Note that if you're an indie developer and you want to make money, you pretty much are going to use Steam. > even though you can use GOG, Uplay, EA, Humble, BattleNet, Amazon Prime, MS Store and the countless other options on PC if you wish unlike on iOS and consoles So their competitive edge becomes yet another reason most GOG buyers also have Steam accounts. GOG usually gets games years after launch when the developer feels DRM is no longer needed. I suppose this is a bit of a double edged sword, as most gamers don't care about DRM and therefore just want the latest game available, which GOG does not carry if it has DRM. GOG and Epic are real competitors, with GOG's competitive edge being they only have games that are DRM free. This is crucial to understand because "using Humble" still means encouraging Steam lock in. Then there are those like Humble, which aren't actually a separate platform, they just sell keys and for the longest time they exclusively sold Steam keys. This pull is so intense, that most of those you've listed have put their games on Steam again. Hence why most of them (excluding GOG and Epic) just have their first party games on there. Meaning those stores would be put at a terrible financial disadvantage trying to get developers onto their store. I'm not stating they don't carry identical libraries as some difference is tolerable, I'm talking about vast vast portions of Steam's collection are unavailable elsewhere. So far as I can tell, they seem to go out of their way not to enshittify anything in any way ever.įor clarity, it's important that readers know that using alternatives (like GOG, Uplay, EA) isn't actually a valid option here because they do not carry the same games that Steam does (due to Steam's dominant position in the marketplace, many avoid releasing on other stores at all). Customer Service - Their customer service isn't as nonexistent as some companies', but it's pretty thin on the ground This made it very difficult for me to maintain a VR gaming station at my house, since my nephews playing VR upstairs meant that I couldn't play DotA 2 downstairs unless I started a second account.Ģ. All your dozens or hundreds of games get locked together into one account, and even if you own two or three computers, you can only play a game on one of them at a time. DRM - The DRM isn't particularly onerous but it is there. The only things about them that are particularly user-hostile and make me hate them are:ġ. But I have to go to bat for them here and say that they don't seem any worse today than they ever have been, and every time I get dragged into opening their shitty app to buy a game that isn't available elsewhere, the app is at least a little better than it was last time I used it. Wading through low quality games is annoying but there are a lot of fantastic games that would never have been approved under the old system Vampire Survivors is a great example of something that probably would have gone straight in the bin. ![]() I don't necessarily disagree with either, although I do think Steam has been improving rather than "shittifying". Greenlight was replaced by Steam Direct in 2017. However, approvals were still heavily curated compared to what we have today. ![]() This didn't start to change until the introduction of Steam Greenlight in 2012, allowing users to vote on which indie games they'd like to see on the platform for the first time. Indie developers and even small publishers were often unable to get their games approved for distribution. ![]() Steam used to be much more selective in deciding which games made it on to their store. * Critical of the quality of some of the titles released on the platform. * Suggesting Steam is a platform like any other, and therefore likely to experience the same process. Two charitable readings would be that the author is either:
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