Steam is still basically the only option AND they are actually helping Linux a lot with game compatibility. Altough, if I need games specifically on steam I’ll be buying the key from Greenmangaming (UK) or GamersGate (Sweden). If anybody has more alternatives feel free to let me know so I can add them to my list.
GOG sadly misses a majority of games atm so I just can’t replace steam with it yet.
I’m quite fond of Fanatical. They are based in the UK and also sometimes sell DRM free books/audiobooks
Ohh I’ve actually been on their website sometime. Good to know they’re UK based thanks!
Update:
What’s that?
My purchase on fanatical
Third party key market places are kinda iffy, and there have been numerous cases of the keys being offered on there having been bought with stolen credit cards, or otherwise generated in ways that aren’t quite above board.
I remember one interview with an indy dev in which they said they prefer people pirating, because chargebacks from stolen cards are actively costing them money.
For people who feel they need the entertainment games provide, but can’t afford current prices, I feel pirating games from conglomerates, and buying from smaller studios and indies is the most socially responsible way to do it, but I’m not your mum.
Edit: Huh, looks like greenmangaming gets their keys directly from the publishers. Didn’t know that was a thing. Guess I was a bit quick on the trigger there, should have checked first. Sorry about that.
G2A is probably the big example of Devs prefering you pirate instead of buying.
Only use G2A if you actively wish harm on the company making the game.
Don’t use G2A even if you wish harm on the company making the game, it’s still supporting scammers and thieves, just pirate the game.
See you already found the reason it is ok, but yeah what you are saying is completely right when talking about sites like G2A, Kinguin, etc where YOU can sell your keys as that opens the gates for illegal stuff
Hence I mentioned legit resellers (from the EU) that do support the publishers.
Huge plus that they aren’t publicly traded and forced to chase profits above all. Plus their employees are far and wide the best paid in the industry, and they never do mass lay offs.
This is a somewhat naive view when you consider Gabe’s multiple super-yachts.
The guy could be more charitable, but aside from that, what do you want him to do? If he lowers the cost of steams cut per purchase he’ll get in trouble for monopolizing the industry. Yeah, he’s too rich, but he got there without exploiting or hurting anyone. Even after he passes away, the company is already employee owned.
You’re missing the part where they make the vast majority of their money from the gambling, not from the cut they take from sales. They don’t have to run the gambling service. But they do because it’s a money faucet.
Two things: First, they very likely don’t make most of their money off of their loot box sales from the few games they own that have them. (CS, Dota 2, TF2).
Secondly, you’re just full of shit and making up that “fact”. As a private company, none of their stuff is completely public record, but using various trackers and estimates and sales numbers from game studios, Steam sells north of 700,000,000 games a year and makes a $billion or so from cs and tf2 stuff.
Since the average game sale amount is around $15; $15 X 700,000,000 = 10,500,000,000 ÷ valves cut of 30% = $3,150,000,000
Now not all studios pay that 30%. Some have lower deals based on volume and notoriety, but it’s still safe to assume that their game sales make over two billion a year. AKA well over their loot box money.
I like how when valve does it, it’s ‘gambling,’ but every other company out there it’s just ‘microtransactions’ and ‘monetization.’
Valve somehow gets 99% of the hate online for lootboxes, despite having one of the most transparent and fair implementations of them.
Like, have you people never seen a gacha? Half of them don’t even fucking publish the rates for what you can get, and make far more money than Valve does.
No, there are actual gambling sites for counter-strike items that are run by scammers who hire a youtuber, give them a huge (deliberate) win to entice kids to bet their parents wage on some stupid cosmetics’ slot machine.
No grey market key sellers, only legit.
The name GamersGate sounds like it didn’t any issues at all /s
Yeahhh I don’t know who thought that was a good name hahaha
Don’t know if you’re serious but the store is way older than that similar-sounding thing
This is the oldest “gate” scandal I can think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal but generally adding -gate after something is used for a scandalous situation. Although it makes 0.0% sense, thats just how culture picked it up. Thats how the gamergate scandal became the name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign))
Wait what exactly is the purpose of buying a steam key from a third party? And how is that profitable and not tos breaking?
Keys can be cheaper when there isn’t any ongoing steam sales. Some website are shady and should be avoided but some are 100% legit. Any reseller listed on isthereanydeal is safe to use, they get their keys directly from publishers.
Good question! Real resellers (so NOT g2a, etc) get their keys from publishers directly (so they pay for them). The publishers get these keys from steam for free and by buying them from a reseller steam takes 0% of the money. So by using an EU reseller more money stays here.
You are still fucked then if Steam decides to take out a game you purchased. Again the whole “you’re not buying a product but a license for the product” debacle. Other than not giving Steam any money, this doesn’t change much? Could just pirate games instead.
I never said I cared about that in the first place. But even after games are removed from Steam they still allow you to download it whenever. Its only really an issue should Gabe choose a replacement for him that isn’t as pro gamers as he is.
This community is about buying european, not complaining about having DRM.
Steam is still basically the only option
When cornered people finally admit that steam is a small monopoly
Steam isn’t a monopoly, there are other choices but they just suck. Epic games in terms of game availability already replaces a good 80% of my active library, itch, ubisoft, ea, etc also exist but are just so bad as well.
Steam is basically the only option… That cares about gamers and actually provides a good service.
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You don’t really have to rely on any company to play your games
I think Steam might be the only private company in this.
Really says a lot.
It does.
Private companies are - often - not driven by pure greed. The people work hard for their company to be successful and they are much less likely to fuck it all over with a stupid move.
Public companies, however, are controlled by a bunch of money motivated monkeys that couldn’t give a rats ass about a company’s future. They’ll bleed it all dry and go to the next company.
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Ye every private business hates them gays and trans people and wants to see them dead.
Go outside, touch some grass you lunatic.
Dude, Steam is selling games you don’t own. How greedy is that?
least socialist lemmy user
What, like ebay and amazon selling stuff they don’t own? They all get a commission for marketing, not all of the money.
Like most game platforms do, except Valve actually looks after their customers.
The gambling problem and grey market they created with their marketplace and their Counter Strike crates is an issue.
I never understood how that is valves problem tbh. That’s like being mad at football players for sports gambling. The second you have a somewhat open market, some people will abuse it.
Also, what’s valve supposed to do? They bab the trade bots if they can find them, they have sued the operators of those portals in the past - so what do you realistically expect from them now? Completely close the market just so some people can’t gamble anymore?
argumentum ad populum, it’s a thing, look it up
Digital companies sell digital goods and services. Shocker :o
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Fuck them too.
You are allowed to say Fuck on the Internet. Why are you following the self-censorship rules for Instagram and other social networks if you are making a joke about them?
Looks like it was baked into the image template they used
No excuse. Build it from scratch again. Build it better.
We can rebuild him. We have the technology
I realised that those who censor themselves on the Internet, grew up on the Internet when YouTube started demonitising profanities and thus picked up the habit.
We are getting old.
youtube was good before googol bought it, now it is crap.
Daily dose of getting old: that buyout was like 20 years ago
The buyout was less than a year into it existing
Very few actually remember pre-google youtube
I sorta remember it being bought but I can’t say I actually recall what it was like pre-google. We had dialup at the time, and just the one family computer, so I didn’t really watch a lot of videos
I just reposted it from elsewhere, no need to read too much about it
[ removed from lemmy ]
You are even allowed to say fuck on the radio and TV in some countries (like The Netherlands)
Costco is cool too! They have local products.
Most important of all they compensate their employees like they are actual humans.
And, they told the ignorant people to go fuck themselves in regards to stopping their DEI efforts.
Honestly, that’s really smart. It shows which businesses are playing the long game and which ones aren’t.
When democrats are back in office and businesses start re-instating DEI, Costco can always say they never got rid of them.
Also, probably ones that are more global and less willing to be pushed around by a dumb ass and his followers. I bet such companies have better quarters for a while too after that.
Keep that DEI and I will keep shopping!
And their management bust unions like their lives depend on it.
Costco can be cool all they want once the federal government of the USA tells them to fuck over Canadians they will. It’s a very dangerous game to rely heavily on American companies in Canada right now. No matter how ethical they might be. The trade war has already begun and the USA will use any lever available when the time comes to annex.
The issue isn’t the federal government tells them to fuck over Canadians (or anyone else). It’s that they don’t tell them anything. They just make Canadian goods cost more in the US. They don’t have a choice. Most businesses would rather the cost stay the same, but we have a dumb ass president who’s fucking us all over for no good reason.
for no good reason
Well, the reason is to destabilize the west because Putin wants a new Soviet Union
It’s certainly not a good reason. But it’s not just “dumb trump pulling levers he doesn’t understand.” It’s “dumb Trump pulling the levers he’s told to. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing, but those planning the lever pulls do”
I sometimes feel an anxiety when pondering what will happen when daddy Gabe isn’t here to keep the wolves at bay.
gabe is a very smart person, if he doesnt have a post death plan for steam i would be immensely surprised.
The fact he is doing research on BCIs, I like to imagine his plan is digitizing himself so he can live forever on the net.
All hail the immortal cyber-lord Gaben.
Basically what Cave Johnson did, indirectly.
maybe portal was just a story about valve, the entire time.
The Beta Tester position at Valve is a high-turnaround job just because of all the accidental deaths.
Cave Johnson: “Gamers are all about immersion, and have asked us to make a peripheral device that lets them feel the game even more. Our engineers just designed a monitor with a gun in it that shoots the player when they are shot in game. The legal department tells me this isn’t technically legal.”
lmao
that would be pretty based, he will become immortalized as a living meme, forever.
Honestly, I’ve been weaning myself off Steam for awhile now. It’s great what they did to make PC gaming more accessible, but I also feel like Steam itself is an unnecessary dependency for most video games.
There should be protocols that games can implement to integrate with launchers and organize playing online.
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That’s my fear too , whoever gets their hand on valve will decide the future of pc gaming kinda , I just hope it won’t get sold to ea , riot , tencent or whatever
Depends on who inherents his shares
me: steam is terrible; it’s just drm with a nice bow on top
steam: steam visual novel fest starts now
me: i love steam stuffs more items on my wishlist
(for real tho itch.io and gog are much better use them - and download the actual offline installers from gog don’t use galaxy)
GOG Galaxy isn’t bad to use. It has cloud saves, and update checking - which is useful for some people. And games installed using the offline installers still show up in galaxy (and can be updated etc.) In fact, you can download the offline installers from the Galaxy app itself if you want to.
itch.io and gog
would switch tbh but it would need to have steam style proton integration first
heroic games launcher integrates a pretty solid proton base. Lutris also works but i find it a bit too fiddly for me.
HGL works great though, also provides native integration with EGL and GOG, which is nice.
Lutris gives you that.
It is not one click… I tried it a few years back. Ended with just going with steam only and abondrd all the other trash stores like ea etc
@cupcakezealot wasn’t Itch also American?
yeah it wasn’t necessarily an alternative; i was just saying they’re better because they tend to support indie devs and/or are more drm free than steam. i didn’t know of a purely non american one that i use :(
@cupcakezealot I like that they support indie creators as well, but Valve also did wonders in regard to gaming on Linux in general. I personally support both, as long as they are not supportive in any way to the current Trump administration.
oh for sure it wasn’t a dismissal of steam (which I have a large library and a steam deck) and more of a use itch.io and gog first of possible
@cupcakezealot oh, I see
Apparently GOG is Polish. DRM free, too; the one time I used it it literally just gave me the raw game files, like back in the day.
i didn’t know they were polish but yup! for most games you can go into your account and download all the manuals and exes/pkgs for any game you own!
Heck, I just cut out the middleman and go straight to torrenting.
Wish I had thought to do this sooner. I would’ve saved a lot of money that really just ended up in the hands of landlords.
Steam may be a very successful business, but they’re still the seed crystal for a whole ecosystem of gambling that preys on addicts and children with the whole CSGO loot box thing. Take a wild guess what forms of addiction have the highest suicide rates?
Fuck Valve. Fuck all Corps. No business has ever nor can ever, genuinely give a shit about anything other than increasing profit.
On the other hand, Valve wishing to seek an alternative to Microsoft’s poor decision[1] making has been a great boon to the Linux community. Valve was also there at the start of Vulkan[2]. But is “funny” that Gabe Newell started off as a Microsoft employee, in fact the one that led the team that ported Doom to Windows with Doom95 and in turn also helped launch Windows (95) as the gaming OS for decades to come.
As much as I distrust and hate corporations, Valve isn’t in it for the shareholders, you can’t buy Valve stocks and that means they at least have a bit more soul than a lot of other corporations - even though they are profit seeking.
What I don’t like about them is how they sell you a service, not an actual game. You technically buy a lifelong lease on each game, never ownership. Your shit can be gone in minutes with nothing to prove for it, except for bank statements saying Valve took your money.
Which is why I’ll always buy on GOG[3] if possible. DRM free and European.
Does everyone just keep glossing over the ‘they enable the abuse of addicts and children” part?
I’m not saying I disagree with your other points I’m just confused.
Because it’s a weak-ass point, quite simply. Capitalism itself does that shit, not gonna knock Valve for something every game company does, if we play that game with everyone it gets exhausting
“Wont SOMEBODY think of the children?” Is literally a Simpsons meme
Every game company does not operate a gambling system that is the center for a literal whole ecosystem of predatory shady businesses. But that was a halfway decent try at a whataboutism argument /s.
Yes that quote is at the heart of a Simpsons episode. And it’s about people using moral panic crusades as a means of enacting draconian measures of control based on a fear based in falsehood. Valve demonstrably engages in the practices I mentioned so I think your point kind of falls completely on its face. I am glad to see you recognize capitalism as inherently exploitative though.
Every game company does not operate a gambling system that is the center for a literal whole ecosystem of predatory shady businesses.
Making a more specific point after the fact doesn’t change the original point.
whataboutism
So busy trying to sound smart you proved you weren’t worth engaging with
This reads like you took in all the words I wrote and then responded to them without actually understanding or comprehending any of the content.
Linux is more important to them than child abuse.
😂
[text you want to display](URL)I was playing around with things, noticed that at least my instance supported citation of sources. I normally do [](). But now I know that not every instance supports if you couldn't see it.
Valve is a privately owned company.
Publicly owned companies want more prodit because well we want out interest and return on stocks and a stable pension etc as well right? That all pushes publicly owned companies to get more and more profit every year.
No business?
I work as a software developer for a small business and they do care about us and not just profits.
Recently we were all given a pay rise and a reduction in hours as they can afford to support that.
Correct, no business. That same business will lay you off in a heartbeat if they can. Businesses do not care about you.
Also, not true in my case.
They do care and have shown on numerous occasions my supporting me when I have needed it and instilling in us that we come first and the business is secondary.
Like the owners literally do the same work as us and are far more accommodating than they have to be for us.
How else would you get a pay rise and a reduction in hours, able to work from home when having car trouble, not having a good mental health day fine take it off, etc. We also don’t have any targets or KPIs and don’t actively seek new work as our clients are loyal.
I cede my point. I knew I was laid off for being a piece of shit, I just knew it.
Sorry, I’m not doing great these days.
I’m not saying you’re a piece of shit, just that there are a few good employers out there. I also realise I am lucky.
Nah you’re good sorry wasn’t implying that.
What a myopic view of the world.
Anyone can start a business and treat their employees and customers fairly. It’s just that in our Stockholm Syndrome Society, the businesses who abuse us are the most successful.
No that’s what Angelosaxton (American) companies are about.
Most privately owned companies don’t care about making as much profit as possible. They want a healthy company that can pay them their salary and save up money for their pension.
Sounds like a systemic issue…
*glances at capitalism" 👀
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Depends if the business it publicly owned.
I think valve are mostly fair to consumers. The money they make from gamers is doing some good in the linux sphere.
I thought it was pretty well known Valve is privately owned.
They make money selling off of gamers by selling games. They take advantage of and enable systemic abuse of, I’ll say it again, addicts and children. I’m not saying they aren’t also fair to their customers in most of their dealings and that they aren’t doing good things for the Linux ecosystem. But we’re also talking way more money than I bet you’re thinking. Gabe’s uber rich person kink is super-yachts. Multiple, super-yachts. You can appear and behave with decency and still contribute to the detriment of society at the same time.
Get lawmakers to make a law about it and properly work it out. Valve is banning loot boxes even for people who are legally allowed to gamble.
The issue is that it is hard to legally define whaf a lootbox is and stop it without stopping things like TCG drafts and RGB loot from bosses or enemies on games.
I agree with this, but you have to admit that if all corps were like steam it would be a lot better.
Hey both things can be true. I feel like at this point though the only reason they haven’t stopped the whole gambling thing is because it’s basically a money faucet and in a monetary economy who’d ever turn off a money faucet? But that’s the rub, greed is inherently incentivized.
I’m gonna add that the ceo is a bilionare who owns an entire fleet of mega yacths
https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php
The crates where fine in TF2 …. Before CSGO got made, but due to CSGO and other games it’s an issue.
But while you consider it gambling, most laws don’t. It’s currently only banned in NL and BE to open lootboxes on Steam and in NL we have legal online gambling for 18+, but Valve won’t gives you access to the lootboxes.
The point is that one laws need to be more clear about what is gambling and what isn’t without ruining anything that uses randomizers and/or loot and there needs to be a better way to validate people’s age without hurting their privacy.
I wouldn’t have started even dual booting Linux if it wasn’t for Steam after being pleasantly surprised with my Steam Deck played most of my Steam library. It’s the primary why I intend to get AMD gpu next time around for the better driver support, but that won’t be for a few years.
Yep, if you want a reason why Valve are “less evil” than other companies, one big thing to point to is the huge investment they’ve made into the Linux ecosystem. Even though it’s in their own interests (Microsoft locking out steam would cripple their income), we can see with Epic suing Google/Apple that there are other, shittier ways that they could have attempted the same thing. The investment they’ve made into Linux, Proton, KDE etc benefit everyone and can’t be taken away on a whim.
I’m just happy to see a meme template from Half Baked.
Chappelle’s old stuff is fire
Have you ever looked at memes on weed?
The man who delivered that line is now my generation’s Walter Cronkite
Ha, right! Also, oy, I’m old
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You can just not buy the games that have stuff like Denuvo etc. If you keep buying them, of course they’ll keep including the DRM etc.
Steam is the storefront, and they have plenty of games you can buy without that crap.
And there’s always torrenting. Denuvo doesn’t actually stop games from being cracked.
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Steam also tells you beforehand, now
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Why not just turn on offline mode on the steam deck? Its easier than blocking it from the internet…
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I barely use Steam to be honest. Gosh, I need to get off Windows…
TBH operating systems are like tools, and if windows isn’t too intrusive and neutered, it can be OK.
I use Windows for gaming/media, for performance reasons, and (CachyOS) Linux for GPU compute stuff, dev work, office, pretty much anything else.
Well, yeah, I get that… Still, there’s quite a bit about Windows that annoys me, and there’s really nothing I do on Windows that Linux can’t handle. I’ve already looked it up, and the little gaming I do does work pretty well on Linux too, reportedly.
So I find myself thinking… Why am I on Windows? I could be on Linux and ditch Microsoft. It’s just some anxiety, fear that things’ll break. At the end of the day, I have more confidence that, if something goes wrong, I can fix it in Windows, but may not be able to fix it in Linux. Hope I’m making sense here.
Again, you can always dual boot, just in case.
What I do is dual boot and “share” a partition between them, so if windows or Linux breaks I can just swap to the other, no problemo.
Fair. I’ll try that :D
As somebody who really recently migrated to linux, shit will ‘break’ and part of the fun is scouring wikis and random forums to get things working and the absolute rush that comes when you figure something out
Look, I enjoy fun with computers as much as the next guy, but if I need to get something done I don’t want to go scouring… If I need to get in a meeting and the audio is fucked or the bluetooth broke or something, that’s a big problem…
lol, ya that’s totally fair, bluetooth for me so far has been total fuckery, this is my personal pc not my work one.
How Newell’s latest yacht? They still allow gambling in CS? Cool cool, nothing to see here.
Gaben is pretty chill, ngl
I never gamed, so…
- Fuck gambling
- Fuck walled gardens
- Fuck billionaires (nobody needs that much dough)
- Fuck Valve/Steam (it’s easy for me to say)
Steam isn’t perfect and I sure as shit won’t be the one defending a corporation, and this isn’t a good excuse at ALL, but if you’ve never gamed you wouldn’t believe how much worse it is on the other side (GOG being the only exception).
And as far as corpo rats go, at least Valve employees own 49% of the company.
Pretty much.
