Something I’ve noticed in this community is that whenever I criticize Steam, or point out something I don’t like about the platform, I tend to get a ton of downvotes.
And honestly, I’m just curious why.
This is a piracy-oriented community, so I find it kinda interesting that Steam seems to have such a strong positive reputation here. I’m not saying people shouldn’t like Steam, obviously everyone has their own reasons for using it. Steam is convenient, has huge sales, supports Linux, has a massive library of games, etc. I completely get why people use it.
I’m just wondering where the line is for people.
For example, do you like Steam despite the DRM because the convenience outweighs the negatives? Do you see Steam as fundamentally different from other forms of DRM? Do you consider Valve one of the “good guys” in the industry? Or do you simply see Steam as a convenient storefront and don’t really think much about the DRM side of it?
Or maybe you actually agree with some of the criticism of Steam, but just think it’s being exaggerated.
For me personally, I don’t use Steam because I don’t really like having my games tied to an account and a platform. I’d rather have the actual files, be able to back them up, move them around, mod them and know that I still have them years later. That’s basically what I was getting at in that video I made about Steam as well.
But I’m not trying to start another “Steam bad!” argument here. I’m genuinely curious because sometimes the reaction seems surprisingly pro-Steam considering the nature of this community.
So what is it about Steam that you guys actually appreciate?
So, I’m going to say what I saw specifically in these years. I’m arguing in a more nuanced approach to valve.
For windows compatibility, my opinion is that in the late 2010s (Wine is the overall GOAT, but I’m talking about recent history), the main driver of linux gaming was dxvk, there was gallium for directx 9 but… It was not that good. Dxvk changed the game, the moment I bought a GT 1030 and ran GTA IV on linux (like this guy did 6 years ago), I was impressed, holy shit. Vulkan is low level enough that it can be an “easy” translation layer for any graphics API.
Now we have d9vk, d7vk, vkd3d, etc, all based on that idea.
Mono did this for all .net framework programs (or CLR based programs, if I’m remembering correctly). Gecko did this to Internet Explorer, etc.
Then came Valve and integrated them all in a package called proton, then came the Steam Deck, a console on a muted Linux distro.
To me, Valve absorbed the glory that came from dxvk. They did a good thing by integrating it all and paying the devs, which is a good thing, but at the end, people forgot what doitsujin did. Now it seems that they did some shady stuff to waydroid too…
I’m not kidding, that guy (dxvk creator) deserves all the respect in the world.
And then there is the gambling, Valve took CS:GO, Dota 2 and TF2 and turned them into polymarket. That’s a big no no. They improved the early lootbox and item market mechanics (in their favour) to what it is today.
They helped enshittify gaming, they absorbed the attribution (even if helping, because let’s get real, they only built the bundle), but they sold a Linux console and helped pay some of the devs involved.
Edit: wording