From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
As a Linux user, nothing else comes even close. I can read on ProtonDB if I can expect a Windows game to just work, and more often than not, it does.
GOG is also a great concept, and somewhat Linux friendly, but it doesn’t have the Steam “click and play” convenience.
Epic Game Store however, has been decidedly Linux hostile for some reason??? As I see it, Steam and GOG are for gamers, Epic Game Store is for business. It would be a dark day for gamers, if Epic ever became dominant.
The contributions Valve has made to Linux really, really can’t be understated.
It’s been 20 years of the joke “It’s finally the year of the Linux Desktop” and Valve took the desktop for a miss and made 2023 “the year of the Linux Portable PC Gaming Handheld.”
Tim Sweeney can eat my asshole.
Steam and GoG are not just free services for gamers either. At their core they are businesses, and they invest significantly to try and make people spend more/get addicted to their services.
I hate this whole idea that some companies are your friend. That just shows their marketing and branding is working on people and blinding people.
It’s not a matter of them being your friend or not, it’s a matter of them respecting their customers, and giving their customers what they want, generating a win-win.
These days most corporations are very happy with the win-lose scenarios, as it maximizes their profits.
Publicly traded companies, which we’ve all learned to hate and not take as our friends, are in no way comparable to Steam which is privately owned. Gabe Newell is in no way forced by shareholders to push for increased profits, the company has no interest in pushing for enshittification unlike VC funded startups.
Thank goodness Gabe will live forever and Steam will always be a private company then!
Oh… Shit.
This is exactly what I mean. It’s like people just have no concept of the future. Point me to any private company that’s been around a long time and is still not shit.