Valve transformed the good will from HL into a fucking empire dominating pc gaming distribution,
I remember we all Fucking haaaated steam at first. Eating up the precious few mb of ram we had, requiring special switching to offline mode for our crappy dialup internet, and really only serving as the drm for halflife and counterstrike.
Yeah, I remember all of the vitriol we spewed at them when it felt like Steam was first being “shoved down our throats”.
But they really are a high-water mark for listening to your customers and acknowledging their feedback to produce positive change for your platform.
Now some 20 years later it really feels like most other interfaces don’t provide the level of service and usability that Steam does.
Any complaints and grievances are always valid about their business practices, the percentage cut that they take and all of the other things. You can’t however say that the platform hasn’t been a boon for PC gaming. Especially on Linux where proton has opened up a whole new world of accessibility especially for games that are too old to run with any sort of consistency on modern Microsoft OSs.
I honestly didn’t make a Steam account until they came to Linux, because that’s when I saw value in the platform. They didn’t even have Proton or anything, I just liked being able to find Linux-compatible games. When Proton came, I started spending a ton on the platform, and that’s around the time Humble Bundle started sucking (I used to pay way more than the minimum if it had good Linux bundles).
So I’m doing my part to reward Valve for investing in Linux.
Epic, GOG, etc could have won my business by doing what Valve did, but Epic does the opposite and GOG only gives lip service.
I remember we all Fucking haaaated steam at first. Eating up the precious few mb of ram we had, requiring special switching to offline mode for our crappy dialup internet, and really only serving as the drm for halflife and counterstrike.
Yeah, I remember all of the vitriol we spewed at them when it felt like Steam was first being “shoved down our throats”.
But they really are a high-water mark for listening to your customers and acknowledging their feedback to produce positive change for your platform.
Now some 20 years later it really feels like most other interfaces don’t provide the level of service and usability that Steam does.
Any complaints and grievances are always valid about their business practices, the percentage cut that they take and all of the other things. You can’t however say that the platform hasn’t been a boon for PC gaming. Especially on Linux where proton has opened up a whole new world of accessibility especially for games that are too old to run with any sort of consistency on modern Microsoft OSs.
It’s hard to be mad when they shove a load of that money to improve pc gaming and boost Linux compability .
I honestly didn’t make a Steam account until they came to Linux, because that’s when I saw value in the platform. They didn’t even have Proton or anything, I just liked being able to find Linux-compatible games. When Proton came, I started spending a ton on the platform, and that’s around the time Humble Bundle started sucking (I used to pay way more than the minimum if it had good Linux bundles).
So I’m doing my part to reward Valve for investing in Linux.
Epic, GOG, etc could have won my business by doing what Valve did, but Epic does the opposite and GOG only gives lip service.