
Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming - Impossible
https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive
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benologist
Valve recently got fined $2,500,000AU for stealing from Australians via a
fraudulent and criminal refund policy. They have never been anyone's friend.

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/23/valve-steam-
fined-2-mill...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/23/valve-steam-
fined-2-million-australia-refund-policy/)

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Arzh
Yeah this really seems to gloss over how, I at least, treated Steam the same
way I did all the others until it actually started to make things easier for
me. I had it installed so I could play HL2 and really didn't start using it
every day until like 4 years later. The problem with the other platforms are
that they haven't made that turn for me yet. GoG is getting there but even
that I only have because I got my Witcher 3 install key from them.

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kuroguro
Haha, I still remember the rage from when I was forced to install steam to
play CS on legit servers :3

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sddfd
Sounds a lot like someone who can't get into the game distribution market
because of customer reservations that (should) also apply to stream.

What all these companies have to accept is that valve was a decade earlier,
and they have no right to demand they can get into the market as game
distribution platform now, but must earn the customers favor to get in.

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jazoom
As a doctor I like to think I'm more of a friend to my patients than the
company that sells them video games online.

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MrZongle2
_Valve is not my friend?_

Sure; it is no more my friend than my doctor, mailman or the guy who aerates
my yard is my friend. We have an agreement that they provide certain services
for certain fees. We may have an amicable relationship, but little more.

I give Valve the benefit of the doubt for reasons largely nostalgic and
mentioned in the article: Valve is the company that brought me the _Half-Life_
, _Left 4 Dead_ and _Portal_ series of games that I have enjoyed considerably.
They also introduced Steam, which back in its early days was most certainly a
boon.

 _Steam is not healthy for gaming?_

Perhaps, but I'm not convinced that it is the sinister force the article
paints it as. Anybody else remember the pre-Steam days? Let's go back to
October 1, 1999: almost four years before Steam launched.

If you wanted to play _Half-Life_ , you had to go to a brick-and-mortar store
and find a boxed copy. Now by October 1999, _Half-Life_ probably wouldn't be
too hard to find considering that it had been out for 10 months...but how
about _Age of Empires II_ or _Grand Theft Auto 2_ (both released September
30th)?

If you lived in a relatively large town, you might have a shot at getting a
copy. If demand was high, you might have even reserved a copy (back when pre-
ordering made sense due to scarcity). But if you were late to the store or
didn't even _have_ a decent store near you, you waited until a retailer
ordered new copies and a truck delivered them and somebody stocked the
shelves.

Steam ended that nonsense with a click. The amount of time you waited depended
upon your Internet connection.

What if you wanted to play with friends across the Internet? Or just join an
ad-hoc game with strangers? If you were lucky, the game you wanted to play had
a decent in-game server browser. If not, you had to rely on something like
GameSpy (if it supported the title) to connect you to other players.

Steam also has eliminated that problem: you can see what your friends are
playing and join them directly. A built-in server browser can provide you a
list of public games to join as well.

How did you know when a game update was available? Back in 1999, you had to
hear it from a friend or see mention of a patch release on a gaming website.
Then you had to _find_ the patch, download it (and hope that your download
wasn't interrupted), and follow the installation instructions. Not rocket
science by any stretch, but still time-consuming.

Steam changed that. Updating was trivial.

Taking screenshots in-game and easily sharing them with friends? Voice
communications? Steam also provided a single integrated solution for both of
these, in place of other third-party options.

Installing mods, once a real PITA for most games, has been greatly simplified
by the Steam Workshop.

I could go on.

This isn't to say that Steam doesn't have customer support issues, or that
such features as game reviews or Steam forums aren't subject to abuse, or that
sometimes Steam seems to take a bigger cut of the profits than it may appear
to deserve. And, in all fairness, it doesn't fully explain why I balk at
Origin (perhaps its the bad taste in my mouth that most Electronic Arts
efforts leave with me) when it's largely the same thing.

I think Steam has, at least for most of its lifetime, been a _benefit_ to PC
gaming. We can debate as to what "healthy" means (I would argue that the abuse
of what constitutes a DLC anymore and micro-transactions have done more
damage), along with Steam's culpability in fostering the "Early Access"
environment today, but I think gamers are far better off now than they were in
the pre-Steam era.

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freeflight
>Steam ended that nonsense with a click. The amount of time you waited
depended upon your Internet connection.

This is one of the main reasons why I consider Steam one of the better success
stories in "fighting piracy", it has everything that's needed: Actually
cheaper games due to discounts, ease of installation with a couple of clicks
and imho those are exactly the reasons why Steam has become such a success
over the years.

Sure, I also was not a big fan of installing Steam back then just to play Half
Life 2, but let's be real here for a second: Even back then the majority of
multiplayer PC games already had "DRM" in the form of CD-keys which made it
impossible to resell them used or rent them, in that regard Steam changed very
little.

Imho Steam has been the healthiest thing that happened to PC gaming in these
last 2 decades. That does not put Valve in a position beyond doubt, but I sure
as hell still trust Valve more than I would ever trust EA, Acti/Blizz or
Ubisoft.

