this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
156 points (96.4% liked)

PC Gaming

8615 readers
758 users here now

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

  1. Be Respectful.
  2. No Spam or Porn.
  3. No Advertising.
  4. No Memes.
  5. No Tech Support.
  6. No questions about buying/building computers.
  7. No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
  8. No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
  9. No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
  10. Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
156
Gabe Newell says no-one in the industry thought Steam would work as a distribution platform—'I'm not talking about 1 or 2 people, I mean like 99%' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 10 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
34 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 34 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 hours ago

You forced it on people by demanding it for a must-have game... which came on discs. To some extent, even now, fuck you.

Other comments talk about great sale prices, which is often an anticompetitive practice called "dumping."

I'd be less blunt if people could admit it's a monopoly. 'Oh I never even consider other stores.' Uh-huh. 'I mean there's competitors, but they hardly matter. Even billion-dollar companies can't make theirs relevant.' You don't say. 'Valve can even afford to let devs sell keys wherever, and the customers still get their ecosystem!' Yeah, wow. We have a word for that. 'How dare you.'

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I remember the uproar when CS 1.6 required steam. It was huge and everyone was angry. It took a lot of pull that CS didn't die because of steam, a lot of players stayed on 1.5 for a long time. But HL2 was too big of an argument to stay off steam.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 hours ago

It was Garry's mod that got me personally. I saw it somewhere and my jaw dropped, I had to have it. Steam didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time, but the thought of a physics sandbox was practically unheard of before that.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

I was finally convinced when steam sales were incredibly favorable.

I could either go to Gamespot and buy a used game for $20 + tax and have to deal with some sweat giving me shit about my gaming choices. Or buy that same game digitally for $10.

Around 2011, I remember not buying consoles anymore and continuing to grow my PC collection.

Around 2017, my pirating dropped significantly. I think I had like 1000+ steam games from buying so many bundles.

By 2020, I didn't pirate a single PC game, the games I bought 10 years ago still work, and I bought a game from the Microsoft Store, only to rebuy it on Steam.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I remember Steam's launch and understand completely.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I hated Steam for a long time because of Half-life 2.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

I mean yeah.

I had to install some program and connect online to PLAY A SINGLE PLAYER GAME? I have the CD already and entered my CD key. Why does it need validation?

This is surely the death of PC gaming.

  • me in 2005
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Same. I think Civ 5 was my gateway game.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Oh MAN. I forgot about those times, hand typing in a 36 character CD key that was spat out by a dot matrix printer with questionable typeset legibility…

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

And importing foreign copies because they sold for cheaper in other countries. I still have a Korean box copy of Call of Duty 2. After buying one, my household needed a second so that I could play at the same time as my sibling, and didn't want to spend a whole $50 for the privilege. They would even send you a copy of the key in email while you waited on the physical box to show up, because the importers knew what they were doing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 24 minutes ago

I also may have had a Malaysian CD key or two in my time 😅

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 hours ago

That's if Steam was even able to connect so you could enter the key.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 hours ago

I mean.... It was a gamble. Internet was still young. Speeds weren't keeping up with game sizes outside a few major cities. I was mailed a few large files because it was quicker than downloading them. Not to mention the desire for physical copies over a digital thing you can lose with a bad hard drive was at an all time high.

Then people realized the internet wasn't just nerd shit, ISPs slowly ramped up their DL speeds and suddenly the thing people mocked for not being feasible is doing well because of how convenient it became.

Gabe even admits he had doubts for awhile.

I wonder where gaming would be if he had listened to the doubters. There's no denying valve has had a major impact on modern gaming