Yes I realize that, unfortunately I believe the pros outweigh the cons when you consider Valve within the video game industry, especially vs Nintendo.

• Valve: US company, BUT privately owned by a great guy. Atleast Gabe Newell hates the US and lives in New Zealand. He fought tooth and nail against even going back to go to court against one of these other videogame companies if I remember right. Also the only reason it hasn’t been enshittified is cause its not publicly traded. Worship GabeN folks.
• Nintendo: umm ya tons of US investment firms own it actually… checks notes… 2nd and 3rd largest investors are US investment funds. JP and BlackRock. Many more on the list.

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• Valve: uses profits to launch the steamdeck so you can escape the abusive relationship of the switch. Steamdeck has been the biggest boost to linux and opensource gaming in history, thanks to Valve’s efforts. Your (reasonably priced) money goes towards improving an opensource product, opensource OS (now used on ASUS gaming portables too, more soon to come), and opensource game development in general as linux marketshare grows.
• Whereas Nintendo uses their outrageous profits to snuff out small studios, C&D opensource indie devs working on expanding and keeping alive 40 year old abandonned IP, killing any aftermarket product a third party invents to make their shit equipment more usable. Oh and most importantly, enshittify your experience to ensure those American investment funds keep seeing their line go up.

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• Valve supports indie development whereas nintendo does not.

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• Steamdeck: Steam has PC gaming prices, ie. Regular massive discounts, especially on games a year or two old. Steamdeck also has access to alternate marketplaces, emulators, sideloading, etc. Want to buy from itch.io, GOG, etc? You can! Its a fully functional linux computer too!

• Switch: locked into nintendo’s store. Games rarely go on sale, never for much off. Charges $89.99 for a reskin of their old IP in literally every series and can’t even be arsed to atleast hire voice actors for that price??? These games require ZERO effort on nintendo’s part, zero imagination, and they continue to rake you over the coals like they are putting out AAA games. Closed off areas in supposedly openworld? Lame. Fog instead of rendering a beautiful landscape? Lame. Maybe if the switch wasn’t made to be as cheap as possible and struggle with low fidelity graphics it would have a reasonable render distance.

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• Valve: online play is free for everyone since… ever? You already pay for internet why tf would you need to pay a membership to access online play, its not 2009 still is it? xbox live?

• Nintendo: Ah yes, greed, thats why. $45 CAD/year for a “family” switch online membership, that increases every year, and you are still capped at 8 accounts? What if you have 7 kids and 2 parents that want an account nintendo? Think of the children.

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I mean I could keep going on but do I need to? For any product/company in any market its worth thinking critically about what the options on the market offer, support, and represent. Not just oh I had a switch, better get a switch 2.

Valve may be US based legally, but they are certainly less of an abusive asshole murikkkan company than Nintendo IMO, who fully embraced US capitalism in every sense of the word.

Could go for an ASUS (Taiwanese) deck… Uh… Thing? What the hell would you call the Ally or similar devices that are not exactly a Steam Deck, but built on the same overall compatibility? 🤔