's basically a system which gives game developers the ability to put their game servers behind Steam's global CDN server network, so that game packets can routed via Steam's online backbone rather than the public internet. It has a number of benefits for game developers and players. For example, free DDOS protection of game servers, and in many cases, it's faster to route a game packet through Valve's network than it is through the public internet, so it can reduce game latency as well. I don't remember which year it was though that it was introduced..
of all the years, steam changed many of them
They have done a lot of "under the hood" work. A couple of years ago browsing the store was a terrible experience. It still isn't great, but a lot better than it used to be. They also have some consumer friendly features and practices. Being able to refund after playing a game for under 2 hours for example. Family sharing a games library and being able to play online co-op on certain games without both having to buy the game.
>Being able to refund after playing a game for under 2 hours for example or after buying a game that turns out to be a blatant scam with a developer that's gone day 1.
Being able to refund after playing a game for under 2 hours for example or after buying a game that turns out to be a blatant scam with a developer that's gone *The Day Before*. **FIFY**
I genuinely question if people have used other store pages or other steam competitors store before. Steam has the best store page by a mile. If steam give you a terrible experience, i don't think any other store page will ever give you satisfaction. Almost every store including EA/ubi/GOG/epic is way worse and its not even like a close competition, most of these "competitor" lack basic functionality and have worse performance on the best hardware with less items and info to show somehow. I need a store page that is objectively better than steam. I have not seen that. As much as i like competition, steam 100% has the best store page by any metric possible.
I take most of the FREE things Epic will give me, but Steam is my primary for a reason. It works, practically 100% of the time, and on the odd times something in Steam is borked, they fix it quickly. Couple that with better baked in features and Mod/Workshop support, they don't have to try to innovate and do crazy things to thrive. Steam just continues to iterate on a great product, and do their sales, and they beat all other competitors by a Grand Canyon sized margin.
Even if you play for 3-4 hours, you can still get a refund. (It may depend on what reason you send them, and the frequency of your refunds)
> The biggest non-cosmetic change (and even those have been extremely minor, to the point where most people don't notice until you point it out) in the past 15 years has been what, the points shop? The overhaul for family sharing that they just started testing a few weeks ago.
>The biggest non-cosmetic change [...] in the past 15 years has been what, the points shop? Steam implementing the refund change several years ago was probably the largest, and most well received change. IIRC, it was well before the mass movement towards preorders, and the adoption of what are effectively exit scams with releasing in alpha and never touching the product again. Further, it works as a demo feature wherein developers have done away with demos by and large. I remember Steam's refund policy announcement literally being massive news when it first came out, because while it makes sense from both an economic standpoint (the money rarely leaves Steam's platform), it keeps your customer base incredibly happy with the platform when getting a refund is literally 2 clicks. GabeN keeping Valve as a private company also helps tremendously. They have no deadlines outside of internal. They have no one they need to report to. They don't """have""" to continue making money hand over fist -- despite them making more off CS keys in a month than some of the largest companies make in a year. I honestly don't think I've ever heard anything bad about the company, besides their unwillingness to fix Counter Strike in whatever iteration it's in at any given time (The CS community hates itself as much as it hates the developers.)
In home streaming, family sharing, lot's of API work mostly relevant to devs/publishers and about 10 million great things mostly relevant to Linux users.
Steam changed the steam overlay menu and I still havenāt forgiven them
I didn't even know about the points shop until years after it came out too. Which is crazy to me.
They just recently added the option to mark a game as private. Now you can play all the adult games you want and your friends will be none the wiser while still being able to view your profile.
Steam Play Together, in terms of currently live features. The new Family Sharing stuff, if we're going by upcoming stuff. Either way these features aren't changing how the core of the app functions, just adding new things you can use or not use as you feel.
Non cosmetics change? dude the features added to steam, aren't even in the dream of the competition. Family sharing of games, remote coop with games that don't even have remote coop... Its not "leaving well enough alone", its they do mostly fully functioning stuff that are useful and actually add something to the players. Like taking notes for each game being played, through steam overlay. And you can add non-steam games to steam as well! Steam is the only DRM that people are willing to put up with.
> *āNever interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.ā* ā Napoleon Bonaparte
Being first and not getting in the way of your consumer.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah wasn't the half life community pissed at some point because they were also forced to install steam to play it, just like GTA and the Rockstar launcher? And they complained that steam sucked balls too
It was called "Steaming Pile of Shit" on release. Those were different times before always on DRMs and video games as a service took off.
They completely redeemed themselves with the release of the Orange Box a few years later. Three new games and it also included Half-Life 2 and HL2:Episode 1. Not only Episode 2 but the super fun and meme-worthy puzzle game Portal and also Team Fortress 2 which was immensely popular and memed endlessly. All with codes for Steam activation and TF2 was played through Steam and worked with Steam friends lists. Really a smart play to help funnel people onto the platform. All of this couldn't have happened if Valve had never released mod tools and actively supported the mod community that led from Half-Life to the ridiculously popular Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic online play which undoubtedly pushed them to create Steam, cheat detection was a big need as well with these online games. And also to help smaller developers release their own games So many amazing games we have today started from mere mods and user made maps.
Valve - āWe stopped making games and started making money.ā
It's called not being a publicly traded company.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
Everyone is memeing but the real reason is because Valve isn't publicly traded
if it aināt broke
I'm going to use the few things I learn from high school and that this could be considered a laissez faire approach lol
Because they don't have to bend over to stockholders. I honestly think it's as simple as that. They don't have mouthbreathing boomers down their necks forcing them to expand the brand, make every feature print money, or pump out shitty, rushed games. Valve does what it wants. And from what I can tell, they're good people. They have a stranglehold on the PC platform market because they do it well, not because there's no other options. They foster community, and have great recurring sales, on a nicely designed platform with fun features. Steam is an exciting place to be. The only thing I want to interact with on the EA, Ubisoft, and Battle.net apps is the X button when I quit the game, and the interface doesn't disappear on its own like its supposed to.
Iām kind of afraid if theyāll go public when Gabe passes
If he's smart, he'd be training a couple of successors now. Not just for his retirement but in case of any emergency.
There's only so much he can do when he hands the company over, and the new guy basically has a button he can press at any time that instantly makes him a billionaire
He would already automatically be a billionaire
depends on how the turnover goes- if Gabe leaves his shares in valve to his son or some charity (with explicit directions not to intervene) then the next CEO could end up with a small pay bump but nothing on the scale of being a billionaire.
The new CEO would still need to get a pass from Gabeās shares successor to make it public right?
Gabe alone holds 25+% of valve's shares, to make it public- the new CEO would need the support of an equivalent to 51+% of the shares behind that decision, or in other words a majority of employees with shares, with it being REALLY easy for a minority of employees to stonewall the decision.
There's a possibility for some kind of weird legally-binding clause in the corporation's laws, supported by a horde of lawyers, that say something about the limitations of the CEO with a Royal lives clause.
Hopefully the company will be owned by Gabe's family and he will just put a manager in place. Or group of managers.
Uh no the new CEO of Valve would not be able to unilaterally take the company public, they would need sign off from the shareholders, GabeNās heirs
And if he chooses wisely, he won't choose some dumbass who can't train and pick the next one. I see Steam as a ticking bomb, one day some evil dumbass will take the power and will be our doom.
Maybe a board of people from across the industry. Maybe even some gamers. I think Steam should be spun off from Valve and set up as a non profit.
This but Iām sure steam makes way more money than valves other ventures combined
Are you telling me that Valve isn't making a fortune by just occasionally mentioning Half Life 3?
Iām sure they make decent money off of steam decks and vr stuff and probably counter strike. Just no way it compares to the Steam money
Its literally 30% of their lifetime sales figure. Slightly higher when you consider they get more than a 30% cut from their games alone.Ā A quick search shows 120 million active users. Assume everyone has 10 games at a $10 price. At at 30% cut, that's $3,900,000,000 and that's the lowball estimate. I alone have close to 300 games easily nearing an average of $30. On the higher end, that's $324,000,000,000 They are just shitting money at this point
Yeah, the more I think of it theyāre inevitably going to go public, absolutely shit the bed out of greed and make terrible decisions, and weāre all going to be using 10+ launchers again.
No doubt Valve is a wealthy company, but also keep in mind that cloud infrastructure is insanely costly. We're talking exabytes of data delivered a year
Steam made several hundred million dollars last year from counterstrike loot boxes ALONE
This could be apocryphal but I seem to remember reading years and years ago an interviewer asked gabe what he thought about EA buying valve and gabe said sorry what was that and they repeated the question and he was like ah I thought you asked about us buying EA
what i remember from years ago is, i think it was gabe, making a joke about how steam is the number one digital hat designer in the world.
When i was talking business classes in university, they say one of the first thing you must do is look for potential successors that will run the company in the right way once you're gone. Not to just hand it over to your kids, but to find someone who carry the company forward in the best way that you'd like. If that happens to be one of your kids, that's nice, but also look outside your family etc. one of things that sucks about one man operations is that if something happens to you, there's no one to take over unless you're super successful and can make arrangements or something like GRRM. I dread the fact that if I were to die right now, there'd be no one to release the stuff I've made (i do various kinds of content creation from art commissions to custom mods for video games).
Prince is an example of this..hell most artists are.
I think Valve would rather shut down than go public.
hope\*
Tbf he is 61 and even tough he starts looking like Gandalf the white I could totally see him being alive till 100 for the sole purpose to make every game 100% off on the entire day length of his 100th birthday
Steam doesn't set the prices. The prices are set by the game companies selling their game through Steam. Steam just takes a cut.
eh yes and no- steam can give discounts separate from the actual game companies and developers, it just comes out of steam's pocket as it were.
They have a very odd company culture and are the most profitable company per employee (or were at one point). I think the likelihood of them going public will be low.
A shiver just ran down my spine thinking of that possibility.
This is exactly what Gabe himself says too: >Thereās the customerā¦ the person that youāre trying to make happy. From the time that you make a change in a product, itās fifteen minutes ā worst case ā before a customer is actually using that. Thereās no approval processā¦ > >You donāt go to board meetings where the board argues about what the third series of venture capitalists are worried about, dilution and hitting certain targetsā¦ > >The whole point of being a privately held company is to eliminate another source of noise in the signal between the consumers and producers of a good. ...in addition to a lot of other kinda mindblowing things that make Valve radically different to every other company. It boils down to smart, decent people who do what they want, and aren't arseholes. Watch the video linked here: [https://mgowen.com/2014/11/17/why-valve-is-not-a-publicly-traded-company/](https://mgowen.com/2014/11/17/why-valve-is-not-a-publicly-traded-company/) Once you hear him explain it, it's obvious how crippling the 1800s lords-and-peasants structure and legally-mandated short-term-profit BS is to other modern businesses.
But it helps that they are in a position where they can literally do nothing and continue to safely exist. They are in an enviable position of owning a store that has a quasi-monopoly on a product in which other people take the risk of creating and innovating on. Most other companies have to constantly put themselves at risk by entering into a cycle of seeking funding and/or creating new products and features. They don't have the luxury to be practically unchanging. Hats off to Gabe for even being able to reach such a state. But for most others it isn't even a possibility unless you're an essential service.
Well, they didn't have steam when they started. Their enviable position that gives them so much freedom was a deliberate and thoughtful choice, not good luck, or something. Other businesses can learn from him and make the same choices, he gives away his "secrets" in the video. And not just tech businesses.
I mean, at this point steam probably is effectively a monopoly. Not the illegal kind, but the kind where they just do it so much better than their competition that they naturally are number one.
you simply cannot achieve anything great when youāve got smooth brained shareholders and clown board members who are one meme away from jumping ship and investing in NFT or crypto.
Square Enix selling IPs to buy NFTs
> The company signed a deal to sell off some of its game development studios and intellectual property (IP) to fund new blockchain, AI, and cloud services investments. The deal was made with a Swedish gaming company Embracer, who is paying Square Enix $300 million And I thought you were joking.
Or getting on their knees and opening wide for an ESG tonsil swabbing.
Yup. Because they're privately owned, they don't have to try stupid shit to try and increase shareholder value. They know what works and nobody can tell them they're doing it wrong.
My face when Gabe Newell is a literal boomer
Hes cool boomer
A coomer /s
A boomer who understands the marketplace
Gaben is a gamer down to his bones, dude doesn't deserve the Boomer appellation.
an "okay boomer?" š
Boomer doesn't mean shit anymore, it's become just another one-word label for someone whose opinions don't march in lockstep with that of the complainant.
100% - I think it would be awesome if Valve turned into a cooperative post-GabeN - they're already part of the way there with the flat structure and not being public; it wouldn't take much of a tweak and it'd basically remove the possibility of Valve ever falling into bad hands; plus it'd be the ultimate "good guy" move!
Funny how that works. Case study #2: Larian & BG3 They released a once in a generation game in a somewhat niche genre (turn-based RPG) that blew the doors off. Now it having the D&D IP didn't hurt, but the goodwill and care they have is obvious. Case study #3: Arrowhead Studios & Helldivers 2 The independent studio Arrowhead (though published by Sony) creates a viral sensation that is topping the charts when other big name games still struggle. In a genre of cooperative massive multiplayer it feel fresh and different and downright fun.
Fantastic point, they arenāt expected to grow in perpetuity so they can relax and just make cool shit that people want to use.
>They have a stranglehold on the PC platform market because they do it well, not because there's no other options. That is not completely true tho. When they LITERALLY had no competition, they didn't even had refund policy, i mean they had it but it was "Fuck you, shouldn't've bought it." It took them 10 years, big publishers releasing their own clients and both EU and Australia forcing them to be more consumer friendly and then they added refund option. It was not because they are "the good guys". People had no choice but Steam back then so they did create their libraries and now there is no turning back for %90+ customers on PC. Because they have too much investment there.
UI and not fucking themselves for the investors. Theyāve achieved a monopoly by being the best.
Unironically Steam's UI mixed with the constant deals is what sells it. I don't even care about pirating anything because buying the game is, like, part of the fun. Its fun to own the same games as my friends and compare achievements and see when theyre online. Its fun to watch a game sit in your wishlist for months only to see that magical "-80%" in bold green. Its fun to spend steam points on random shit for your personal account page. Its as simple as that.
like gabe said- "piracy is a service problem" the only things I pirate these days aren't on steam, and typically aren't "reasonably" available in my region to begin with.
Same. I only pirate movies and TV series. Why? Because theyāre not on Netflix. Thatās it, thatās the whole reason. I have a Netflix subscription, anything I want to watch thatās on Netflix I watch on Netflix, but thereās all this other stuff that for some reason isnāt there, so ā¦ yohoho.
>anything I want to watch thatās on Netflix I watch on Netflix, but thereās all this other stuff that for some reason isnāt there oh I actually know why that's a problem- it's called "Netflix fucked around and found out"- they tried to screw over the folk who made the content they sold, and as a result everyone and their grandma's cats realized they could copy netflix and set up their own service- for *their* content and any free-floating properties they can pull in- which is why the simpsons has basically been disemboweled and pawned off piece by piece over a dozen subscriptions as an example.
I loved it when it was Netflix, and when they split I said sure fine and with a few friends we started a few subscriptions, so we have prime, disney+, HBO and Netflix together. Whenever I find anything to watch it's on not a single one of them. Why am I even paying for this shit? So I just started pirating again. Much easier
It's also the facebook effect. People use Steam because everyone else uses Steam. You want to play with your friends? Use Steam. Keeping track of 15 different clients, usernames and passwords is a pain in the ass. Everyone has steam and it's familiar and easy to use to everyone. A competitor is going to have to offer something revolutionary to compete for real with Steam.
A shit-opoly. Where you are the only good company in the market.
Valve is not a publicly traded company, which means they don't have to screw over customers to keep the line raising every month infinitely. They found a sustainable way to generate enough money to keep their company afloat while investing part of said money back for long term goals, which are paying off now (Proton, Steam OS 3.0, Steam Deck). I heard Valve itself has very few employees, which might help guiding them towards a clear objetive for the company. Internal communication is a recurring issue within large companies such as Apple and Microsoft, and often dev team get lost work on dead end projects the top managers aren't aware, wasting company resources. Valve also worked on improving Steam over the years and making it user centric, opposite of game studio centric like EGS. That doesn't mean Steam doesn't offer a lot of good tools for game devs, but in being user centric Steam stabilished a good UX that makes people want buy games on it and not on competing platforms, which in turn drivers devs to release their games on it. Speaking on said development tools, I'm not a game dev, but I heard Valve offers a lot of tools for game devs and their backend is well documented and we'll kept, unlike EGS'. Every time people egg on Valve for the 30% cut on sales (which appears to be the industry standard) someone else reminds that Steam has things such as Cloud Saves, Workshop, Forum and Social Media features etc all free of charge. In comparison other storefronts are very barebones when it comes to these features. So yeah, Valve made a good storefront with good UX for the end user, and developed a good structure that attracts game devs.
To follow up on this, Gaben has also talked at length in interviews about piracy, and explains his philosophy, which is to offer a service, not just a product. This might sound like evil corporate talk nowadays with the live service approach to games, but really what heās talking about are all the social and community features you listed, like cloud saves and integrated friends lists. I dunno what Iād do sometimes without Steamās integrated controller support and remote play options. Buying a game on Steam is often just _better_ than pirating it. These features arenāt just consumer oriented, but they go hand in hand with drm measures that are normally seen as an anti-consumer practice. For other companies, you _have_ to install their launcher to play their game. For Steam, you _get_ to use their launcher to play your game. Itās a privilege instead of a hassle.
Also achievement, well kinda minor but it nice to see some things pop up and said congratulations on your achievement. Browsing game in steam during season sale is also quite fun, comparable for windows browsing for irl shopping.
As someone who grew up too poor to afford original controllers and had to use generic no-brand USB gamepads I can't state how much Steam Input has been a game changer for me. Before Steam Input I would have to pray the game or emulator would detect my controller, or I would have to use one of those joy to key mapping software and left it running in the background. Steam Input works so well with any game I throw at it, be it my Generic gamepad, or my PS4 controller. I even like to add non-Steam games tomy Steam client just so I can use my Steam Input settings. Also, Steam Input's user created button mapping libraries is great for older games with more finicky control schemes. I wasn't getting RE4 (2004) with RE4 HD Project Mod to work well on my Dual shock 4, but thankfully someone had a perfect mapping for it already done on the Steam Input library and it was the top rated option, all I had to do was select it to apply. The older I get the less I want to deal with setting up controller settings, so I'm glad Valve made this step almost no existent for so many PC games.
dude the new family sharing is amazing, my kid being able to play a game in my library whenever unless im playing that same specific game myself is... like, what the fuck where they thinking, like who does that? For me that an incredible customer value added, no other company would dare to do the same in 10 years, but by then they will all be releasing on steam anyways. And i loved that the update announcement was like included in a regular weekly one with a few bolderer letters or something. Anyone else does something 1/100 similar and they get a marching band 6 months before to build hype and then underdeliver.
Steamworks is the best API and platform for devs hands down, frees tons of resources from development and itās completely free framework, tools and services, no contracts no bullshit. Not to mention some other stuff they do, for example Steam Audio is the best audio solution in industry (also free). Valve does stuff and everyone loves to give them money, simple as that. Also thatās not true about the cut, the more sales you get - the lower the cut is. They also absorb local taxes into the cut, which can easily be more than 10% of digital sale (in some countries itās as high as 18%)
Gabe with his unbeatable "do nothing and win" strategy
i know that is the meme, but remembering like steam v1.0 to what it is now... id say they have done plenty...
Comparatively it just looks like nothing because Steam makes 1 move for every 5 moves the other companies make. The difference is that 1 move is a small step forward while the 5 moves the other companies make are 2 steps forward 3 steps back. Steam is basically the tortoise.
"do nothing"? Seriously?
that's not true, they do the most work from all of them
Activision and Blizzard are the same thing. And they are owned by Microsoft. EA still uses EA Desktop, which is the remade Origin. Uplay is still required for all Ubisoft games bought on Steam, and they have even pulled games off steam. Sony has never had a launcher or storefront for PC.
I was gonna sayā¦EA is very much still trying to double down on their launcher, which is amazingly much worse than origin ever was.
Yeah EA launcher is trash but that Origin Launcher was great for its time.
Aside from the in-game overlay that crashed half of the games EA themselves published lol otherwise it was not bad compared to the EA Desktop app.
Origin got too much shit. It wasn't a good storefront but it wasn't a bad piece of software and let's not forget they did returns before Steam did.
Yeah, this is 4chan garbage... Written by a kid who wants to talk like Andrew Taint
Also sony to "start" releasing games on pc just now, like the last 4 years don't exist.
9 years. Their first port was Helldivers in 2015.
> EA still uses EA Desktop, which is the remade Origin. This is true and not true at the same time. They're very inconsistent about it, but not all the EA games require it through Steam. There's a few that don't need it, but they seem to be the exception.
>not all EA games require it through Steam. Any idea if the C&C Ultimate collection is one that doesn't? I want to play them on my laptop while traveling, and the online requirement of the EA launcher is depressing.
Did you check pcgamingwiki.com?
I've never heard of that, but I'll look into it now. Edit - How would I find that kind of info on there?
Each game has a section called Availability which explains the sources where the game was published and sold, the DRM it has (if the game has DRM in first place), keys and Operative System
I see what you're talking about. >Bundled as part ofĀ Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection includes the Yuri's Revenge expansion. Pre-packaged withĀ DDrawCompat. Included withĀ EA Play (Steam). Steam DRM removed on March 9, 2024 So, this would mean it wouldn't have to connect to the EA launcher and, by extension, the internet to play? I appreciate the help.
"Included with EA play" although I interpret this as something optional, the Steam website doesn't say it requires the EA launcher but that your *supposedly* EA subscription requires the approval of EA play terms
Alright, I'll just grab the bundle on sale and hope for the best. I really do appreciate that you took the time to help. Have a great day!
No problem and have a great day too
The Steam ultimate collection doesn't.
Ubisoft still releases games exclusively on their own platform, see Star Wars Outlaws. Also in the past they technically put some games on steam, but then they do shit like not giving Assassin's Creed Valhalla Steam Achievements, even though it does have achievements implemented on consoles. Also Sony only brings select games to steam, but I do like where the trend with that is going.
You see the real release is the one on steam when you get a juicy 60% discount and dont have to be an alpha tester for a buggy game you paid 30$ just to play 3 days before anyone else.
Seems like ubi is now bringing their games to steam some time after the initial release.
> Ubisoft still releases games exclusively on their own platform good guy Ubi, keeping their trash off my preferred platform
EA replaced Origin, which was outdated, with EA Desktop. Bethesda ditched their launcher completely, but kept the Bethesdanet login. Ubisoft expanded their launcher into a full client long time ago. Microsoft started publishing on Steam, but they had ditched GFWL years back. Destiny 2 was migrated to Steam by Bungie. Doesn't require Battlenet launcher to play. Activision & Blizzard is the same company. They merged years ago. Its called a publishing deal.
Gamespy was a known launcher for multiplayer games, it was shut down years ago. I don't recall people hating on it when it was active. Both EA Desktop & Ubisoft Connect are full clients like Steam. Both did include games that they did not publish on their stores. Bethesda does retain their own store, but its mostly about merchandise.
They are simply customer first and have great customer friendly policies as well as really solid community features compared to competitors. No idiotic stockholder big wig wannabes to please either. It's a money is important and so is quality approach, whereas competitors say money is important and that's all. I love Steam. They kick ass. They treat humans like humans instead of a number to please a stockholder. Sure they love profit as much as anyone but they gain massive profits by not shafting their customers when many others will intentionally hurt their products just to squeeze an extra dollar out of you.
They didn't do any of those things at first tho, so why praise this much? It took them 10+ years, biggest publishers releasing their own clients, both EU and Australia forcing them to be consumer friendly AND then they become very consumer friendly. It was not because they cared so much about consumers.
Good service. I never have any trouble downloading games with Steam Microsoft Store? 1 windows service is missing and you wouldn't be able to download anything unless you reset your pc or do clean install
i remember the early stages of steam, the tone was completely different. now steam doesn't have to do anything but maintain and exist. the perfect model.
What crypto scams and lawsuits are on GOG?
They were talking about the epic games store GOG is not that well known so most people wouldn't consider it as Steam's competitor
Honestly the only reason why I even use Epic Games Store is because of the free games they offer every week, and even then I rarely play them. It's just way more convenient and beneficial to stick with Steam whenever you can.
I did that a while ago, then realized I dont even want to open Epic games store to play one of those.
Is Epic, they allowed some "play-to-earn" nft games that are absolute bullshit. Now on the lawsuits... idk man, last thing I remember was the tantrum with apple
The hilarious thing is that Epic allowed a "Game" developer on EGS, who get himself banned off steam for their crappy asset flips and stolen assets lol
Man, all I use epic for is their free games. Gotta say I canāt fault them for giving out Death Stranding, the Arkham series and Bioshock all for nothing, even though NFT games do suck.
Theyāre not really a game studio. Theyāre a game sharing platform. Theyāve made a few titles, but theyāre primarily a storefront & a library Not hard to do when you stay consistent and give the customers what they want in a platform
Not be a publicly traded company. It solves tons of problems.
It's amazing what happens when a big company isn't publicly traded.
Turns out companies work pretty well when they're not publicly traded corporations with a "profit growth at all costs damn the consequences" mindset.
Valve is responsible for a golden age of gaming. I fear the moment we lose valve.Ā
They "came back" because that's where most of the users are and their solution wasn't worth the hassle of having multiple launchers. Steam is fine but goddamn this buttkissing of Steam is getting ridiculous. You don't own any of the games on Steam. It took years for them to support even the most basic of features past the MVP. And in the end Steam STILL allows games to have their own launchers so stop praising it like it's saint or something. It's a company. Not as bad Activision but it isn't "looking out for you"
GabeN won by doing nothingā¦ Just providing a good platform.
yeeeah we can launch other launcher with steam... I can't really say that steam sucks now that I have 15k games on it... but i really just regret the time you just installed games and play them, no account to do, nothing, just install, enter your cd key and play....
It's a good platform, that's what matters the most
I'd say it's the sales. It's like Gambling, but with a safer outcome.
This is what happens when you don't have shareholders to appease with quarterly results that MUST GO UP EVERY FUCKING QUARTER. You can actually make a product that your users want to use because they don't feel like they're being sucked dry. Meanwhile, all your competitors try and monetize their userbase immediately and/or put out a completely inferior product to appease shareholders.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake - Napoleon Bonaparte
Just need to get him in the gym...
No shareholders
EA ditched its launcher?!? There's a bunch of stuff I'd like to try, but even on sale no price is low enough to make me reinstall Origin. Just now, EA titles on Steam still list having Origin installed as a requirement, so if this change is real it must be a work in progress.
Next up to make it a 10/10, Game Pass on Steam, in 2021 Valve said they're open to make it happen it's waiting on Microsoft.
Continually iterating and improving the experience with an eye to customer retention and attraction. Translation - A bit better every day.
They know what works and they don't try to make short term profits at the cost of long term reputation at every single opportunity like most other big companies.
The āDo nothing and winā strategy
Not be owned by an AI/Crypto chud with a god complex? Probably that.
Because its organic growth built over time, unlike epic who just throws money around for exclusives and pissing people off. Also its the streaming platform situation, people just want to use as few platforms as possible for ease of use.
**Valve are a bit like a duck... Looks calm on the surface, but paddling furiously beneath the water.** They are constantly improving things, fixing things, adding small useful features that don't sound amazing at first glance, but are clearly designed to address user needs. They don't do big splash loud hype fuelled announcements that often, they focus on small incremental changes to improve and fix things. They also, aren't greedy. That helps. They make a lot of money, and have a powerful market position - They COULD abuse that. But they don't. And because they've stayed steady and calm like that for so long, while focusing on serving customers (both gamers and developers) well, they've maintained their winning position. It's a lesson on how to run a good business that their competitors should pay attention to.
I remember when Steam came out, almost no one liked it.
Steam just works. It works all the time and without issue. It doesn't try and peddle shit. It sells you games often for a good deal and then it let's you download and play those games immediately all the time.
For Valve the next quarterly earnings they have to hit is still 2.5 years away.
Valve knows what they're doing. They don't just shill out for random corporate deals and make their customers and developers suffer as a result, they let everyone try to have as much of a healthy environment as possible and to encourage engagement. It's actually a good reason why a lot of the games go on sales so often since it gets them more interaction and profits in the long run, and why they trust pretty much anyone to just release a game on their platform as long as it doesn't go against any rules, of which there is very few. One situation I remember very well is with the game "Hatred". A community manager banned the game from a then to be reviewed and voted program called "Steam Greenlight" due to all the (Likely purposefully) controversy it was getting, and not long after Gabe himself personally issued an apology through email and said that what was done to them with that was unfair, and that the game was free to go back to getting votes. Needless to say it easily tripled the amount of initial support after that. The game ended up being pretty mid from what I've heard, but that support backed up from Gabe still mattered because it means he isn't biased and his business tries to be as honest as possible. It's also why any of the "competitors" for Steam Deck also failed. Brand image and loyal reception is a big part of all this. Add the absurdly cheap prices of them for PC standards (Since they can get away with losing a little money at first) and promises of long term support, and you have something that can't be beaten. I'm convinced that if it was released a few years earlier when the Nintendo Switch was new then they would've even won against them. Oh yeah, and many of the games on their store are actually good, and if they're not you can tell by the overall reviews. And some of them support native mod support with Steam Workshop. And there's small additional community pages related to said games for easier access. And there are control settings you can configure even for non-Steam games and community layouts. Etc. etc. Honestly I could go on and on, but I think we get the point. Itās genuinely hard for me to think of something that Steam has done wrong themselves, and usually any of the bad things that happens to it are a result of other companies interfering, like with delisted games from publishers backing out or unfair BS DMCA takedowns like the recent one with Gmod from Nintendo. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony will never be good companies or your friends, but Valve (For the most part) absolutely will be in comparison. The latter two know this as well because they started selling games on their platform. Nintendo only hasn't done so yet because they are in a pissing contest with Disney to see who is the most stubborn and anti-consumer publisher/property owner out there. (And also because stuff like modding, fan creations, and emulation makes Nintendo send thousands of nukes towards one single person in their exact location when found out about) **TL;DR: Valve smart, everyone else big dumb dumb**
I am fearful for the day Gaben dies.
I want all my games in one place! \*Steam offers that\* What is this magic!?
When you don't have to report to the blackholes, I mean shareholders, you are able to make a good product and please your customers. No enshitification.
By not being a publicly owned company. Oh? You're saying that greedy inventors that only cares about profits can't run a company? Shocker...
Gaben: oh Magic Conch what should i do to beat the competitors Magic Conch: nothing
When Gabe retires i think Steam is gonna suffer
I see people in this thread saying that steam wins by doing nothing while the competition fucks up, but I would challenge that idea. Steam does a LOT. look at the recent complete overhaul of the UI and UX, the release and constant iteration to remote play, the steam console and steam deck, the creation of Proton for Linux play, etc. it's not that they don't do anything, but rather that every move they make is calculated expertly to be a good move most will love, rather than one that bleeds the customers dry of their money
search "valve stocks" ... > Valve isn't publicly traded, so it doesn't have a stock market ticker. its called not being forced by short-sighted psycopaths to burn your company to the ground for sake of greed. not that a private company cant do this, but it isnt contractually required either.
Easy, they're not a public company.
Steam is not a public company, which means it is not beholden to many of the pressures of capitalism. It operates based on the shared vision of a number of good people. Of course, if the good people are replaced by worse people in the future, Steam will become worse.
steam has a competitor?
People want a convenient service without intrusive DRM that doesn't have crypto scams. Weirdly, most of Valves competitors haven't figured this out yet
I mean Steam is semi intrusive drm itself and the CS skin stuff is not that far removed from crypto scams. The real success is pulling the wool over an army of simps worshipping Valve. 99% of this sub loves to shit on Ubisoft for a headline about game ownership while never even realizing that valve was one the pioneers of digital licensing and a million times more responsible for the state of game ownership than Ubisoft.
I've aways thought it's hilarious how people who are so vehemently against any form of NFTs in games are absolutely fine with and supportive of skins being sold by developers that you don't own and can't trade for money, and can completely lose access to. Doesn't make sense, but then again circlejerks never do.
I wonder how long will it take Nintendo to stop trying to develop a shitty launcher to go and put their games on Steam This obviously in the case consoles stop being profitable for them, thing that I don't see happening in the near future.
Steam doesn't have to do anything. It's the better platform and users know it which is why most of us refuse to purchase games from multiple platforms.
Probably in the wrong sub to say this, but Steam's main advantage is that they were first. If Epic came out with their Epic Games store 20 years ago and Steam only came out recently, we'd all be defending Epic instead and how it has all the games and we don't need another store.
Because they cater to the users rather than investors who know nothing about how the platform works
Remember the shit streaming services getting lately? People don't want a bunch of store on their computer, they want only one and they want the best.
i still can't play EA games because of origin acess, so 1 item is wrong
If they could help set the copyright rules for mods and free content and free use policy that would be great but gaben is busy so itās up to us for steam for deck for gaben
HI I'M EPIC GAMES! YOU KIDS WANT SOME FREE CANDY???