I'm very scared about the future though. What happens when Gabe is gone? The entire PC Gaming industry is essentially locked in to a single platform. If Steam decided to charge $10/mo people have so much invested into their libraries they would likely do it. What about $20 or $30 per month?

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

> 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 :)