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The most promising Disco Elysium successor studio says workers must unite to topple Valve's 'digital fiefdom' of Steam (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (21 children)

Right on. I enjoy steam and I find Valve are mostly responsible gatekeepers, but at the end of the day, they’re still a gatekeeper

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Are they gatekeepers though? It's not like they own Windows or Linux and stop you from using any other store. Just having the biggest audience doesn't make them gatekeepers to the market.

I never see people talking about what valve should change other than lowering the 30% cut, but arbitrarily forcing that would set a bad precedent.

Instead of virtue signalling here's reasonable things Valve could do:

allow developers to chose what features of steam they use for each game, allowing them to lower the cut by individually opting out of forums, workshop, cloud saves, achievements, inventory items etc
offer a purchase = one time download with no drm (still legally one copy) for the closest thing to "owning" a digital game
allow someone to inherit a steam account

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure proton is free to use and you can install stores and games not from steam on a Steam Deck, so again I really don't know what they're gatekeeping.

[+] [email protected] -14 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Having the biggest audience to the degree that they do absolutely makes them a gatekeeper. If Steam became predatory tomorrow it would have a catastrophic effect on the consumer friendliness of the current PC market because you wouldn't have anywhere else to turn for many games. GOG and Itch don't have nearly as large of a selection of mainstream stuff.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's on developers for not putting their games on other platforms, Valve do not prevent you from doing so. If they went crazy tomorrow, people can just jump ship.

I swear the only games that could never be on another store would be Valve's own. It's really not their fault that other platforms are so bad or niche.

Like realistically what should they do to not be seen as gatekeepers? Become worse to scare developers and customers onto other platforms?

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