this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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An architect of GameStop's long-forgotten Steam competitor explains why he thinks Valve came out on top: 'What Steam did better than anybody else was to create a community' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 22 points 3 weeks ago

I'm aware that there are community features on Steam, and some people must use them. There are stickers, profile pages, trading cards, and all kind of other things that I mostly ignore, but that other people must be using. But, I don't think I'd ever call myself a member of the Steam community.

On the other hand, there are communities for games on Steam. The game-related forums and mod workshops are essential parts of some of the Steam games I play. I don't post much in the forums, but I definitely use guides that other people post there.

What I think makes Steam work is:

  • fair and honest prices, often with sales and discounts
  • any DRM they use is something that normal users don't notice -- you really notice the difference when you end up with a Ubisoft game, even if it's on Steam.
  • updates that just work, so the next time you start the game it's a new version and you don't have to do anything
  • a store that seems designed to sell you games you'll actually enjoy playing, not one that pushes you to buy things that will make them the most money
  • a client that makes it easy to play games with your friends, using a consistent interface, if you choose to do that. If not, they don't try to push you to do things with friends.
  • a decent review system that they've mostly managed to prevent people from gaming

I guess some of those, like playing games with friends, or even reviews could be seen as community features. But, I don't feel like I'm "part of the steam community" when I play games with friends. We just happen to be two people playing a game using the same launcher. As for reviews, I don't trust Steam reviews more than say Metacritic or Rock Paper Shotgun. I actually trust the "community" less than a good reviewer. There are admittedly some features of the Steam reviews that are useful, like saying how many hours someone has put into a game next to their review. I just mostly use the Steam reviews as a way to avoid buying something that's a complete stinker because it looks interesting and is on sale.