• GrindingGears
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    3 months ago

    Could someone (politely) explain why anyone who criticizes steam gets absolutely scorched?

    I mean I’m a user, on the PC it’s probably the platform I purchase on the most. I’ve also used Epic, GOG, and a few of the others. Like most, I’m getting pretty annoyed by having to load what seems like 15 different platforms to play a variety of games.

    But I’ve never understood this blind absolute cult-like following of steam. What makes them absolutely beyond any reproach or criticism? Especially when at least Epic gives away lots of free games (like I think I’ve spent about $20 bucks on that platform, yet it seems like I have just about every game known to man in my library). Or others that don’t mess around with DRM, etc. So what gives?

    • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s not about Steam and Valve being beyond reproach for criticism. It’s that posts like OP are incredibly hyperbolic.

      Steam is genuinely a good service, at least for now, for as long as the current people in charge stay in charge. And because they’re such a good service they have become the number one place where people look for games.

      This attracts the occasional person like OP who tries really… really hard to make Valve look evil. And not just random people either, other platforms who either don’t have the resources, or don’t want to spend the resources, to make a service that can actually compete with Steam try to make Valve look like a villain too.

      Claims that seems true on the surface, but are otherwise false (i.e. Valve has a monopoly), cases that are misrepresented (i.e. The case with Wolfire Games), or criticisms directed at Valve that aren’t specific to Valve or Steam (i.e. You don’t actually own your games) are often the go-to topics of posts like OP, and have been repeated hundreds of times (and debunked). At this point people are just sick of seeing it and will downvote on sight.

    • MindTraveller
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      3 months ago

      The ACCC in australia sued Valve for their crappy refunds policy and forced them to implement an australian-style refund system. Everyone in the rest of the world enjoys it when a business treats them like australians (which is to say, like they have actual consumer rights), and assumed Valve was just nice. Epic, EA, Ubisoft and the rest treat them like americans, which they hate. So that’s why people love Valve. Because Australia sued the pants off them.