Between Asus, Lenovo, and now MSI, it feels like every major PC gaming brand is lining up to compete with Valve’s Steam Deck. MSI’s Instagram teaser for next week’s CES announcement doesn’t give too many hints about the specs or features of its competitor. But it does seem to confirm it’ll have plenty of fan grills and RGB.
I mean, worse thing that can happen is that valve becomes a public traded company with greedy stockholders… Like basically all their current competitors.
I’m happy that a lot of what they did with Proton is FOSS. Even if they stop tomorrow, all that work will remain and continue. That’s a lasting contribution. Not sure I can say the same for the rest.
Sure but if you treat them like a monopoly and your library depends on them, they can turn around and make things go bad for everyone real quick. The tools used to run the games on Linux might be open source, Steam is still a form of DRM that you depend on to play your games! They could easily start charging a monthly subscription to not have ads pop-ups in game!
They could easily start charging a monthly subscription to not have ads pop-ups in game!
No, they could not. Regulators would stop that very quickly. Steam is large enough that would be noticed.
Now, tell me what the other stores have to offer? Epic has the same issues, but with less games and more crappy launcher. Gog is DRM free… But those games you can get DRM free elsewhere too. The rest have very limited catalog and little features.
In the end Steam is big because they are doing things better by most players standards. I will be extremely happy the day the competition starts doing something aside from “being the underdog”.
Sony has announced that certain TV shows that players may have bought through PlayStation will be deleted from their libraries. Yes, shows you paid for, just…deleted.
Edit: They don’t add ads instead they are removing bought shows, which is even worse. Amazon shows ads before shows on their subscription service (self-promotion of shows/movies).
Well they don’t make the games so they couldn’t really do that nor would game developers be very appreciative of that. But I see your point. There’s nothing stopping you buying all your games on steam then making a copy of them elsewhere to play with a steam emulator if it goes tits up
“We’re reducing our cut from 30% to 15% and introducing ads for players that don’t want to pay.”
Tada! Most devs would fall in line just like they don’t mind releasing on Steam instead of other platforms that take a smaller cut just to have access to a bigger player pool.
I mean, worse thing that can happen is that valve becomes a public traded company with greedy stockholders… Like basically all their current competitors. I’m happy that a lot of what they did with Proton is FOSS. Even if they stop tomorrow, all that work will remain and continue. That’s a lasting contribution. Not sure I can say the same for the rest.
Sure but if you treat them like a monopoly and your library depends on them, they can turn around and make things go bad for everyone real quick. The tools used to run the games on Linux might be open source, Steam is still a form of DRM that you depend on to play your games! They could easily start charging a monthly subscription to not have ads pop-ups in game!
No, they could not. Regulators would stop that very quickly. Steam is large enough that would be noticed.
Now, tell me what the other stores have to offer? Epic has the same issues, but with less games and more crappy launcher. Gog is DRM free… But those games you can get DRM free elsewhere too. The rest have very limited catalog and little features.
In the end Steam is big because they are doing things better by most players standards. I will be extremely happy the day the competition starts doing something aside from “being the underdog”.
Just like they’re stopping streaming services from doing it?
What streaming service is adding pop up adds on movies or shows you have purchased?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/12/02/playstation-is-deleting-tv-shows-players-paid-for-thanks-to-warner-bros/
Edit: They don’t add ads instead they are removing bought shows, which is even worse. Amazon shows ads before shows on their subscription service (self-promotion of shows/movies).
Well they don’t make the games so they couldn’t really do that nor would game developers be very appreciative of that. But I see your point. There’s nothing stopping you buying all your games on steam then making a copy of them elsewhere to play with a steam emulator if it goes tits up
“We’re reducing our cut from 30% to 15% and introducing ads for players that don’t want to pay.”
Tada! Most devs would fall in line just like they don’t mind releasing on Steam instead of other platforms that take a smaller cut just to have access to a bigger player pool.