Last year, they all came crawlin' back to Steam, and this year was another strong one for Valve.

From the opinion piece:

Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.

  • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    11 months ago

    No. They’re repeating cable history. The great bundling has already begun. Hulu and Disney are being rolled together. You’re going to have fewer options moving forward. You’ll have to buy the netflix-hulu-disney-peacock-hbo-starz bundle or the other one with all the rest. Then they can keep cranking up the price because it’s all or nothing. Prices will go up until too many people choose the “nothing” option, then they’ll start doing a “build your own package” to let you drop half and save 10% just because you want one of the services.

      • sunbeam60English
        1·
        11 months ago

        Meanwhile in the land of downloading Linux distributions via BitTorrent, nothing has changed.

    • Bgugi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      11 months ago

      It will just keep getting worse until some new “disruptor” enters the marketplace. That one will be great for a while, then collapse into a new archipelago of shitty cash grabs.

      I’m just wondering what the next big thing will be… Maybe some kind of local macro-kiosks that have mechanical DRM units that store all the data so they don’t have to negotiate with the non-open ISPs. You could probably even include impulse sales of physical merchandise and consumables while people browse for the media they want.