This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
Just for the young’ns here, the image in the post is from a late 90s cartoon called Recess. Show is about a bunch of elementary schoolers and the one thing they look forward to at school: recess. They basically have roving kid gangs on the playground. Preschoolers are depicted as godless heathen barbarians not to be messed with. It’s a fantastic cartoon.
Yeah... that explanation was helpful to me because I'm... young...
I am also super young, fellow kids. 6-7 or whatever, right?
*dabs mournfully*
This is way funnier than my comment. Bravo
No, no. See Bravo was a different cartoon
I'm Juuuust old enough to remember this cartoon, but was too young to really watch it
My guy.
They already profit on loot boxes
Child gambling
unfinished products
AI slop
Extortionate DLC programs
Pre orders
Season passes
How else has GabeN been funding his son's racing career. Those Aston Martins aren't cheap.
AI slop
I'd like to be clear what you're referring to, because I only know two things Valve is allowing in that regard
Is there something else I'm unaware of? Because otherwise I guess it's a matter of where you draw the line, because I'd still consider Steam the best platform available, and have to agree to disagree.
They said the trending thing and got reflexive upvotes. That's all it was.
It's more complicated, because Valve absolutely isn't perfect and contributes to problems, and most of that comment is valid. I still wouldn't boycott them as it stands, because I do see them as the best option and don't mind them getting some of my money.
The best alternatives have their own flaws, GOG using GenAI in official promotional material and no Linux launcher, itch barely having a launcher, which is valid, but is severely lacking compared to Steam.
The point is that it could be worse, considerably worse. Yes, I know, the standards are low nowadays. I try to stay with GOG where possible but with Linux, you sometimes have better compatibility with Steam versions and you have the steam DB reducing the risks even further, even if that is not from Valve itself.
As long as it stays private, it really doesn't matter. Enshitification comes from public stockholdership, venture capital or private equity trying to get insane returns on overpriced assets.
They make 30% of the gross sales on their platform... nobody prints money like Valve does.
For reference, stores refuse Amex because they take 1%-2% more than Visa/Mastercard on gross sales. Steam takes 30% and nobody gives a shit. lol
Retail stores also take like 30% usually. People don't give a shit because it's not unusual and any option that takes less is worse in some way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Newell
https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newells-son-thinks-valve-needs-to-try-something-scary/
It's more probably Doug Lombardi or Scott Lynch (COO?) that would take the reigns. Or it would probably turn into a co-op to be honest.
let's hope they won't turn it into an extraction shooter.
I think that would be best, like bobs red mill.
Employee owned (like John Lewis and Richer Sounds) or customer owned (like the supermarket)
I've always pondered what should be the contingencies if, eventually, Steam enshittifies because Gabe is gone. I would need a huge storage data to locally store the installation files.
Support good competitors like GoG
I'm a big fan of Steam, but gog.com also exists, and people should always try to figure out how to preserve copies of their games and media in a self-hosted way wherever possible.
I know with some games it's not possible because of requiring signons, etc, but even those sometimes get cracked (people run their own WoW servers, etc).
I always download and/or sideload everything I can. My e-books, my music, and my games.
I have been negligent about shows and movies because once I watch them I tend to not watch them again. But, I have friends with extensive video libraries that they built up over the years.
It's harder now because storage is so fucking expensive. But don't accept the default mode that your shit has to live in the cloud. The cloud is just somebody else's storage.
With the direction things are going, it looks like GoG may get bought by someone else or just go bankrupt, sadly.
I buy GoG over Steam without exception, but sadly it seems most gamers are not that way.
Then its back to black jack and hookers, atleast those will be cheaper
I guess one way to prevent that would be to create a nonprofit org with a very clear set of rules on how to run Valve going forward. Kinda like Rolex works today.
"Nonprofit" and "Valve" don't belong in the same universe. Valve is and has been 100/ about making money, and it's been very, very good at it. They behave like they do because they aren't publicly traded, so there aren't short-term investors wanting to pump the stock and bail out, so they look at actual long-term investment and profit strategies.
People love Steam around here, but it was the beginning of modern enshittification of gaming. It was literally launched as a way to create an online activation requirement for a single-player game (Half Life 2), and they've fully-embraced lootbox mechanics for years.
Gabe is a billionaire yacht collector, not your buddy. Public companies exist to drive up share value at all times. Valve exists to make Gabe more money.
If it actually got bad - would physical media come back full-force? Or would GOG be the go too?
Probably GoG, itch.io, or just direct sales. A lot of companies aren’t set up for physical distribution, aren’t big enough to get their product into the retail channels, and/or would have a hard time selling internationally. Steam didn’t invent digital game sales, they just made it a little easier. I think the first game I bought online was around 2000 or 2001. It was DX-Ball 2 from Longbow Digital Arts (RIP Seumas McNally), along with a screensaver I loved that they’ve open sourced and I wish I could get it running on macOS and Linux. I was still in high school and didn’t have a credit card, so I paid using a postal money order. If developers were selling directly in the ’90s they can make it work again.
Forgive my ignorance, and I might come off as snobby.
I see itch.io referenced often as an alternate game store but all I see on there are games that are super amateurish like a few notches above 2000s flash games. Am I not looking hard enough or are people happy playing those kinds of games?
Everyone can upload their game to itch, so there are a lot of bad games, and some very good ones.
I really haven’t used it much myself, but as the other commenter mentioned, since anyone can upload I’m not surprised there’s a large amount of mediocre content. So far I’ve felt like that’s a platform where you need to go in knowing what you’re looking for. But, if Steam were ever to disappear or become irrelevant, they’d certainly be in a position to pick up some of the market.
GOG is always the go-to. Steam only if you can't wait to play it or its multi-player.
Gog feels like it's one step form becoming a enshittified corporate hellscape half the time. And only by virtue of not having a dominant market position keeping it in check enough to not let it self go to shit.
Oh yeah let me just pull entire factory tooling and logistical supply chains out of my hat.
So his eldest son is a pro race car driver.