PC Gaming

Finally someone with a voice said it.

Epic gives so many games away, but their launcher and store are so bad that I don't even play their free games.

I don't care if Uni wants to run a store. But forcing me to use their store when I buy the game on steam is pretty af. So I don't play Ubi games either.

Their shit launcher made the games run worse.

In present day. I dont want to use Windows. So I simply cannot play much if the new games from the other shit companies because they have some vendetta against Proton / Steam Deck.

Now they're literally doing it to themselves.

If I could testify for Valve as a customer I would.

i think personally Steam's/Valve's dominance is really good here's why:

• Improving Linux gaming,improving Wine and DXVK for gaming,so you dont rely on Microsoft for your OS.
• Great client(i like the: inbuilt Chromium based browser,Community features)
• Not so awful and maybe simple DRM methods(eg, needing the Steam client doesnt tank the performance that much,compared to something like denuvo which i think makes modding impossible,needs consistent internet connection,and tanks the game's fps alot )
• I can buy with cash giftcard to buy games(I wish GOG had that)
• Workshop for modding on supported games.(ik some games have workshop and dont let you mod everything)
• Makes/has good games(Half-life 2 is the best game i ever played)

but the bad things:

• Steam Client is still 32 bit and Steam doesnt target ARM(E,G. For like M1+ macs,those need rosetta )
• third party clients arent a option
• You dont own anything you buy on Steam.
• Having the Steam client open at all times(ik not all games have this, but i assume CEF based Steam will lower the performance like slightly)
• TF2 neglect
• lootboxes/battle pass in some games(i am aware Valve was the first company to have a battle pass and fortnite popularized it)
  alright thats what i think of the Good and bad of Valve/Steam

Edit: Fixed Paragraph break.

Steam had been one of the good companies so far. Until they showed clear signs of enshitiffication, I will patronise Steam.

Steam is the very, very rare case of a major company that is both not beholden to shareholders, and has a pretty good guy at the helm.

Steam kinda killed gaming piracy for many. Hope they won't go the Netflix way in the future.

I only buy games on Steam, GOG and ItchIO. The main reason I don't give a cent to stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic Games anymore is their services and terms are horrible. I'm all in for supporting competition when it's good competition.

And it will last til Gabe dies. Then I guarantee it enshittifes so fast it will make your head spin.

I think valve has the absolute worst skins market out there but their store is really good.

How to explain Steam's success on PC for console players: "Think of it like the X1 vs PS4 era. Steam is the PS4 and every competitor was the Xbox One"

I feel like they've earned it because they've put in the most work. They are the best in the game because they make the user experience the best there is. EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft have/had their own storefronts or launchers but they are clunky and unpleasant to deal with and the only benefits they had were exclusives. They've never put any effort into user experience and were mainly doing it to make themselves more money and it definitely showed. The only one that's ever been a real competitor is Epic Launcher. And while it has gotten better over the years, the user experience is still not anywhere near Steam. And even now the Epic Launcher is still unpleasant to deal with in a lot of cases unless you just use it to play Fortnite.

With Steam everything just works and is basically seamless. Not only that, before Steam the modding community for most games had an immense learning curve and most people just avoided it save for Minecraft. And as far as I can tell you can't even mod games you buy on the Microsoft Store because their file structure is atrocious.

The only storefront I wish was better/more popular was GOG. It's not bad and has a lot of benefits (Like no DRM and offline installers), but Steam just makes everything so easy it's hard not to get stuck with them once you've started.