Truth be told, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.
PC Gaming has had tons of DRM examples - from SecuROM (anyone remember those times?) to modern day Denuvo DRM.
So there are a few unpopular DRMs out there:
- Disc checking based DRM (if the disc was cooked, that’s your paid game down the drain)
- CD Key based DRM (if you lost the CD Key, that’s your paid game down the drain)
- Online activation (you registered the same game on two different PCs? Try that again one more time and you’re done for. For added bonus, sometimes the activation software would register the same PC as different hardware because someone had the audacity to upgrade their hardware!)
- Always online - need I say more?
- Cloud gaming - now with the added joy of not owning the ones and zeros you paid for!!
Steam has managed to use account based DRM while avoiding the trappings of pretty much all of the above (for some games you can enter a CD key, and that game is permanently attached to your account, which is great if you lose the disc, but sucks if you want to sell the physical game on afterwards), while the competition used any of the above (some used multiple layers of DRM, which is eurgh).
Then on top of that, hats off to Valve - they do tend to listen to their customers and give them what they want, even if the whole point is to keep them tied to using Steam and strangle out the competition:
- Cloud saving
- Steam Workshops
- Game streaming via local network
- Sharing the game library with family
- Controller support with button remapping for legacy games with poor support
- In store game reviews
- Store algoritm suggestions based on the game categories you buy and what you friends buy
- Discussion forums (even if they can be thoroughly toxic at times)
- Guides (the formatting is awful)
- Fairly deep and independent social integration
- Built in audio streaming via Steam
- Those card things that you can sell for a bit of money or craft
Compare that to Origin, Epic Store, GOG etc. They just cannot compete with what Valve offers in terms of features on top of features.
What bothers me about Valve is that
- They have such a chokehold on PC gaming that everything else feels inferior, and no other company can really compete in terms of features
- They have fought refunds in the past (as mentioned in the article)
- The whole paid modding fiasco because Valve really wanted to financially exploit a community known to give stuff away for free
- How they often abandon their own products due to lack of customer attention and their limited size due to wanting to remain a limited company
- I’m looking at Valve Index, and apart from Half Life: Alyx, I don’t see much in the way of new games. Even worse is that I watched someone on YouTube basically explain that there are still glitches and weird stuff that occurs in the Valve Index - aa product that costs £919 here in the UK.
- I’m also looking at the Steam Controller, which has been very, very neglected with no talk of a sequel (given how successful the Steam Deck has been, I’m shocked at the lack of a “companion controller”)
- I’m also looking at the infamous Steam PCs that completely flopped
- How TF2 started the trend (at least on Steam) of microtransactions in games, and how CS:GO has carried that flag (and started a gambling community which has probably done untold damage to young children as they grow into adults and are confronted with the world of gambling)
- How Valve, as a company that started off making games, has absolutely no desire whatsoever to make games anymore because of how wildly successful they are.
And this is the stuff I can think of at the top of my head. I was going to say it also concerns me they don’t have a bug bounty program, but it turns out now they do.
I completely forgot about Whiskey. Managed to get GTA V running at 120FPS on it, which was (and still is, IMHO) absolutely mindblowing.