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Oh. Steam tried to rip gamers off so hard that they removed forced arbitration clauses and class action waivers from their terms of service.
Steam is a monopoly no doubt, but it's not a result of major anti-competitive behavior, but simply because others can't match it.
To be fair they did that because law firms were seeking out frivolous arbitration bullshit to try to extort them into settlements.
But their market dominance is definitely primarily about how much better they are than anything else.
But the outcome is good for me at least and I'm satisfied.
I would literally donate money directly to Valve if I could for all the good selfless work they're doing.
Their work on sponsoring DXVK, and Proton's development, their contributions to make the AMD drivers even more awesome, gamescope, they've been driving all the HDR and VR work on Linux, and now they're also getting even more hands on with Wayland through frog-protocols.
Meanwhile the others are either doing nothing at all except selling the games, or actively sabotaging Linux gaming and furthering Microsoft's monopoly like Epic Games is doing with their intrusive anti-cheat.
Being on Steam is being strongly pro-consumer and the first thing a developer not publishing on Steam does to me is make sure I'm very unlikely to buy their games because at least on Steam I know I won't get ripped off.
Couldn't care less about whiny developers complaining they make slightly less millions in sales for overpriced AAA games, and still impose their own launcher and shit because they only treat Steam like a store and nothing else. I pick what's good for the players not the developers. If they're unhappy there's dozens of indie developers in line to pick up the slack willing to make games I'm willing to pay for.
EDIT: And a couple hours later, Valve delivers once again: https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-dev-public@lists.archlinux.org/thread/RIZSKIBDSLY4S5J2E2STNP5DH4XZGJMR/?sort=date
This dude again? His other video about valve has so many mistakes
Edit: Btw I think this deserve a thumbs down for the clickbait hyperbole shit title alone.
The fun part is, unless you're doing stuff that's extremely shady, they'll basically give you as many keys as you want to sell the game externally. Of the hundreds of games in my Steam library, it's a very small fraction that have been purchased through Steam, or that they've made any money on. Their 30% is closer to a commission than a platform fee, and a 30% commission on a product that's all margin isn't unusual.
And people use Steam because they're actually way better than any other option. The "freedom" platforms like GOG can't be bothered even having a client support Linux, while Valve invested a good bit into working with community projects to make most of their (already sold about as much as they're going to) back catalogue compatible and smooth. Steam input is also, by itself, more value added than any other store, and there are several other meaningful features.
Valve and Steam is actually the best thing happened to PC Gaming and Linux. No thanks, I want Valve and Steam succeed. I've seen the same claims over and over again and most of the time its wrong or disingenuous. I'm not saying Valve is a prophet, off course there are things I don't like about.
But saying Valve is ripping every PC gamer is a lie.
What I found most interesting is that the real alternative of cutting down Valve is giving the money that Valves make to multiple others shittier companies. In the end of the day the money will not go to the people that's actually work on the game.
I want to give Valve money, not 100% he publisher. Why? Because Valve is actively working on Open Source and improving PC gaming (and even creating new devices and games). Unlike shops like Game Jolt, who just cuts part of the money for selling it on their platform.
This _ might_ be the dumbest take I’ve ever seen. Clearly someone made up their mind to hate Valve and everything they see just confirms their existing biases, reality be dammed.
Great video with good points, we'll have to see if the monopoly stays good for gamers in the next 10 years, its pretty obv from the video that the status quo is great for valve and good for gamers, but horrible for competition in the platform space. Valve is a monopoly like how android and ios are a duopoly. Great for customers and the companies around the OS's, bad for competition in the market. (Does competition matter if a monopoly it benefits the customer?)