From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
Competition for the sake of competition isn’t intrinsically a good thing.
Seems to me, most of the people complaining about Steam are greedy devs who want to make more money off of their products.
For me, as a user, that’s not my concern. For me, as a user, it’s more important that I can play games without having to download different launchers just to make someone else richer.
GOG is probably the only legitimate competitor with Steam. They provide value to customers instead of just themselves or greedy devs.
A nice thing about GOG is that you can choose whether or not you use their launcher. You can use GOG Galaxy, and it will download game updates and sync saves. or you can just not use it; and just launch the games directly. Or you can put shortcuts to the gog games into steam and launch them from there. Or you can launch your steam games from galaxy if you like. … I appreciate that kind of stuff a lot, because although I think Steam does a good job, I’m very wary of lock-in and companies becoming too powerful.
(And of course, for real indie games, itch.io is the place to go.)
FTFY
Also, the only truly bad competition is subsidized competition. As long as it’s not surviving on some kind of grant or funding, instead of its actual market value, then it’s always a good thing as it keeps competitors on their toes.
That is looks like it’s supposed to point out something negative.
Convenience is always something to consider as a customer in literally any product. It’s most often the main driver between competitors and can make or brake a product.
So, yeah. Using another launcher that has 10% of the features and not a single upside while being incredibly inconvenient has not worked out. Fuck origin, uplay, and the likes.
Listen. Some of us have our life savings in our Steam library. If competition ever drives Steam bankrupt, we go down with the ship! We take Steam’s health personally and very seriously. Your mumbo jumbo about competition doesn’t factor into it.
That’s why you buy from GOG.
No one wants Steam bankrupt, they just want more than one videogame vendor on PC to be viable.
“Mumbo jumbo about competition” I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or are just legitimately a braindead moron.
There are exceptions to the notion that competition is good. If we attempt to map out all the exceptions, we will be left with mumbo jumbo. Economic libertarianism is the true death of the brain. Some monopolies are good and any threat to the monopoly is a threat to the consumer.
As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, the only bad competition is one that gets subsidized in order to survive. If they are operating on their own profit margins then they are definitionally “good competition.”
No, zero monopolies are good. If you can even name one that you personally believe to somehow be good then I can explain why you’re wrong.
At no point in time has a natural diversification of product sources has been bad for the consumer. The only exceptions to this relate back to point #1, the subsidized or otherwise “assisted” business model.
Tell me, does your childhood home have a lot of lead paint on the walls? We aren’t trying to take down Steam FFS, just provide alternatives that force them to stay competitive by giving better service to the consumer.
The fact that you think a second source for videogames is somehow going to threaten you personally just shows how much of a zombie you are. Gabe isn’t your lord and savior, he’s just another rich guy who has a monopoly on his corner of the market. Grow the fuck up.