> I'm not sure why Steam always seems to be exempt from the "perils of digital ownership" arguments

Because they have been consistently good citizens for more than 2 decades. They built a reputation. Something other companies are eager to piss away at the first opportunity to sell out or squeeze their customers.

It’s not surprising that Valve is successful and trusted with this approach. What is surprising is that it is apparently so incredibly hard for other companies to understand this very simple fact.

1. Build a good product.

2. Consistently act in good faith.

3. Profit.

> I'm not sure why Steam always seems to be exempt from the "perils of digital ownership" arguments

They're not, really, but they've given us little reason to distrust them.

I'm also fairly confident there would be some fun legal stuff going on if Steam tried that. People have thousands - tens of thousands - of dollars worth of stuff on Steam. That isn't really the same as, say, having to watch ads even after paying for a subscription.

I’d just quietly turn to GoG and download all of my games just in case. But anyway I’m no longer that interested in games now. Reality is more challenging and fun.

At that point I'd feel entitled to keep the games I bought by pirating them.

Microsoft/xBox are waiting to buy Valve.

People would go back to piracy.

Exactly as that famous quote says, currently Steam is the better product, but if Valve would go rogue, that could change easily.

> If Steam decided to charge $10/mo

If you think about games already purchased I suspect that would be illegal in many parts of the world.

I’ve already received 95% of the value from the game library I have on Steam.

Worst case, if I lose access to all of them, whether by choice or by force (they go under), there are other options of obtaining (most of) the same games, and that’s even if I’m interested in playing them again.

Most of the games I really care about, I probably already have on other platforms anyway, in addition to or instead of Steam.

It's not exempt. I don't trust Steam long term and so don't spend any significant money on it. I only ever buy cheap games for like $8 or less, where I know I'll get that much worth of gameplay in a short time frame and it won't bother me if the platform ever later enshittifies.

Gabe says that the platform will fail-open if ever necessary, that it would revert to offline DRMless functionality. I believe that he has that intention, but the realities of operating from receivership or assimilation by Microsoft would likely be very different.

the same as always happens :)

Yet for some reason, people still use Steam as a “gotcha” to justify why Apple’s terms are fair.

But as you’ve hinted at, Steam is very different from the iOS App Store because it is competing organically with other app stores on Windows. Steam does not control Windows or the hardware, so it cannot “force” itself to be the only option to download games on Windows.

And even when it does have full control over the platform and HW (Steam Deck), it’s just a light wrapper around a standard Linux distro (Arch).

Steam is currently being sued by Wolfire for being anti-competitive by allegedly having a "platform most-favored-nations" clause. Preventing games on other platforms from being priced lower.

According to the developer:

> [Valve] would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.

> I believe that other developers who charged lower prices on other stores have been contacted by Valve, telling them that their games will be removed from Steam if they did not raise their prices on competing stores.

https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-cla...

I would note that they do provide quite an immense amount of value to developers. Achievements, transferable inventory system, multi-player (steam networking), among other things. The 30% cut still feels high, especially since most games can't or won't take advantage of every single service Steam provides, but I do think they provide quite a bit of developer value that needs to be factored in.

Steam isn't the right place to sell a game that does 1M in total lifetime sales. Because like you said, it won't hit any recommendations and they'll take a huge cut.

This is like complaining that AMC won't screen your student film. You're playing in a very niche space and the key is to keep costs under control so you can actually make money.

This math is missing a step: $200k went to your publisher who already gave you the $200k, so really you got about $394k total (before your taxes).

And it's worth remembering that your publisher got $194k ... I'm not sure if this publishing arrangement makes sense for the publisher ($200k risk for not much more reward?) or for you (30% of your net income from the game, after valve's 30%) (I'm not in the industry so honestly I just don't know)

> Second, Steam does not provide your game any marketing (algorithmic visibility) unless it's already successfully marketed outside of Steam (marketing is not free), and again later once it hits a certain number of sales.

Oh, it's safe to say Steam acts as a big multiplier on whatever attention you manage to scrounge up. Not that this is ideal.

I think there's a lot of weirdness if you try to answer "what is the PC gaming platform?" and how Valve or anyone else fits into it, and because it's PC a lot of answers can be true simultaneously, and many different users want/expect different things.

Is it processor architecture? Is it the OS? Is it the store and whatever facilities they provide? Is it the mode of physical interaction with the device (desk, couch+TV, etc)? Is it being able to assemble any random collection of hardware and expecting it to work? Does that discount set builds? Is it mandatory that the user is free to screw around with the software any way they please or can you lock stuff down?

At least on the commerce side, it's been the case since steam was opened up to third parties that they were the gatekeeper for success unless you were already huge (and now very few companies want to go it alone). Going back to Introversion's Darwinia they were just scraping by until they got on steam, developers have long been complaining that the varied methods Valve has used to get on the store (manual review, greenlight, etc) showed the vast majority of gamers only purchase through it or that you'll get a large wave of new business when you release on it. Now it seems like a 'tragedy of the commons' situation unless you've got your own marketing or it's a hobby project.

It seems like you've now got to do mental gymnastics to say Valve doesn't own the PC gaming platform

The gambling is the only thing I think you can reasonably attack them for. They didn't create microtransactions, those had already been figured out in Korea. The DRM was necessary for Steam to be palatable to publishers (and it's always been more of a pro-forma thing than a real attempt at DRM like Denuvo), and a world without Steam would absolutely have seen per-publisher e-shops that would also have DRM. Tying game installation to a game client... again, that was a 'when' not an 'if', and they weren't even the first. If I recall, you had to install a client to install Wild Tangent games. The client was also, arguably, malware.

Valve did not do anything for Always-on DRM other than allowing it to exist on platform. On Steam itself DRM barely exists.

> Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back?

Absurd expectations.

> Assuming the ROI is positive what exactly is holding them back?

The Google problem where every project that is not Search has a much worse ROI.

That’s what they did for CS:GO, developed by Hidden Path.

They did try that, Episode 4 was being developed by Arkane. Unfortunately 4 comes after 3 which never happened.

They want it to be good? Throwing it at a third party sounds like a good way to get a meh game and then have to release it since you've already spent X$ on it.