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.
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.