I see 2 main points against steam in this comment section.
Steam is doing price fixing for games: False, this accusation came from Epic Games CEO, but the actual steam policy only blocks the selling of steam keys for a lower price, not the game itself.
Steam is a monopoly and monopolies are bad: I agree that monopolies are bad, but in my opinion only if they take action to harm the user and the market. From my knowledge steam is pretty known as being pro customer and haven’t taken any monopolistic actions to block other stores from growing.
The reason why the games are not usually cheaper on other platforms is because publishers practice standard prices, so the game publishers take the extra profits from a lower store cut.
I am not trying to be a fanboy, I am just trying to look objectively at the facts, if someone can prove me wrong, I am willing to change my mind.
The other, less factual observation to make is: With the wealth of frivolous lawsuits against Valve in the past months, as well as pushes against Linux for age verification, it seems very likely that there is a well-funded group conducting lawfare to de-value the company. Whether this is simple retaliation for winning a case against a patent troll, or a long-term strategy to find a way to turn the company public and aggressively take it over, I can only guess.
Other community moderators have reported influxes of bot accounts, and it’d be naive in the age of AI to claim that all forum participants are human. Given the funding behind the attacks on Valve, I’d conclude it’s entirely possible that some proportion (certainly not all) of the accounts responding on the topic of Valve are either paid astroturfers, or complete bot accounts seeking to generate negativity towards them.
I see 2 main points against steam in this comment section.
Steam is doing price fixing for games: False, this accusation came from Epic Games CEO, but the actual steam policy only blocks the selling of steam keys for a lower price, not the game itself.
Steam is a monopoly and monopolies are bad: I agree that monopolies are bad, but in my opinion only if they take action to harm the user and the market. From my knowledge steam is pretty known as being pro customer and haven’t taken any monopolistic actions to block other stores from growing.
The reason why the games are not usually cheaper on other platforms is because publishers practice standard prices, so the game publishers take the extra profits from a lower store cut.
I am not trying to be a fanboy, I am just trying to look objectively at the facts, if someone can prove me wrong, I am willing to change my mind.
The other, less factual observation to make is: With the wealth of frivolous lawsuits against Valve in the past months, as well as pushes against Linux for age verification, it seems very likely that there is a well-funded group conducting lawfare to de-value the company. Whether this is simple retaliation for winning a case against a patent troll, or a long-term strategy to find a way to turn the company public and aggressively take it over, I can only guess.
Other community moderators have reported influxes of bot accounts, and it’d be naive in the age of AI to claim that all forum participants are human. Given the funding behind the attacks on Valve, I’d conclude it’s entirely possible that some proportion (certainly not all) of the accounts responding on the topic of Valve are either paid astroturfers, or complete bot accounts seeking to generate negativity towards them.