this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
65 points (100.0% liked)
Pop Culture
63 readers
76 users here now
founded 2 weeks ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yup steam is a fucking awful monopoly. I don't know why people think Newell is anything but standard subhuman billionaire trash.
Amerikkkans are always searching for the one good capitalist who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become just a smol bean billionaire. Even many who should know better subconsciously still believe in the Amerikkkan Dream.
Steam does have some benefits, however, that I don't blame people for enjoying. It's more convenient that 1000 CDs with 1000 different DRM schemes. It's convenient to have a central library for managing and launching everything, though that could have been accomplished in a vendor neutral way (but wasn't because there's no profit in that).
have you seen the competition? all those publisher apps suck shit. steam doesn't do most of the things that make a monopoly bad and having 50 different logins with 49 extra chances for your credit card to be stolen isn't better.
I mean it's definitely the best of worst but people make it sound like it's actually good. It's extremely bad for developers. Basically digital rent seeking, their favored nation clauses, more or less erasing physical media and the second hand market. This is just off the top of my head. But steam is awful
i don't know about where you live but there was basically no second-hand market for win 9x games anyway.
In small towns yeah you'll never get a second hand market. But everywhere else you can. I mean even now there is a big market for second hand switch games. You can basically play any game for like $20 if you buy used (or even new) and sell when you're done.
sorry what does that have to do with pc games?
Steam is one of those publisher apps. It's just the least shit one because it launched significantly earlier and people were forced to use it.
When it launched, and for solidly the first decade of it's existence, it was widely considered to be resource hogging and intrusive DRM.
you don't have to tell me, i held out on making an account until 2015