I think Steam might be the only private company in this.
Really says a lot.
don’t forget valve gets minors (and adults) into gambling.
Man I love it when people glaze objectively bad companies just because it’s popular opinion to like them.
Remember steam started the business model of not actually owning your games.
Gabe has made billions by stealing profit from the workers that actually make games.
They had to be sued just to offer refunds.
They host tons of malware and shovelware and outright scam games and even protect them from “”““review bombing””"
They pushed “early access” into the mainstream.
And because of people like you that would literally suck Gabes dick for the meme, they get away with it.
Remember steam started the business model of not actually owning your games.
GOG exists, go use GOG. Steam is popular because they don’t fuck over buyers, and they run a good business model, people are ok not “owning” things if the service is reasonably well put together.
Gabe has made billions by stealing profit from the workers that actually make games.
steam takes a 30% cut, which isn’t all that high, especially when you consider that they develop things like proton at zero cost to anybody, including developers. You’re also getting the single largest and most widely used publishing platform, period. It’s really hard to beat something of that caliber, so it’s definitely a tradeoff. There are also cases of devs making games that become so popular they pull in millions of dollars worth of revenue.
They host tons of malware and shovelware and outright scam games and even protect them from “”““review bombing””"
in defense of steam, if they specifically curated high quality games people like you would accuse them of gate keeping the platform. Scams are definitely a thing, malware, technically is. I’ve not seen malware ever in my personal experience, and i doubt most people have, and whenever it does happen, steam responds accordingly so i’m not sure its a fair statement.
They pushed “early access” into the mainstream.
there’s nothing necessarily wrong with early access, i actually think it’s a really productive way to provide tons of play testing and development potential for smaller dev teams. Does it also incentivize shovelware? Sure, but it’s a platform you can make money on, that’s not abnormal. And again, it’s usually very well known when games are abandonware.
And because of people like you that would literally suck Gabes dick for the meme, they get away with it.
surprised you didn’t mention gambling, that’s probably the most significant argument against steam right now, they effectively run what can be considered an online casino.
Ok then fund linux gaming
That’s one of the greatest thing Valve is doing. They’re breathing life into Linux gaming.
While I think capitalism encourages unethical business practices, keep in mind that Valve actively supports the development and popularization of the kernel as well as other projects like Wine from their profits.
G*mers have been too Stockholmed by Steam’s monopoly to recognise that everything they complain about with EA or Ubisoft all started with Valve.
I sometimes feel an anxiety when pondering what will happen when daddy Gabe isn’t here to keep the wolves at bay.
That’s my fear too , whoever gets their hand on valve will decide the future of pc gaming kinda , I just hope it won’t get sold to ea , riot , tencent or whatever
gabe is a very smart person, if he doesnt have a post death plan for steam i would be immensely surprised.
The fact he is doing research on BCIs, I like to imagine his plan is digitizing himself so he can live forever on the net.
Honestly, I’ve been weaning myself off Steam for awhile now. It’s great what they did to make PC gaming more accessible, but I also feel like Steam itself is an unnecessary dependency for most video games.
There should be protocols that games can implement to integrate with launchers and organize playing online.
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Depends on who inherents his shares
steam is just so based.
I dont think a single more based company has ever existed. It rivals the greats like linux, with a touch of gambling.
Linux isn’t a company.
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.
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.
I don’t know of a single game on/from Steam that doesn’t require Steam to run. Thats DRM.
Stardew Valley, Terraria, and Starbound, to name a few I’m pretty sure are DRM free (Starbound I’m certain of). Probably plenty of others, but I haven’t tested. To see if a game requires steam, literally just install the game on Steam, copy the game folder out of the Steam install path, close steam, and launch the game.
It is entirely up to the developer if they want to use it though. It is not mandatory for a developer to use Steam DRM even if publishing on Steam.
Kerbal Space Program 1, at least used to not require steam running at all. I havent tried in a while, but it was supposed to stay that way.
It looks like they miss out on the Steamworks features “(e.g. online multiplayer, achievements, leaderboards, trading cards, etc.)” if they opt not to use their DRM, so I can understand why the vast majority of devs would want to use it.
You can actually pick and choose which parts of the steamworks api to implement, so you can have trading cards, multiplayer etc without the drm side.
from memory, i think you do need to use the drm to use family sharing, we had issue with that when we chose not to use the drm, but everything else we could implement fine without it.
Ah I didn’t realise that, thanks. The overview page made it seem like the DRM was required for any of that to work.
Oh wow that is interesting. So the vast majority of devs just choose to lock it to the steam.exe?
yep yep, exactly this. For whatever reason suits them, be it drm or others, pretty much everyone who publishes on steam does choose to do so
I will always have some admiration for a person that sets up shop in Microsoft’s back yard and bases the system on Linux. I hate the DRM aspect and couldn’t care less about what promoting whatever with children because quite frankly that’s just not going to be solved by anything other than parents taking better care of their kids. The same can be said about exposure to any kind of media, including not letting children watch commercials on Saturday morning because gee whiz, that stuff is exploitative.
To me complaints about exposing kids to gambling is just finding something to be pissed off about and reinforces my feeling that the Left has picked up the kinds of puritanism that used to be associated with the Right.
But yeah. DRM software is a serious thing to worry about. Selling people vapor is kind of a shitty thing to do.
Yeh plus they let neonazi groups usw their forums for recruiting and hate speech, because they don’t want to pay any mods.
While I wasn’t a mod for Steam proper, I was a mod for a popular game that routinely had its share of hate groups and 8ch mobs try to take over. The flagging system worked pretty well for keeping the worst of this stuff out. Plus, the publisher is permitted to make moderators for its own Steam forum. So if you are seeing shit get out of hand on a particular title, blame the publisher, not Steam.
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.
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me: steam is terrible; it’s just drm with a nice bow on top
steam: steam visual novel fest starts now
me: i love steam stuffs more items on my wishlist
(for real tho itch.io and gog are much better use them - and download the actual offline installers from gog don’t use galaxy)
GOG Galaxy isn’t bad to use. It has cloud saves, and update checking - which is useful for some people. And games installed using the offline installers still show up in galaxy (and can be updated etc.) In fact, you can download the offline installers from the Galaxy app itself if you want to.
Heck, I just cut out the middleman and go straight to torrenting.
Wish I had thought to do this sooner. I would’ve saved a lot of money that really just ended up in the hands of landlords.
itch.io and gog
would switch tbh but it would need to have steam style proton integration first
heroic games launcher integrates a pretty solid proton base. Lutris also works but i find it a bit too fiddly for me.
HGL works great though, also provides native integration with EGL and GOG, which is nice.
Lutris gives you that.
It is not one click… I tried it a few years back. Ended with just going with steam only and abondrd all the other trash stores like ea etc
@cupcakezealot wasn’t Itch also American?
yeah it wasn’t necessarily an alternative; i was just saying they’re better because they tend to support indie devs and/or are more drm free than steam. i didn’t know of a purely non american one that i use :(
@cupcakezealot I like that they support indie creators as well, but Valve also did wonders in regard to gaming on Linux in general. I personally support both, as long as they are not supportive in any way to the current Trump administration.
oh for sure it wasn’t a dismissal of steam (which I have a large library and a steam deck) and more of a use itch.io and gog first of possible
@cupcakezealot oh, I see
Apparently GOG is Polish. DRM free, too; the one time I used it it literally just gave me the raw game files, like back in the day.
i didn’t know they were polish but yup! for most games you can go into your account and download all the manuals and exes/pkgs for any game you own!
I love my Steam Deck and Proton, but it pisses me off how many Steam games are spyware / DRMware and won’t start without internet on this PORTABLE console, and especially that Valve allows this kind of toxic shit.
So, my Steam Deck stays blocked from the internet in my firewall and I buy from GOG when available or get them from other places.
Also, Gabe can STFU about piracy being a service problem until Steam bans DRM and spyware.
You can just not buy the games that have stuff like Denuvo etc. If you keep buying them, of course they’ll keep including the DRM etc.
Steam is the storefront, and they have plenty of games you can buy without that crap.
Steam also tells you beforehand, now
Correct, don’t buy them.
And there’s always torrenting. Denuvo doesn’t actually stop games from being cracked.
Why not just turn on offline mode on the steam deck? Its easier than blocking it from the internet…
Still need to connect to things on my local network.
It’s crazy how it’s absolutely impossible to criticize steam without getting bashed to oblivion by so-called gamers. The amount of free balls sucking Steam gets is just ridiculous. They have sub 100 employees , take 30% of every god damn games sold on the platform and you don’t own you games. Yeah it’s a cool platform, but in the end it’s just another nasty capitalist business.
As a Linux gamer, steam has done so much to make it incredibly easy. They didn’t have to make proton, but they did and it’s great.
The few games they’ve made have pretty much all been incredible.
The family sharing means my wife has access to my whole account on her steam deck.
Sure, they take a big cut of sales, I’ve heard not a great place to work, and probably some other reasons to not like them. But the good far outweighs the cons. It’s hard to hate them compared to other huge companies.
Well I mean, proton exists pretty much solely because of the steam deck. I will agree that it’s been really nice switching to Linux as a result of proton’s existence but they didn’t just magically do it out of the goodness of their own heart either. It’s basically the nicest version of a monopolistic gaming environment that doesn’t really allow you to actually own anything that you buy.
It’s kind of funny to watch the news with them; they’re like two different companies struggling to coexist. One is just as greedy and evil as every other corporation and the other one fights for the consumer, so you end up with a news story one day saying that they’re stifling competition by forcing price cuts on only their platform, but then they also are banning all games that force players to watch advertisements. Make make up your mind Steam 😂
Well I mean, proton exists pretty much solely because of the steam deck.
proton existed many years before the steamdeck, and it’s evident they intended it to be used WITH the steam deck, but it also exists outside the steamdeck, even then, it’s still a huge incurred cost for a console that is actually super cost competitive for what it is. They don’t even have that significant of a console market share, it seems like it’s been nothing but a pet project to make gaming on linux more accessible, presumably because valve doesn’t really like windows. Steam is 100% still WAY in the red on proton, and will probably continue to be for the whole lifetime of the project, it’s unlikely they’ll ever break even on it.
How do they not allow you to own anything? Steam has drm free games, and if this is about licensing that wasn’t different 30 years ago.
Valve is absolutely not perfect and I buy from gog when possible, but my god do I hate that argument. Using steam’s drm is the choice of the publisher.
How do they not allow you to own anything? Steam has drm free games, and if this is about licensing that wasn’t different 30 years ago.
its the perpetual license thing, every platform that doesnt directly sell you the product does the same thing, it’s the industry standard.
Yes, and video games sold as physical disks did it too.
Family sharing is just replicating a feature of the disc age that valve killed of only owning 1 copy of a game and installing it one multiple people’s computers. If it had DRM requiring the disc to be inserted to play (which many games did), only one person could play it at a time.
I had a couple of classmates who’d take turns buying each Sims 2 expansion because you only needed the last installed expansion disc inserted to play so that way they’d each have a fully expanded Sims 2 install at half the price. My dad would always have the latest expansion installed and I would have to wait until they got the next one before I could get that one. Certain expansions were exciting enough that I’d find times to play on my dad’s computer to play the latest expansion though
take 30% of every god damn games sold on the platform and you don’t own you games.
they also provide both proton completely for free, and the entire steam marketplace, as well as any other additional functionality, steam networking for ex, with that 30% cut.
It’s a large cut, but you’re not really going to find a better option. Sure you could release on GOG, i think like 12 people use GOG though.
they also provide both proton completely for free
Yeah,I mean Proton is basically Wine - A free and open-source project developed by hundred of people over the years - with some extra patches. It’s great, but the only reason they did it is to sell steam decks.
Steam does certain things really well, but in the end it’s just a capitalist business. I don’t get why gamers can be that bitchy about studios, that employ thousands of devs and artists, people who just wants to make good games but needs to deal with executives, but will rip their shirt a soon as someone criticize steam. They do no care about you, your experience, or even video games, they only care about money.
Boy are you gonna be surprised as hell when you find out what sort of percentage other publishers take, especially for physical releases!
Shockingly enough, infrastructure requires money to run!
You mean like Epic who takes 12%? Or Itch that let you chose your contribution? Or Humble that takes 25% but give half of that to charity?
BTW steam is not a publisher…The infrastructure argument is just BS in 2025. Just admit you’re an official gamer, meaning you will do anything to protect a soulless capitalist business that make millions everyday but employ like 83 people. Ubisoft bad, Steam good, I know lol.
Oh please, Sony, Nintendo, Apple, etc all take 30%+. Epic is flailing horribly while running EGS at a deficit held up solely by Fortnige skins and gambling (but it’s ok when they do it right?)
Physical publishers take 60%+.
Humble bundle is getting discounted keys because it’s for charity.
Steam is a publisher. They’ll also finance your game with interest-free loans, you don’t even need to publish your game on Steam.
More to the point, Steam offers massive value for that 30%- forums, hosting, security, patching services, hosting, matchmaking, dlc options, the list goes on and on… And more importantly, steam doesnt care if you use those services even while selling keys elsewhere. that means that steam doesn’t even get 30% of the take from those keys.
The infrastructure argument is just BS in 2025
Why? Do we have free electricity and data centers? Sign me up for my share of both.
Lol, in 2022 steam had profit margin of 70%. That makes it the most profitable company per employee in the United States, check it out. But obviously, they’re not in it for the money, they just want players like you to be happy.
Really we just to implement an open protocol that launchers and games can both support.
It’s a testament to how much worse every other company is.
I still don’t understand why the company is so highly regarded. They enable underage gambling. Life must be easy for a company. You just have to be a little bit better than the others and you are regarded as a hero.
i mean, out of all things a company can do that are bad, underage gambling is probably one of the better ones, and the argument in favor of it is that it’s on games like csgo and cs2, where the age range is obviously higher than an actual child.
Realistically, i think you have to be kind of stupid to get caught in gambling, but it is also definitely predatory, and there’s a reason it’s a heavily regulated industry. There’s definitely a better solution than we currently have, but it’s not as bad as it could be either.
“underage gambling is probably one of the better ones”, “you have to be kind of stupid to get caught in gambling” you seem like you do not know what you are talking about respectfully.
Have you watched cofeezilla? The industry already has armed mafia structures.
I never gamed, so…
- Fuck gambling
- Fuck walled gardens
- Fuck billionaires (nobody needs that much dough)
- Fuck Valve/Steam (it’s easy for me to say)
Steam isn’t perfect and I sure as shit won’t be the one defending a corporation, and this isn’t a good excuse at ALL, but if you’ve never gamed you wouldn’t believe how much worse it is on the other side (GOG being the only exception).
And as far as corpo rats go, at least Valve employees own 49% of the company.
Gaben is pretty chill, ngl
Yup pretty much it.
I’m literally installing windows right now. I feel disgust, but I need it for one application that I know will never have a Linux version. I got tired of the slow as shit virtual machine I used for it before. I can’t replace it with an alternative either, for business reasons.
Accurate and warranted.
Steam ils not cool. Steam is a monopoly position. This egemony need to end. We need many actors not just one.
Both things are currently true, they are a monopoly which is not good, but they are also acting nicely for the most part and not fucking people over despite their position
they are a monopoly
They are not, they’re just a really good service so people use them more than the others
Epic, GOG, Itch, etc. still exist and are widely used
Yea, the same way youtube isn’t a monopoly… Except for all practical purposes it is.
Except for all practical purposes it is.
Except it’s not, because you can go to multiple other sources
More than YouTube, even, and even YouTube isn’t a full monopoly, though it’s a lot closer than Steam is
Monopolies aren’t just "big companies’ you know
You’re right - monopolies aren’t just big companies. But a lack of monopoly is also not simply having access to alternatives. You can have all kinds of alternative services - that notion alone does not disprove the claim that Steam is a monopoly.
A company does not need total market share to be a monopoly even in legal terms
