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Polygon: Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming

Lime

Member
I think it's important to realize that it's possible to like the services and features that Steam offers, and at the same time criticize and find the business practices of Valve highly problematic. These are two separate things and one doesn't excuse or defend the other.
 
I am your friend.

That's still not good. Valve does not have incentives to ever improve.

If Valve does not have incentives to ever improve, why have they stayed so far ahead of all competitors when it comes to features and usability? Nobody else have gone out there and given me anything as great as big picture mode with the ability to use my DS4 or Xbone controller with customization like Steam has. Nobody could argue MS, EA, or Ubi don't have the resources to do things like this.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
Amazon should invest in some new UI designers for this imaginary Amazon PC client then because the design of their other apps are usually boring as hell. All you can say in the positive is that they are functional and that's about it.

At least Steam has a 'look'.

I don't mind boring as long as it's functional. I have a feeling they will start going in that direction if it's worth it. They will probably incorporate it into Twitch perhaps. Look up a game, buy it, play games with streamers, or join a game with someone on your twitch friends list.
 
You read a bunch from the same source until you learn not to click on the articles anymore because the reputation of the site precedes the article, it's not hard.

It's also not hard to avoid posting in a thread in which you have nothing insightful or relevant to the topic at hand to say.
 
You read a bunch from the same source until you learn not to click on the articles anymore because the reputation of the site precedes the article, it's not hard.

And then you feel the need to fuck up discussions by bringing it into every related thread even when it doesn't apply. It's not hard but it is annoying.
 
Well, I got a Happy Birthday Coupon from Nintendo once, take that, XboT!

That's right, I was able to purchase 2-3 year old games for $28 instead of $40! Awwww yiisssss.
Once I got 20 microsoft points. I couldnt buy shit because they were 20 points. That was worse than never having received anything.
 

Marcel

Member
I don't mind boring as long as it's functional. I have a feeling they will start going in that direction if it's worth it. They will probably incorporate it into Twitch perhaps. Look up a game, buy it, play games with streamers, or join a game with someone on your twitch friends list.

You're probably correct about the Twitch integration. I'd go as far as to say Amazon would include Twitch in the branding of the entire client.

However, the look and feel of a client is as important as functionality if you're looking to start something totally new. And even more important if you want to take swipes at Steam. It's why user experience positions exist at the big app and tech companies.
 
Valve does not have a heart or intentions. The people who work at Valve probably have a wide range of attitudes from idealistic to mercenary. But why does any of this matter at all?

Because I often see people using this argument as the reason why Valve is so "open" and definitely not just another crappy attempt at forced ecosystem lock-in.
 

BibiMaghoo

Member
I don't consider GOG or any other store as competition or alternatives to Steam. If they don't offer a comparable feature set, then they are obviously not comparable. Steam is much more than a store. I give them my money because of their features, not out of loyalty or anything else at all.

Origin and Uplay could potentially catch up, but they never will because their goals are tied to their own software, something Steam doesn't have a problem with. So not a friend, no, but the most favorable ally of those available.
 

Krappadizzle

Gold Member
It's not like I see billboards for Steam saying "Become a workshop creator and earn $500 a week" or some shit. So that's a very tenuous criticism at best.
 

Hux1ey

Banned
Read the article, it outlines cases of Valve engaging in shitty business practices

I did, Valve have done some bullshit but what corporation hasn't? They're there to make money at the end of the day and they provide a great service which many of us enjoy. Steam is unhealthy for gaming? Please.

I am also a GOG apologist. Keep up. I lost steam for 6 months due to a driver error. Couldn't access my games. That happened years ago and in that time I only used steam once to try civ 6.

What on earth?
 

patapuf

Member
Because I often see people using this argument as the reason why Valve is so "open" and definitely not just another crappy attempt at forced ecosystem lock-in.

Steam is much more open than any client bar a DRM free GOG copy. How is that not true?

Doesn't mean they won't try to attract you to their ecosystem nevertheless, and they leverage the openness of their features for that.
 

Timeless

Member
In a different copyright regime, we wouldn't have to have this. Custom models would be okay and so would selling them outside of the purview of the original owner. Would drive competition and innovation in mods and custom content.

In the current system, the people who make the original thing have all the power.
 

inner-G

Banned
Better than the Windows 10 store

didnt Microsoft start Polygon? Or throw them a big revelnparty or something?
 

collige

Banned
Steam workshop creators aren't Valve employees. Most companies don't even promote mods, let alone pay the creators.

The "employee" designation is a matter of semantics. By having their work sold, artists are entitled to a cut of the profits. If the cut is being lowered to an absurdly low percent while also making money hand over foot, people are well within their rights to call Valve out.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
I don't really think there's much meat here, mostly grist.

The individual arguments are the following:
- Valve has a monopoly
- Some people like Steam and not Origin and they're hypocrites
- Valve let people make money off selling content, but don't pay them enough
- Valve wasn't proactive enough in establishing an EU/AU-compliant digital refunds policy
- Some ex-employees of Valve didn't like the culture.
- Reddit memes are bad

If the point here is "Some People ThinK Valve Is Based And Lord GFaben Dot Meme Dot Bmp!!!", then, like, why would any right-minded adult spend time trying to refute idiot teenagers on the internet.

But if the point here is that this is an indictment of Valve generally, I don't see it. In order:
- Steam has a lower share of PC gaming than ever before. With Twitch, Itch, Gog, Humble, Origin, Uplay, Epic Games Launcher, Windows 10 App Store, Amazon, Battle.net, the Mac App Store, Beth.net, and others there are more clients than ever before. WePlay is about to be an 800 pound gorilla. More games are being sold DRM-free than ever before. Many of the most popular games on the internet are not on Steam. And Valve allows people to sell Steam games on any store with Valve taking a 0% cut, so also Steam the Client and Steam the Store are not connected at all. Moreover, with Greenlight and now Direct, Steam is using what clout it does have less than ever before to constrain winners and losers on their own platform.
- When Steam came out, I didn't want Steam because it was an annoying inconvenience. Then it killed FilePlanet, made patching easy, and then later it solved the 10 foot UI problem for PC, so it is convenient. By comparison, Origin is worse. It's not intrinsically against the rules for people to want their 30%, but they need to earn it. Valve earned it for me. EA didn't. Ubisoft didn't. GOG did. Humble did. Microsoft didn't. This isn't because I'm a hypocrite, it's because I'd generally prefer fewer better clients.
- It sounds to me like Valve is making an error reducing the payout for DOTA2 cosmetic makers. But in general, there's a difference between starting with a status quo where everyone makes money and clawing it back, versus starting with a status quo where no one makes money and giving them a little bit. The alternative to paying community content makers is not paying community content makers. That's bad. Moving to a world where they do get paid, even if it's only the top earners and even if they aren't paid enough, is an improvement. Let's keep improving it by improving what they get paid, allowing paid mods, and reducing gatekeeping.
- I agree with the AU court decisions and support giving consumers additional rights for refunds. Also, no one had a systematic digital refund policy. This was a case where tech got ahead of law. I am glad law is constraining tech. But let's not pretend Bad Actor Valve departed from the tradition of digital refunds to screw people. And their current refund policy is more automated and generous than most other actors.
- if the point here is to point out that Valve's flat hierarchy has strengths and weaknesses, and one weakness is cliquishness and dysfunctionality when it comes to major projects, sure. I think the presentation of digging up all the ex-employees that say bad things and none of the people who feel it is functional makes it difficult to say whether these experiences are the rule or the exception. It also isn't a consumer-facing issue; the bizarre thing is that reddit people care about Valve's corporate structure to begin with.
- Reddit memes are bad.

I think the lack of a through line or coherence to the structure of the essay means that it mostly seems like a stream of consciousness, and the fact that all of these arguments have been made before mostly makes it seem like someone muckracking rather than an original contribution.

But, finally, a lot of this kinda seems Lady MacBeth-y. Like, venting grievances is of course always allowed and fine, but then what? In the end you can basically choose to buy from Steam or not. If you don't, then you give up Steam's value adds. If that bothers you, then Valve has justified their 30%. If it doesn't bother you, life goes on. If you do buy from Steam then it's a tacit consent that, despite your issues, Steam's the best option. Doesn't mean we can't demand better, but it does mean that maybe some of the apocalyptic language is a bit much.

The one line I would want people to take from this post is that Steam never than a monopoly and has less control than ever, so I particularly object to the idea that Bad Guy Valve is Ruining It For The Rest of Us.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
I remember PC gaming pre-steam. You went to a box store and had your choice of WoW, Starcraft 1 box set, Sims expansions, and a Battlefield. That was the entirety of PC gaming.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Nothing in the article supports the second half of its title. In fact, the vast majority of it focuses squarely on dispelling the notion that Valve is an altruistic anomaly.
 
I remember PC gaming pre-steam. You went to a box store and had your choice of WoW, Starcraft 1 box set, Sims expansions, and a Battlefield. That was the entirety of PC gaming.


Also had to scour the internet for the latest patch, which sometimes had to be downloaded from weird 3rd party download sites.
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
Says the Nintendo apologist. Pot, kettle, etc.

Nintendo (or any other gaming company) to Valve is no comparison at all. Valve has wrapped its tendrils around PC gaming and will never be ejected. Ever. There is no hardware reset, no OS upgrade, no real or artificial launch that can shake things up. 30 years from now people will not only still be locked into Steam but will be more dependent on it as their libraries grow over time. This is the reason Valve doesnt give a high priority to Steam its because they won totally and dont need to give it any attention for it to accrue influence.
 

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
There's a story somewhere in this garbage article.

We emailed Valve for a comment on this issue before publishing the story, and have yet to hear back. After all, if you don't say anything, you can't tell a lie to the internet, right?

ugh

We also didn't want anything else once we were comfortable with Steam, which is a big problem for anyone who doesn't want to give Valve a third of every sale.

...

”Developers have sometimes complained about Valve's hegemony in digital distribution and wished for seriously competitive alternatives," Geek.com wrote. ”It appears that EA is taking this possibility very seriously with Origin, but it won't exactly be to gamers' benefit if in three years' time all gaming PCs are running stores from Valve, EA, Blizzard, and Ubisoft at all times just so that players can access their purchases."

Valve had all your information and was tracking your data, but it would be wrong for other companies to do so. Valve takes 30 percent of each sale on Steam, but anyone who wants to keep their own revenue is seen as ”greedy."

...

We all eventually discovered that our close, personal and entirely fictional relationship with Valve did not entitle us to any kind of refund on our purchases.

But it took the better part of a decade for enough people to start noticing that Steam's refund policy wasn't so much a ”policy" as the words ”eat shit and die" printed in huge size 72 font and to start raising hell about it. We were used to buying our PC games in stores, and we had recourse if they didn't work. We could go talk to someone. Steam never provided that luxury, and it still doesn't.

The occasional no-refund horror story was dismissed as the exception, not the rule. It didn't cause near enough to damage the Good Guy Valve golden brand, and an incredible 11 years passed before enough people were possessed of enough indignant fury to actually complain to the authorities.

...

Even when Valve finally did get around to launching a refund program (a full two years after the supposedly evil EA did it!), many people quite accurately and angrily observed that the default refund option was in Steam credit, which means Valve wins either way.

30% is the industry standard, across all platforms. Humble only charges 5% because their business model is completely different, as they rely on bundle sales, not their digital store.

Not only that, but Origin has been closed off to any other developers that want to put their titles on their service. I even had a guy that worked on the Origin team that was a big fan of my game and tried to get it on Origin...with no success.

I've been rejected by GOG.com four times. I'm not sure what they want from me. They give vague, unhelpful reasons as to why.

So according to this article, devs like myself should opt for more platforms outside of Steam so in turn customers can use other services. But if I can't even get on platforms outside of Steam then...what?

I also like how he glossed over the fact that SimCity was an online only game that required Origin and complete internet access...which promptly exploded and made the game unplayable for months at a time since it doesn't even boot up without Origin access. But hey, I can get a refund through Origin, right?

Oh wait, EA forbid refunds for SimCity because their servers melting down and making the game unplayable wasn't a proper refund reason. That's a story on Polygon, by the way. Not sure how Tim missed that. It took them six months to finally relent.

My point is, all services have terrible issues that go unresolved, ignored, or fixed after years of grief. Steam is the biggest of them all, perhaps because they are also the biggest PC portal by far. They should be held accountable, but for the author to pretend that none of the other services don't have their problems and hold them as a beacon of perfection is asinine.
 

shira

Member
Dota 2 continues to grow — not least of all because the prize money for the International tournaments is literally donated by us, the players, who purchase interactive Compendiums and Battle Passes to raise prize money for the competitors (from which Valve takes 75 percent).

When you decide to support Dota 2, Good Guy Valve takes your money, puts 25 percent into the prize pool for the players and keeps the rest for himself, and even then the prize pool was nearly $20 million in 2016. I'm sure you can do the math

A lot of that goes into hosting TI.

It's literally top of the line everything for the players and the fan experience.
 
Nintendo (or any other gaming company) to Valve is no comparison at all. Valve has wrapped its tendrils around PC gaming and will never be ejected. Ever. There is no hardware reset, no OS upgrade, no real or artificial launch that can shake things up. 30 years from now people will not only still be locked into Steam but will be more dependent on it as their libraries grow over time. This is the reason Valve doesnt give a high priority to Steam its because they won totally and dont need to give it any attention for it to accrue influence.

Won't even bother trying to argue because I would probably botch it, just read Stumps post above.
 

KJRS_1993

Member
Too many people playing the 'man' and not the ball here - it's making them appear very overly upset.

Also, there's plenty of users who complain about people leaving comments expressing their tiredness of Angry Joe topics (don't click on the link if you're not interested!!), yet some very clear shit posts about this particular source are allowed? What gives?

It's an interesting article.


Not really

Case in point.
 

The Wart

Member
Because I often see people using this argument as the reason why Valve is so "open" and definitely not just another crappy attempt at forced ecosystem lock-in.

By any reasonable measure Steam is far more open and less locked-in than practically any platform other than GOG. See: Stump's excellent post above. So the idea that Steam is "bad for gaming" is pretty big leap. Could Steam be better for the PC gaming ecosystem, while still being sustainable? Sure, and it's worth pointing out ways it could improve. But "this thing could be better" is a very, very different argument than "the existence of this thing is a net negative". The fact that so many people seem incapable of understanding the distinction is pretty disturbing.
 

Arulan

Member
No corporation is your friend. That being said, this article is a load of bullshit.

Valve, despite being a leader in the industry, and having enormous power to influence, has always pushed for an open-platform. They continue to push themselves away from the position of overlords and gatekeepers of the Steam platform. They compete not by creating artificial value by exclusivity deals, which they very well could, but by creating a better platform than their competitors. And the largest bullshit of all goes to: "is not healthy for gaming". The aforementioned policies and Valve's insistence on them, such as in removing barriers to publication on the storefront have been an incredible boon for indie developers, and part of why they're flourishing now more than ever. Valve's contributions to VR are nothing short of incredible.

How do the other corporations who lead this industry stand up? Not so favorably. Many create closed-platforms so that they can exert their power over it. They compete by creating artificial value and dangling it on a fishing pole. On PC, a lot of these other clients and storefronts are criticized because they add no value to the space. Microsoft's Store for instance is a cancer on the platform, and attempting to undermine its values. Other clients like Uplay offer no value whatsoever but to get in the way. GOG on the other hand is praised quite often. I wonder why that is...

Valve, like every corporation, is still out to make money, but it's the method they go about it that is important.
 

Carl7

Member
I think Valve is my friend. Their services and practices have turned the PC into a much more attractive platform for developers what is greatly beneficial to me as a PC enthusiast.
 
Good points in the article, I just don't like how sensationalist some of them are laid out. I tend to be a straight facts man, tell me how they got fucked exactly without embellishments or similes, and I'll agree, they're getting fucked.
 
I don't really think there's much meat here, mostly grist.

The individual arguments are the following:
- Valve has a monopoly
- Some people like Steam and not Origin and they're hypocrites
- Valve let people make money off selling content, but don't pay them enough
- Valve wasn't proactive enough in establishing an EU/AU-compliant digital refunds policy
- Some ex-employees of Valve didn't like the culture.
- Reddit memes are bad

If the point here is "Some People ThinK Valve Is Based And Lord GFaben Dot Meme Dot Bmp!!!", then, like, why would any right-minded adult spend time trying to refute idiot teenagers on the internet.

But if the point here is that this is an indictment of Valve generally, I don't see it. In order:
- Steam has a lower share of PC gaming than ever before. With Twitch, Itch, Gog, Humble, Origin, Uplay, Epic Games Launcher, Windows 10 App Store, Amazon, Battle.net, the Mac App Store, Beth.net, and others there are more clients than ever before. WePlay is about to be an 800 pound gorilla. More games are being sold DRM-free than ever before. Many of the most popular games on the internet are not on Steam. And Valve allows people to sell Steam games on any store with Valve taking a 0% cut, so also Steam the Client and Steam the Store are not connected at all. Moreover, with Greenlight and now Direct, Steam is using what clout it does have less than ever before to constrain winners and losers on their own platform.
- When Steam came out, I didn't want Steam because it was an annoying inconvenience. Then it killed FilePlanet, made patching easy, and then later it solved the 10 foot UI problem for PC, so it is convenient. By comparison, Origin is worse. It's not intrinsically against the rules for people to want their 30%, but they need to earn it. Valve earned it for me. EA didn't. Ubisoft didn't. GOG did. Humble did. Microsoft didn't. This isn't because I'm a hypocrite, it's because I'd generally prefer fewer better clients.
- It sounds to me like Valve is making an error reducing the payout for DOTA2 cosmetic makers. But in general, there's a difference between starting with a status quo where everyone makes money and clawing it back, versus starting with a status quo where no one makes money and giving them a little bit. The alternative to paying community content makers is not paying community content makers. That's bad. Moving to a world where they do get paid, even if it's only the top earners and even if they aren't paid enough, is an improvement. Let's keep improving it by improving what they get paid, allowing paid mods, and reducing gatekeeping.
- I agree with the AU court decisions and support giving consumers additional rights for refunds. Also, no one had a systematic digital refund policy. This was a case where tech got ahead of law. I am glad law is constraining tech. But let's not pretend Bad Actor Valve departed from the tradition of digital refunds to screw people. And their current refund policy is more automated and generous than most other actors.
- if the point here is to point out that Valve's flat hierarchy has strengths and weaknesses, and one weakness is cliquishness and dysfunctionality when it comes to major projects, sure. I think the presentation of digging up all the ex-employees that say bad things and none of the people who feel it is functional makes it difficult to say whether these experiences are the rule or the exception. It also isn't a consumer-facing issue; the bizarre thing is that reddit people care about Valve's corporate structure to begin with.
- Reddit memes are bad.

I think the lack of a through line or coherence to the structure of the essay means that it mostly seems like a stream of consciousness, and the fact that all of these arguments have been made before mostly makes it seem like someone muckracking rather than an original contribution.

But, finally, a lot of this kinda seems Lady MacBeth-y. Like, venting grievances is of course always allowed and fine, but then what? In the end you can basically choose to buy from Steam or not. If you don't, then you give up Steam's value adds. If that bothers you, then Valve has justified their 30%. If it doesn't bother you, life goes on. If you do buy from Steam then it's a tacit consent that, despite your issues, Steam's the best option. Doesn't mean we can't demand better, but it does mean that maybe some of the apocalyptic language is a bit much.

The one line I would want people to take from this post is that Steam never than a monopoly and has less control than ever, so I particularly object to the idea that Bad Guy Valve is Ruining It For The Rest of Us.

That is a sweet write up. Thanks for your informed insight.
 
Steam is much more open than any client bar a DRM free GOG copy. How is that not true?

Doesn't mean they won't try to attract you to their ecosystem nevertheless, and they leverage the openness of their feature for that.

Just to preface this, if 70%+ of PC sales were made via GoG, I wouldn't be nearly as supportive of the platform as I am.

But that aside, I don't feel particularly "locked in" to GoG. I download their DRM-Free executables and store them in my personal "game library" folder on an archived hard drive. Buying a game from GoG does not make the idea of buying a (DRM-Free) game from the Humble Store less appealing. My library is unified and within my control.
 

Twentieth

Member
The one line I would want people to take from this post is that Steam never than a monopoly and has less control than ever, so I particularly object to the idea that Bad Guy Valve is Ruining It For The Rest of Us.

I agree. In a certain way, it feels like this article would've made more sense before GOG and other competitors increased their costumer base, and before the refund policy. That being said, I believe Valve deserves a lot of the criticism pointed at them. A huge corporation like them, with a lot of influence on gaming in general, is bound to face public repercusions for bad practices.
 

jmga

Member
I'm surprised GOG isn't more popular than it is

I buy always on GOG when available, but it has its own problems.

Their curation system prevents developers from updating as often as on Steam, and for some reason there are problems with DLCs and several times a developer has had to offer refunds because of not being able to release the DLC on GOG.
 
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