Sure, here are my small list personal list of gripes, mostly minor except the first one.
Their continued stance on loot boxes and enabling of gambling.
They did try to do a paid mod system back in the day and got shutdown by gamers pretty quick.
Their initial discontinuation of batteries and LCD screens for their steam deck after only four years.
Their continued stance that they are selling revokable, non-transferable licenses and not games that you own.
Steam’s a great company and overall very pro-consumer company in my opinion, more so than most of the other companies in the PC gaming realm but I’ll criticize Steam when I see something I believe is anti-consumer regardless of my like for them because end of they day they’re still just a corporation that prioritizes profits over people and it’s just one death away from being enshitified like the rest of them.
I disagree. They’re are a multi billion dollar company that is the defacto/largest distributor, they’ve got the clout to push for effective change and they’ve been vocally against the secondary market or transfers, including on death.
Also you said it yourself, they could easily do this for the games they publish and yet here we are.
I do appreciate they keep delisted games around at least.
If they tried to change the terms, the companies would definitely simply leave.
Personally, I don’t care. I find it weird people want to somehow have an account after death. I just treat it like a library that is there for me and the money saved vs any other way plus the convenience is huge. Its not any different than paying for a round of golf or 10 frames of bowling. Except I can play as many rounds as I want for the same price.
I watch all the other stores requiring some kind of payment for what valve provides for free. Even less than what valve provides for free.
I save so much money compared to anywhere else that as long as I die before valve (maybe thats the bigger issue), it is money well spent. My kids dont want my account they have their own.
Yeah, it’s honestly very sad to see people defend these gaming corporations blindly, yes, including Steam, when they’re doing anti-consumer things.
I’ll take the bait… What anti-consumer stuff is Valve doing?
Sure, here are my small list personal list of gripes, mostly minor except the first one.
Steam’s a great company and overall very pro-consumer company in my opinion, more so than most of the other companies in the PC gaming realm but I’ll criticize Steam when I see something I believe is anti-consumer regardless of my like for them because end of they day they’re still just a corporation that prioritizes profits over people and it’s just one death away from being enshitified like the rest of them.
That have zero choice on the licensing at least for games they dont publish.
On the other hand they have kept installers for me long after the publisher has pulled their product.
I disagree. They’re are a multi billion dollar company that is the defacto/largest distributor, they’ve got the clout to push for effective change and they’ve been vocally against the secondary market or transfers, including on death.
Also you said it yourself, they could easily do this for the games they publish and yet here we are.
I do appreciate they keep delisted games around at least.
If they tried to change the terms, the companies would definitely simply leave.
Personally, I don’t care. I find it weird people want to somehow have an account after death. I just treat it like a library that is there for me and the money saved vs any other way plus the convenience is huge. Its not any different than paying for a round of golf or 10 frames of bowling. Except I can play as many rounds as I want for the same price.
I watch all the other stores requiring some kind of payment for what valve provides for free. Even less than what valve provides for free.
I save so much money compared to anywhere else that as long as I die before valve (maybe thats the bigger issue), it is money well spent. My kids dont want my account they have their own.
Let’s not forget they’ve been emulating amazons efforts to drive prices up across the market
They’re doing also lots of pro consumer things
Whereas, I’d argue Nintendo is almost entirely anti consumer. They didn’t even fix their joycons and recall them