The decline of the Steam games platform is inevitable, and there are already warning signs.

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    Yeah, no. Valve has all but ensured their continuing relevance with the Steam Deck alone. Coupled with their consumer-focused policies (like forcing companies to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat), they’re not going anywhere.

    This is just a Mac fanboi who’s salty that Mac support is poor, even though it’s Apple that has made their walled garden hard to work with.

    I do worry a little about future antitrust actions, because while I generally like Valve as they are, Gabe won’t be around forever. They have a giant influence in the market, and they don’t even have to try (they were one of the first, so it makes sense they’d have the most market share); it could be that the company I generally like starts actively being anticompetitive or starts donating to Nazis or something.

    But that is a problem for a future time, and there’s no denying that Valve has propelled Linux gaming into mainstream relevance. No matter what happens, I’ll always be grateful for that.

    • TheFogan@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      24 hours ago

      I do worry a little about future antitrust actions, because while I generally like Valve as they are, Gabe won’t be around forever. They have a giant influence in the market, and they don’t even have to try (they were one of the first, so it makes sense they’d have the most market share); it could be that the company I generally like starts actively being anticompetitive or starts donating to Nazis or something.

      Agreed, if there’s one potential weak point… it’s basically that valve is the 15 years ago google of gaming right now. Great support for open source and linux… mostly good policies (minus maybe their micro transaction and lack of cracking down on how say the CSGO skins feed an underage gambling industry).

      But yeah, effectively we still have the worse of positions that, one bad management choice, and we could all lose access to all the games we’ve purchased from them over the last decade or 2.