Regardless of whether or not OP "brought this on himself", I think Valve's attitude towards game ownership is going to evolve quickly once the woke staff achieve a critical mass within the company. The leftists will eventually demand that our steam libraries be used as leverage to control our behavior.
Of course, the moment Valve starts banning people from the games they've purchased, the platform will quickly collapse. I know the first hint of political bannings will trigger an immediate piracy spree in my household, and I say this as someone who has mostly been on the devs' side in piracy debates.
I gave up on torrents due to all the hassles involved. Reminded me of troubleshooting the process of installing/running games on PCs back in the 90s. The viruses, the old-school installers, trying to get Windows to play nice with some files because it labels them as trojans (and some of them actually are).
GOG removes all of that hassle and you still get to install and play the game as if it were Steam, but thankfully you don't need the Steam bootstrapper to launch any of your titles (granted, some games on Steam can be played without the boostrapper, but the point still stands).
GOG, as far as functionality is concerned, is really a great way to actually OWN the game, because no matter what happens to your account, you can just backup the game on any kind of media you want and play it whenever you want without worrying about logging in or signing in or any of that nonsense. And you also don't have to worry about any of the fake files, bloated files, virus files, or other treachery that comes with torrenting.
The problem, however, is that GOG is about as converged as Steam, and will forfeit carrying certain games or promote certain games based on political grounds.
It's a real shame, because from a functionality standpoint GOG really is a good antithesis to both piracy and Steam.
Steam has also had scandals involving using extremist imagery in promotions, changing the LGBT tag to LGBTQ+ despite the fact it's blatantly extremist, engaging in terrorist financing by donating to extremist game jams, the politically motivated moderator abuse of the userbase which includes allowing extremist game devs to abuse users, the hypocrisy and questionable decisions involving the enforcement of the already questionable loli ban, and the handling of the "rape day" drama.
Extra: the rape day dev was driven off the internet as regressive leftists managed to dox him for publishing offensive fetishistic material, and his site and several accounts are now gone.
Not sure how recent this change is but you can’t just generate as many keys as you want now for free. There is a limit with how many you can do and then after that amount has been reached it costs “$x”. I’m sure the number of keys you can generate and the cost of extra keys is negotiable for larger devs. But it’s not an endless key gen factory for devs anymore.
Happened to me recently. Got banned from two hubs for disagreeing with their far left lunacy and got a two week steam community ban. When I wrote support they said they did not think the devs abused the ban function since being "rude" was a bannable offense. Nothing I said was even rude, they were just offended by a different opinion.
I must disagree. Tribes of Midgard cuck devs banned me in a thread about their gender crap because I pointed out how many people here got the clown awards. If something like this can earn you a global community ban, I consider this 100% unwarranted abuse.
I'm completely unsympathetic. You are free to call people cucks, commies, trannies, whatever and they are free to ban you and remove your account. Personally, I don't talk to normies, and don't have these problems. If you must carry your crusade in the steam community hub (lol) enjoy the repercussions.
This is an important question for the topic. If it is possible to implement bad-man lists like reddit allows, then you can end up with some epic shitflinging. Some retard could decide that everyone who played X game for more than 2 hours needs to blacklisted, which gets you banned from 100 hubs that subscribe to the blacklist, which then bans you from the platform.
...a bit of a darker implementation of that tactic given this is an automated system whats to stop a bunch of the asset flippers that infest steam from doing this: step one target a user. step 2 massive ban wave from allied hubs. step three wait till you think they got unbanned. step 4 repeat and use a burner to send a message along the lines of you want this to stop send $xxxx.xx to this address.
I share your optimism on the matter. Steam's leadership should be aware that they don't actually hold a monopoly, and any unhappy customers are not forced to take it on the chin.
Of course, I've been wrong before about this sort of thing. Gamergate and all that. Here's hoping that we don't have to see even more institutions become compromised.
Steam support let me re-purchase f1 2021 specifically to post a negative review complaining about cancel culture, then return the game a 2nd time for another refund.
Steam has so far been cool to me.
This will last exactly until a prominent person or community holds the flaming dogshit under Gaben's nose.
Valve's corporate structure is completely retarded and dysfunctional and only exists because Steam makes it impossible for the company to fail. The very moment that Gabe and the higher managers think that a policy could lose them significant profit, it's changed and most involved are fired.
Because Valve is a software company located in a leftist shithole most of their employees inevitably drink the koolaid just to fit in.
That's true, but they have problems like being 40% owned by the CCP and also being woke. Epic absolutely is not better in this regard.
If you're looking for real competition to Steam, piracy is the closest thing to a legitimate answer you'll get. No political bullshit, and the prices literally cannot be beat.
The China part is true but if they were so woke, would Google have tried so hard to kill them off? They tried to sign a secret deal with Tencent to take a 51% stake together and remove Sweeney. Tencent said no.
People think the MLK thing was woke, but in reality it's a step back from the BLM pandering everyone did last year. Still a waste of development time though.
They tried to kill them off because they were wanting to open a competing market place and google in true monopolistic fashion wanted to buy them to prevent competition. It wasn’t “oh they are woke too we will let them
Be”. It’s, “hey you making money on apps without us getting a cut is not something we want to happen.”
Do you buy so many games that it legitimately is a chore to buy them individually? Do you play them? (asking as someone with a game library that has a depressingly high percentage of unfinished games)
Edit: the downvote isn't for when someone's triggered. This isn't Reddit.
It is ridiculous they haven't put more effort into it. I'm just a fan of more of the money going to game developers instead of middlemen and gatekeepers.
The industry split isn't anything unfair, to be perfectly honest. This "the devs deserve more money" thing is just more union agitating if you ask me, and what's more Epic's split mostly goes to the publishers anyway.
30% to Valve seems disproportionate and greedy though, which they get away with only because they have a near-monopoly.
This part is just not true. Every vendor storefront except Epic has the exact same split. It is the industry standard, has been for thirty years.
Epic is doing what is called a "loss leader", it's a tactic that Rockefeller used to buy up rival gas stations by operating at a loss in hopes that he could outlast them financially. It is a tactic that you use when you are bent on creating a monopoly. A tactic that Epic can only use because they are heavily backed with Red Chinese money.
They are very literally engaged in illegal, monopolistic trade practices and the only reason they haven't been legally confronted for it yet is because fully one half of the political spectrum is also in the pocket of the ChiComs.
Sometimes I buy games that have a lot of DLC when they're on sale. I do like simulators, and sometimes they have a ton of DLC. So when buying in bulk, it's so much easier adding them all to the shopping cart at one time.
I used to buy individually but then sometimes I would run into the problem of buying the same thing twice. Steam is nice enough to inform you that you already purchased that item, though, so that's when I started using the shopping cart function more efficiently when buying multiple DLC packs.
I've never used the Epic Store to purchase things, but do they even warn you about duplicate DLC purchases the way Steam does?
I sometimes run into problems for some games (mostly some indie titles or sims like Ship Simulator Extreme) and needed the forums to find a solution to some common problems. The issue I was having at the time was an issue other Steam users had and since the game is niche, Steam's forums was the only place where I could find some decent troubleshooting help.
So yes, I completely understand the need for forums. I've used them sparingly but often enough to see their value.
Also, for some games I've managed to find out if a game is woke or not. Most people ask these things for most new games (indie, AAA or otherwise) and usually there's a thread or two about how woke a game is. I was able to find out a couple of times that a game was woke before buying it, even though it didn't seem particularly woke from the promo material. It was thanks to the forums that I was able to gather this information. Without the forums I may have added a woke game to my wishlist and purchased it unknowingly.
Regardless of whether or not OP "brought this on himself", I think Valve's attitude towards game ownership is going to evolve quickly once the woke staff achieve a critical mass within the company. The leftists will eventually demand that our steam libraries be used as leverage to control our behavior.
Of course, the moment Valve starts banning people from the games they've purchased, the platform will quickly collapse. I know the first hint of political bannings will trigger an immediate piracy spree in my household, and I say this as someone who has mostly been on the devs' side in piracy debates.
Actually... yes.
Politically? No.
I gave up on torrents due to all the hassles involved. Reminded me of troubleshooting the process of installing/running games on PCs back in the 90s. The viruses, the old-school installers, trying to get Windows to play nice with some files because it labels them as trojans (and some of them actually are).
GOG removes all of that hassle and you still get to install and play the game as if it were Steam, but thankfully you don't need the Steam bootstrapper to launch any of your titles (granted, some games on Steam can be played without the boostrapper, but the point still stands).
GOG, as far as functionality is concerned, is really a great way to actually OWN the game, because no matter what happens to your account, you can just backup the game on any kind of media you want and play it whenever you want without worrying about logging in or signing in or any of that nonsense. And you also don't have to worry about any of the fake files, bloated files, virus files, or other treachery that comes with torrenting.
The problem, however, is that GOG is about as converged as Steam, and will forfeit carrying certain games or promote certain games based on political grounds.
It's a real shame, because from a functionality standpoint GOG really is a good antithesis to both piracy and Steam.
Steam has also had scandals involving using extremist imagery in promotions, changing the LGBT tag to LGBTQ+ despite the fact it's blatantly extremist, engaging in terrorist financing by donating to extremist game jams, the politically motivated moderator abuse of the userbase which includes allowing extremist game devs to abuse users, the hypocrisy and questionable decisions involving the enforcement of the already questionable loli ban, and the handling of the "rape day" drama.
Extra: the rape day dev was driven off the internet as regressive leftists managed to dox him for publishing offensive fetishistic material, and his site and several accounts are now gone.
Not sure how recent this change is but you can’t just generate as many keys as you want now for free. There is a limit with how many you can do and then after that amount has been reached it costs “$x”. I’m sure the number of keys you can generate and the cost of extra keys is negotiable for larger devs. But it’s not an endless key gen factory for devs anymore.
Happened to me recently. Got banned from two hubs for disagreeing with their far left lunacy and got a two week steam community ban. When I wrote support they said they did not think the devs abused the ban function since being "rude" was a bannable offense. Nothing I said was even rude, they were just offended by a different opinion.
So don't post on their forums or whatever they are?
This 100% sounds like a stepping on a rake situation.
I must disagree. Tribes of Midgard cuck devs banned me in a thread about their gender crap because I pointed out how many people here got the clown awards. If something like this can earn you a global community ban, I consider this 100% unwarranted abuse.
I'm completely unsympathetic. You are free to call people cucks, commies, trannies, whatever and they are free to ban you and remove your account. Personally, I don't talk to normies, and don't have these problems. If you must carry your crusade in the steam community hub (lol) enjoy the repercussions.
So I guess you're also a pRiVaTe cOmPaNy retard? Got it.
What is Steam Hub?
There is absolutely nothing of value in steam communities. No problem solving, no tips, just insane people screeching about bugs and/or game issues.
The yooka laylee forums were a hoot after the jontron debacle
Can you be banned from hubs you don't participate in? Can you be banned from hubs for games you don't own? If not, I think I have a solution.
This is an important question for the topic. If it is possible to implement bad-man lists like reddit allows, then you can end up with some epic shitflinging. Some retard could decide that everyone who played X game for more than 2 hours needs to blacklisted, which gets you banned from 100 hubs that subscribe to the blacklist, which then bans you from the platform.
100% this will happen in the future (just look at how popular blacklists are on twitter)
...a bit of a darker implementation of that tactic given this is an automated system whats to stop a bunch of the asset flippers that infest steam from doing this: step one target a user. step 2 massive ban wave from allied hubs. step three wait till you think they got unbanned. step 4 repeat and use a burner to send a message along the lines of you want this to stop send $xxxx.xx to this address.
I share your optimism on the matter. Steam's leadership should be aware that they don't actually hold a monopoly, and any unhappy customers are not forced to take it on the chin.
Of course, I've been wrong before about this sort of thing. Gamergate and all that. Here's hoping that we don't have to see even more institutions become compromised.
Use torrents. rutracker.org
Steam support let me re-purchase f1 2021 specifically to post a negative review complaining about cancel culture, then return the game a 2nd time for another refund.
Steam has so far been cool to me.
This will last exactly until a prominent person or community holds the flaming dogshit under Gaben's nose.
Valve's corporate structure is completely retarded and dysfunctional and only exists because Steam makes it impossible for the company to fail. The very moment that Gabe and the higher managers think that a policy could lose them significant profit, it's changed and most involved are fired.
Because Valve is a software company located in a leftist shithole most of their employees inevitably drink the koolaid just to fit in.
They've done this multiple times.
This is more of an automated buildup thing.
Epic Games Store doesn't have these problems.
That's true, but they have problems like being 40% owned by the CCP and also being woke. Epic absolutely is not better in this regard.
If you're looking for real competition to Steam, piracy is the closest thing to a legitimate answer you'll get. No political bullshit, and the prices literally cannot be beat.
The China part is true but if they were so woke, would Google have tried so hard to kill them off? They tried to sign a secret deal with Tencent to take a 51% stake together and remove Sweeney. Tencent said no.
People think the MLK thing was woke, but in reality it's a step back from the BLM pandering everyone did last year. Still a waste of development time though.
They tried to kill them off because they were wanting to open a competing market place and google in true monopolistic fashion wanted to buy them to prevent competition. It wasn’t “oh they are woke too we will let them Be”. It’s, “hey you making money on apps without us getting a cut is not something we want to happen.”
Epic Games Store doesn't have a shopping cart.
Do you buy so many games that it legitimately is a chore to buy them individually? Do you play them? (asking as someone with a game library that has a depressingly high percentage of unfinished games)
Edit: the downvote isn't for when someone's triggered. This isn't Reddit.
I don't use a so called storefront that lacks even the most basic features of a storefront.
Although Epic is definitely a front of some kind. Just not a store.
It is ridiculous they haven't put more effort into it. I'm just a fan of more of the money going to game developers instead of middlemen and gatekeepers.
The industry split isn't anything unfair, to be perfectly honest. This "the devs deserve more money" thing is just more union agitating if you ask me, and what's more Epic's split mostly goes to the publishers anyway.
12% to Epic is fair enough, no complaints there. And I love their advertisement strategy of paying developers in order to give away free games.
30% to Valve seems disproportionate and greedy though, which they get away with only because they have a near-monopoly.
This part is just not true. Every vendor storefront except Epic has the exact same split. It is the industry standard, has been for thirty years.
Epic is doing what is called a "loss leader", it's a tactic that Rockefeller used to buy up rival gas stations by operating at a loss in hopes that he could outlast them financially. It is a tactic that you use when you are bent on creating a monopoly. A tactic that Epic can only use because they are heavily backed with Red Chinese money.
They are very literally engaged in illegal, monopolistic trade practices and the only reason they haven't been legally confronted for it yet is because fully one half of the political spectrum is also in the pocket of the ChiComs.
Yes.
Sometimes I buy games that have a lot of DLC when they're on sale. I do like simulators, and sometimes they have a ton of DLC. So when buying in bulk, it's so much easier adding them all to the shopping cart at one time.
I used to buy individually but then sometimes I would run into the problem of buying the same thing twice. Steam is nice enough to inform you that you already purchased that item, though, so that's when I started using the shopping cart function more efficiently when buying multiple DLC packs.
I've never used the Epic Store to purchase things, but do they even warn you about duplicate DLC purchases the way Steam does?
That's a good point. Unrelated: DLCs are getting completely out of hand.
Well, they don't have these problems because they don't have forums... Or a community hub around the game!
I still never understood why that was a bad thing. Less features for malfactors to exploit.
I sometimes run into problems for some games (mostly some indie titles or sims like Ship Simulator Extreme) and needed the forums to find a solution to some common problems. The issue I was having at the time was an issue other Steam users had and since the game is niche, Steam's forums was the only place where I could find some decent troubleshooting help.
So yes, I completely understand the need for forums. I've used them sparingly but often enough to see their value.
Also, for some games I've managed to find out if a game is woke or not. Most people ask these things for most new games (indie, AAA or otherwise) and usually there's a thread or two about how woke a game is. I was able to find out a couple of times that a game was woke before buying it, even though it didn't seem particularly woke from the promo material. It was thanks to the forums that I was able to gather this information. Without the forums I may have added a woke game to my wishlist and purchased it unknowingly.
Neither does GOG.
Honestly, as long as you don't move to Origin, go for whatever you like.
Hah, I can honestly say I always refused that.
I'm glad. EA is enemy #2.
Google is #1 of course.
Yup, there's quite a few competitors willing to take on Steam gamers.