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.
Okay. He's definitely not talking to me. Or to any of my PC-gaming friends. So, bad start.
"Valve is not your friend." This is true. They're a business running a store. Their policies are generally good for consumers and the frequent sales and discount amounts make PC gaming a viable, long-term investment in the hobby. But they're not my friend.
"Steam is not healthy for gaming." Jesus I hope the rest of the argument is better than the opening paragraph.
Good Guy Valve worked hard to make us believe that willingly installing surveillance and control software onto our computers was a morally benevolent, perhaps even righteous act — and we swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
Now there's a pretty serious allegation, he surely isn't referring to things like auto-updater, steamworks, customized store recommendations and VAC as 'surveillance and control software,' right?
Because that would be incredibly stupid. And surely he's not insinuating that there was zero resistance to the very idea of requiring steam to run half life 2, because there absolutely was
a lot of resistance to it.
This article is written from the point of view that the PC Gaming Community is completely blinded by satisfaction with the platform to some fairly common criticisms of their business practices, and that might be true. I wouldn't expect the majority to know about or care about how they've been increasingly stiffing creators of Dota 2 items, or the sludgy uncertainty, inconsistent quality and awful signal/noise ratio in the Early Access section, or how their client is in desperate need of a renewal, etc. But the tone of the article is just a bit too smug, taking time to explain how unfair we all were to EA Origin (while ignoring the reasons EA didn't have anywhere near the good will Valve had) and overselling the nefariousness of what is a very common viral marketing vector for Steam Sale promotion. It's just unconvincing when fully 2/3rds of the column are 'look at that bitch over there eating crackers like she owns the place,' burying legitimate grievances like the Steam Workshop mess and their stubbornness with granting consumers the right of first sale in all the hand-wringing about relatively inoffensive things like Steam's DRM.