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[Tagyhag]

Steam has its share of problems, no doubt about it, and yes, the cult of personality that it has to some people does mean that some people are ok with those problems, but if you look at the gaming medium in its entirety, there is no service platform out there with zero problems.

Much less one with as many games, features, and options as Steam.

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.

That's a great point, but it's easier for Tim look 100% right if you don't give he doesn't put counter arguments.

 

[rrs]

Honestly, there's been quite the change in how mods had been viewed through valve, with attempts to csgoify everything by trying to end server mods; to throwing a hissy fit that someone might be able to hold a knife they never got as a drop and went ham on more modified servers; and with a general feeling valve wants you for a paycheck more and more rather than the new content you bring

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

"Polygon: GIMME MORE CLICKS"

 

[nubbe]

I buy all my games on GOG nowadays

 

[Crayon]

Valve has their flubs but their general strategy of openness and in particular their contributions to gaming on Linux make them one of the most good or least evil companies in gaming today.

 

[Hux1ey]

I buy all my games on GOG nowadays

Pretty limiting no?

 

[Tumle]

I wish people in threads for their favorite companies would grasp this but alas.

No buisnesses are our friends that is true.. but businesses have Different business startegies that you can favour over the other.. not that I'm condoning system wars by saying that..
will need to read the article to comment on that though.. hope I get around to doing that since I'd like to know more on how things are going over at valve..

 

[Shifty1897]

Steam is not my friend, but I like them a heck of a lot more than I like Polygon.

 

[Usobuko]

GoG lacking many Japanese games no?

But Valve is an interesting case. Sometimes I wonder the intrinsic value of cult favored personalities like Elon, Gabe etc. with regards to their companies.

My only gripe with Valve is people excusing their Customer Service practices because they are a small company. They are only small by choice and the belief to want to automate everything. Valve as a privately-owned company is probably worth as much as all say Ubisoft & Square Enix combined.

 

[polyh3dron]

But companies like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Fiverr and the others are starting to feel the risk of that edge. The world is finally realizing that a hands-off, profit-first, tax-dodging ”connection and services platform," powered by the cheap labor of people who aren't technically employees and have no rights isn't exactly a good idea. In fact, it may be a very bad one. Whether this means government regulators finally getting their act together, unions winning court cases or citizens voting them out of town, these companies are starting to feel the downside of moving fast and breaking things.

If you were to ask the average PC gamer, they'd swear up and down that there's no way they'd ever give their money to such a corporation. They'd not only be caught dead before helping a company like that come to power, they might even join the resistance to stop them.

And yet, that sort of operation is exactly what the PC gaming community has been supporting, promoting and defending since 2004 when Valve more or less forced us to install Steam by bundling it with Half-Life 2.

Steam is part of the new gig economy? What? How?

 

[Phatosaurus]

The drive to be on the bleeding edge of technology powers the PC gaming community. We want nothing more than to run our ridiculously powerful rigs on barely stable beta drivers, with our CPUs overclocked to speeds that are neither advisable nor guaranteed to be safe for our systems.

Nah fam, my graphics card is only a 1050Ti, I upgrade the drivers when the Geforce programme tells me to and I can't even overclock the i5 2320 I've had since 2012.

As for Valve, I downloaded Steam in 2009 for cheap games, not Half Life 2 and I mainly buy through the Humble Store or wherever else is cheapest.

This article is fucked.

 

[patapuf]

Just to preface this, if 90%+ 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.

GOG's DRM free approach is great and if that ever becomes successful enough to supplant steam i'll welcome that

But ecosystems are a fact of everything digital, not just games. I'll take Valves approach to it over the alternatives we have. Especially when we have companies like MS or Amazon knocking on the door and trying to get in.

I still remember what publishers were trying to pull before steam became big. Valve is doing just fine right now.

 

[Chairmanchuck]

Steam/Valve has so many problems, but that article seems to be written by a "casual user" or someone who doesnt use Steam that much.

Heck. I am sure Jshackles or some members from SteamGAF can write an article that fits the situation far better than this.

Like why even talk about Memes? Or saying that people prefering Steam over Origin are hypocrites, even though Steam offers far more services/games than Origin.

 

[Doug Heffernan]

Not my friend?
All that money spent on Christmas cards sent to Gaben... down the drain.

 

[Abilidebob]

GoG lacking many Japanese games no?

But Valve is an interesting case. Sometimes I wonder the intrinsic value of cult favored personalities like Elon, Gabe etc. with regards to their companies.

My only gripe with Valve is people excusing their Customer Service practices because they are a small company. They are only small by choice and the belief to want to automate everything. Valve as a privately-owned company is probably worth as much as all say Ubisoft & Square Enix combined.

I mean, Ubisoft + SE have about 14k employees. I don't think Valve has even 500. I know that their employees are some of the best paid in the industry, but damn.

 

[Spade]

Of course they aren't... but what in the fuck did I just read? lol

 

[CharminUltra]

I trust Valve a lot more than Polygon's pie charts.

 

[Raylan Targaryen]

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

Outside of The Witcher, the only games GOG has are older than most PC gamers probably.

 

[Quadraphonic]

Steam/Valve has so many problems, but that article seems to be written by a "casual user" or someone who doesnt use Steam that much.

Heck. I am sure Jshackles or some members from SteamGAF can write an article that fits the situation far better than this.

Like why even talk about Memes? Or saying that people prefering Steam over Origin are hypocrites, even though Steam offers far more services/games than Origin.

The comparison to Origin was that EA and Steam were doing the exact same things.

Valve doesn't put their games on Origin because they want to make as much profit as possible.
Same thing for EA. Why give up a 30% share of a million+ selling title?

It's not about the size of the catalog, but EA's motivation being 'greed' when every other developer and publisher out there would probably do the same if it was possible.

 

[DeathoftheEndless]

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.

You can argue that workshop creators are morally entitled to a cut of the profits, but they are definitely not legally. Technically, Valve doesn't have to pay them anything.

 

[Usobuko]

I mean, Ubisoft + SE have about 14k employees. I don't think Valve has even 500. I know that their employees are some of the best paid in the industry, but damn.

That's just a conservative estimate considering many gaming companies run at 30+ Price/Earning ratio whereas I'm employing a 8-15ish for Valve.

Very rough estimate though but yes they are extremely big in figures.

 

[IrishNinja]

they can't possibly be less healthy for gaming than polygon

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

yeah, this is also true

 

[Chairmanchuck]

The comparison to Origin was that EA and Steam were doing the exact same things.

Valve doesn't put their games on Origin because they want to make as much profit as possible.
Same thing for EA. Why give up a 30% share of a million+ selling title?

It's not about the size of the catalog, but EA's motivation being 'greed' when every other developer and publisher out there would probably do the same if it was possible.

They are doing and they can and imo there is nothing bad about that. People just rather want to have EA titles on Steam because Steam has far more options and features than Origin. Origin didnt even have cloud saves when it launched. Of course people would rather have the games there.

 

[Retrofluxed]

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.

Ain't that that god damn truth. Steam may have its fair share of problems, but Steam saved us from the dark ages of PC gaming in the mid-aughts.

 

[trailmix16]

Steam is part of the new gig economy? What? How?

player activity/labor == slice of money for valve

 

[Intheflorsh]

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.

FYI: That was back in 2013, their refund policy changed in 2016.

https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/store/great-game-guarantee

Probably why Tim missed that.

 

[Nocturno999]

While there is a lot to criticize Valve for, Steam has given me a great service for over 10 years and countless games

and experiences that otherwise couldn't have experienced on other platforms for many reasons. And that's what matters at the end.

Steam is still miles ahead the competition and keeps improving.

 

[prag16]

I'm sure they are, but I'm not interested in installing multiple clients and juggling to specific ones for certain games. Hell, I won't even buy blizzard games because I am just not interested in having a client installed for 2-3 of them. There's already more games on steam then I will ever play so I just get no value out of multiple storefronts.

Now if someone developed some sort of universal client that would as seamlessly as possible combine all the distributors into a single client then that'd be another story. But I don't know if that's even possible.

I mean, you don't even have to launch the clients specifically. You can just have a folder of "games". Never really understood this complaint. So what if you have multiple clients. You don't have to keep them running. Do you refuse to buy EA games on PC on principal too, just because they're not on Steam?

You are part of the problem.

 

[Nzyme32]

I mean normally I'd agree that monopolies are a bad concept.
But I love Valve/STEAM.

When it works for you, for sure, but increasingly there are many areas that have gotten poorer due to Valve's structure and the inability to support it all simultaneously / have a tiny team take on entire systems and fail to keep an understanding of that system / changes as a business and their direction - a direct result of their structure. I wouldn't go as far as Polygon in their descriptive comparisons to Uber etc and much of their hyperbole

As far as the article goes, it's title is pathetic. No for profit company / corporation is "your friend" by definition, and if you fall into that ditch you should expect to find that out as ever. Steam / Valve do great and terrible things all the time right from the inception of Steam and "games journalism" rolls with the bait / perceived likelihood of clicks. It's rare to find good timely reporting these days, and particularly investigative journalism for gaming (in large part due to the nature of both industries).

The Steam Workshop changes for contributors is absolutely galling to me. I'd love to see the actual answers to why and the direction this is heading long term. As far as Steams services go, its the same focus on some and neglect of others with rapid changes causing recurring bugs and failures / neglect doing the same. Seems only now whatever internal things are going on are finally heading towards infrastructure changes to Steam. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen

While there is a lot to criticize Valve for, Steam has given me a great service for over 10 years and countless games

and experiences that otherwise couldn't have experienced on other platforms for many reasons. And that's what matters at the end.

Steam is still miles ahead the competition and keeps improving.

Yeah, even at this point with the many issues I have both with it at a service and features level, to the philosophical and communicative messes - Steam and Valve in general far surpasses everything else out there. Seems with Valve, all one can do is keep complaining till the make the changes. That's what I will continue to do with what few contacts I know of.

 

[Lanrutcon]

I mean, you don't even have to launch the clients specifically. You can just have a folder of "games". Never really understood this complaint. So what if you have multiple clients. You don't have to keep them running. Do you refuse to buy EA games on PC on principal too, just because they're not on Steam?

You are part of the problem.

Then I guess I'm also part of the "problem".

Steam or bust, devs. Steam or bust.

 

[Lucinice]

I agree that Valve is a really bad and exploitative company but wow this article said that in the smuggest most condescending way.

 

[RedSwirl]

The article makes some points but I think most of it is pretty hyperbolic.

I don't know about the workshop stuff because I never interacted with all that TF2 or DOTA 2 stuff. What I will say though in regards to that and Steam's content curation is that Valve does seem similar to Facebook and Uber in some respects. It's a relatively small company that has found itself in a position of tremendous power because it innovated in an important area when nobody else was looking. Like Facebook or Uber, Steam has kind taken a "let technology solve it," or "let the market solve it," or "let an algorithm solve it" approach to a lot of problems. I think that's become an addictive approach for tech companies and is probably somewhat libertarian, but it doesn't seem to work for everything. We're starting to see the drawbacks of Uber's lack of regulation, Facebook hasn't really faced up to how much power it wields in the dissemination of news and media. In the case of Valve the "let technology solve it" approach hasn't really worked for curating games (which it doesn't even want to do anymore) or customer service.

But let's look at how Valve got here compared to how Origin started up and where it is now. People accepted Steam eventually because it proved to be much better than how people were acquiring and installing PC games before. It offered and still offers more convenience than the alternatives. I've never been into the cult of personality surrounding Gabe but I at least understand that much. Origin certainly has a right to exist, but it doesn't have that much reason for existing other than EA keeping that 30% cut on its games. Origin works now and doesn't present me with any huge hassles, but there are almost no reasons to buy a non-EA game on Origin rather than Steam. Same with UPlay. Feature-wise Steam is simply a moving target that it seems EA and Ubisoft will never catch up with.

Other services have managed to carve out niches by doing very specific things better than Steam might do those specific things. The Blizzard app knows it exists only to distribute and manage Blizzard games, and it's good at that. That and Blizzard games are just popular enough to exist outside Steam. Itch has probably become the better place for experimentation and very small in-development games. Humble is actually where I buy most indie games now for the Steam keys and DRM-free copies, and even some non-indie games that only offer Steam keys because I personally feel better paying through Amazon. GOG is arguably better for indie games and certain other kinds of PC games, but has a limited selection both because big publishers want DRM and because the people running GOG seem to have very particular tastes. GOG feels more like a "PC gamer's PC game store" whereas Steam is trying to be for everyone.

 

[Sillverrr]

Steam is a convenient platform for patching my games, keeping them all in one place and obtaining some relative bargains. Nothing more. If I were playing favourites, I'd strictly support GOG Galaxy. CD Projekt has made all the right moves lately, whereas Valve does a piss-poor job of communicating insofar as I'm concerned. But again, different strokes for different folks.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

No corporation is your friend.

Quite right.

At best you hope their good outweighs their bad.

Outside of the Workshop contributor pay stuff, I think Valve's good far outweighs their bad. That's what matters, ultimately.

While there is a lot to criticize Valve for, Steam has given me a great service for over 10 years and countless games

and experiences that otherwise couldn't have experienced on other platforms for many reasons. And that's what matters at the end.

Steam is still miles ahead the competition and keeps improving.

this. If I have any complaints at all, they are relatively minor. I don't like neutered steam trading, I don't like the portion artists get for their work in game cosmetics. I can't complain about anything else, personally. That's a pretty short fuckin list.

 

[JaseC]

The comparison to Origin was that EA and Steam were doing the exact same things.

Valve doesn't put their games on Origin because they want to make as much profit as possible.
Same thing for EA. Why give up a 30% share of a million+ selling title?

It's not about the size of the catalog, but EA's motivation being 'greed' when every other developer and publisher out there would probably do the same if it was possible.

I'm not so sure that can be pinned on Valve considering:

- It did sell its games on EADM prior to the rebrand, despite Steam lacking some titles that were available on the former
- It continues to sell its games on select third-party stores
- One of those stores is Uplay

To be perfectly honest, I think EA made the decision to drop Valve's titles as it realised offering said games on Origin but refusing to sell its post-rebrand releases on Steam would be a very bad look.

 

[Rentahamster]

While I may agree philosophically with several points in the article, the reality is that Steam has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for my personal style of PC gaming. I'm not sure if I'm the exception or the norm, or what the landscape would be like without Steam.

 

[Seik]

Kotaku made the same article last week about Nintendo not being our friend. :lol

What's up with the news outlet telling their readers that corporations are not their friends? I mean, that's a no shit sherlock case.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

Steam is part of the new gig economy? What? How?

The article is quite poorly written and far too long. But the second half of the article (and the only part that should have actually been published had the editor been competent) makes a good case

They never actually justify the "since 2004" part, though. The actually bad things that Valve do that are pointed out by the article started much more recently

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Outside of The Witcher, the only games GOG has are older than most PC gamers probably.

That's not really true anymore.

They have a number of AAA games that are old but still from well within the past decade, like Mirror's Edge, Crysis, Metro, Darksiders, and Dead Space.

Then they have a lot of "AA" games like A Boy and his Blob, Trials in the Sky, De Blob, and TellTale's entire catalog.

And of course, they've got a bunch a bunch of indie games: Fez, SuperHot, Necrodancer, etc.

GoG still has a ways to go, but a lot of their more recent "gets" have impressed me. Telltale, Warner Brothers, and whoever-owns-THQ were a big deal.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

[Valve] did sell its games on EADM prior to the rebrand, despite EA not selling all of its own digital titles on Steam

They did? Do you mean, like, just stuff older than Half Life, or semi-new titles as well?

 

[Pizza]

Okay polygon y'all can make some serious analytical data charts so I'm about to stop what I'm doing and hear you guys out

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Kotaku made the same article last week about Nintendo not being our friend. :lol

What's up with the news outlet telling their readers that corporations are not their friends? I mean, that's a no shit sherlock case.

People could probably use the occasional reminder in the run up to E3, and besides that the general tenor of review threads proves that a substantial percentage of gamers across platforms have difficulty separating the business goals of game developers, publishers and platform holders from their own sense of identity, leading to noisy and defensive outbursts about haters and how this group of people have it out for their favorite game makers/sellers and by extension themselves.

It's a real problem! Too many people subscribe to the belief that corporations will have their backs and keep making them happy as long as they make sure nobody says 'the wrong' things about said corporations.

On the other hand, this column is a very poor example of how to shake people out of that mindset.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

they can't possibly be less healthy for gaming than polygon

Explain how Polygon are bad for the industry? They publish lots of bad articles (this one is not one of them, but it is unfocused and poorly written) but I fail to see how they actually hurt the industry

 

[frontovik]

I would never have delved into STEAM if it wasn't for other developers using Steamworks. I.e. Total War and Paradox games...

I appreciate Steam for its conveniences, Steam community and a relatively reliable client, but I have never regarded Valve as a friend or PC gaming's salvation. I'd still take it over uPlay, Origin, or Battle.Net any day.

That being said, Valve delving into shady accounting in Europe and Australia deserves a severe infraction.

 

[Scrawnton]

My only issue with valve is that after Portal 2 they more or less abandoned making the games that their fans loved and monetized the heck out of F2P games. I understand steam makes them tons of money, but would it really have hurt to use some of those billions in revenue to hire some new devs and fund some game development?

 

[Armaros]

It's amazing that Polygon could take something that should be discussed, Valve and Steam's dominance and the issues that it causes and yet ruin it with mass hyperbole and wierd use of nicknames and 'memes'.

 

[ThreePiMatt]

The value that Steam has provided over the past decade+ far outweighs the gripes listed in the article.

Valve's work in expanding the PC market through Steam is a significant factor in the rise of the indie game scene, not to mention making the PC a viable platform for Japanese developers.

The PC as a platform and market is FAR healthier and more vibrant now than it was before Steam.

 

[EatinOlives]

It's an incredibly cynical article that doesn't contribute much to the discussion except taking the absolute most negative of every one of Valve's development since its launch. And even then it's not a particularly compelling argument. From the get-go it peppers the text with flavor text like their derogatory "Good Guy Valve" nickname and unsubstantiated claims that Gabe Newell's transparency in the early days of the service were thinly-veiled ruses. There's little in terms of critical analysis. It's aggressive in ignoring and downplaying the wide array of appealing features that made the service as popular as it is today.

 

[Hello? This is Hailun!]

How?

Those companies are tech companies and problematic. So obviously Steam is the exact same thing!

 

[JaseC]

They did? Do you mean, like, just stuff older than Half Life, or semi-new titles as well?

Its then entire Source catalogue was available, IIRC (Half-Life 2 through L4D2).