VALVE IS BAD, ACTUALLY!

Steam is on a path to become a monopoly. Is that a good thing for the gamer?

If it's not on Steam, it might as well not exist. Even console exclusives made for PlayStation and Xbox will find themselves listed on Steam. And that's saying something. It's saying that even giant studios like Microsoft or Sony just can't pass on that cash-grab potential.

That is power. Power that belongs to Steam's maker Valve, which also has some of the most popular PC games, and makes Linux-based console SteamDeck that challenges Windows' gaming monopoly. For that, everyone loves Valve. But there is a problem. Valve's power is too great and Valve will use that power to the detriment of the whole gaming community.

I am going to prove that to you by showing you Valve's historical record and by looking at its future path. Both of which should convince you that it doesn't matter how much you may love Steam right now, Valve is not your friend.

Valve has this image of an infallible good guy, standing up to the big tech. Any criticism of Valve or Steam is met with dismissal and ridicule. Valve's fans will defend any corporate decision they make, even if it's the same they would scorch other gaming companies for making.

When you purchase games from Steam, you have to accept the terms that you will never own your games. Your purchase only grants you a temporary limited license. What's the difference and why does it matter? Well, if you own something, like a book, or a DVD with a game, the contents still belong to the copyright holder, but you get to decide what to do with the material. Like for instance, you can lend it, gift it or trade it for something else.
A Steam license gives you none of that. It's just a subscription.

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[AQDuck]

Few corrections:
1: Steam's 30% cut goes for games sold _within Steam, _ developers can generate Steam keys to be sold or given away externally of which Valve takes 0% (more on that in point 3).

2: Steam got its refund policy because Australia requires it for digital goods, not because EA did it (which they had done for years). It is worth noting that other digital stores (Ubisoft, Bethesda, etc.) only offer refunds in Australia after this law, still shitty that a legal threat had to be taken.

3: Related to the first correction: This _only_ applies to the _Steam_ keys sold externally (through the dev/publisher's own site or 3rd party like GMG, HumbleBundle, etc.).
If the game is also on EGS, GOG, etc. the dev can price it whatever they want there (because they are not selling a Steam key at those stores). The reason why games are _often_ priced the same on EGS despite the lower in-store tax is because they make more profit (but not as much as they would if you bought a Steam key from their own site).
Valve did, however, briefly have a rule that games should launch on Steam within 3 months after launch on competing platform, but I don't think they've ever enforced that and probably removed it at this point.

[vectivus]

if valve stop providing me service then i will take pirate bay

[FRI]

Companies trade reputation for quick cash grabs. Valve has balanced a good reputation with their services unlike Blizzard-Activision. We can only trust they maintain that reputation.

[bruderdasisteinschwerermangel]

In all fairness, the issue with buying a license instead of owning a product, is not exclusive to Steam. It's not even exclusive to video games, pretty much all commercial software has traditionally been sold as licenses. And yes that sucks, I think this must change to protect consumers. But I think it should be done for all software, not steam, EA, ubisoft, blizzard, ...

[SmogginMog]

A Company can attempt to legally waive all your Rights away,
and even if you sign that contract in blood -
YOU STILL HAVE THOSE LEGAL RIGHTS.

[Dazz_Youniversual_Studios]

I don't like Valve. I never really have, but at least they have contributed to Linux. You cannot say the same for EA, or Ubisoft, or Microsoft, or any other Soft.😂

[MinePossu]

Steam isn't perfect, but their efforts on the deck and linux is great for slowly chipping away at the microsoft monopoly.

[gethinfiltrator]

I have a couple of games there but as a general rule - never have all your eggs in one basket. I hunt physical copies second hand and collect these. Not running out of games anytime soon.

[rimsoned]

I tried posting an in depth comment here but google is determined to block it. Basically while your video is heading in the right direction, it misses some details (such as valve does a lot more than video game distribution so its not fair to compare it directly to other gamer distributors, albeit the 30% cut is too high IMO), allowing reselling of digital games will kill indie single player games and prop up multiplayer live service games. YOu should have talked more about the problem that is valve crates like in tf2, because this is genuinely a problem. Another point is that while valve funding of linux today is great, we should be wary of it.

[Jader]

7:43 The Hated One says "Games that sell" and then pans over Concord

[wesmongold]

Call me old school but the only thing I trust is the physical media I own, on a cartridge. If I can make the wrong video on YouTube and then have my Steam account suspended, losing access to my bought games, then they aren't worthy of any kind of trust. I'll stick to cartridge gaming and piracy.

[peudo]

You bring up a lot of good points. But you're disingenuous about the cost of running their online store being close to 0. Millions of gamers downloading probably petabytes of data every day is not free nor is it cheap. Every game download, every patch, every video from the store... Those take bandwidth. Then there's the data reliability issue. They must be using a CDN, and have to maintain many copies of all their data with backups and redundancy. There's a reason competitors aren't popping up and succeeding. And it's not just because of the social network monopoly aspect of it. Running this kind of operation is VERY costly.

Should they charge 30%? I doubt that's necessary. But I'd be okay with that if they vetted all software they sell by checking it for vulnerabilities and exploits before selling it. Since they aren't doing that, I do think 30% is unreasonable.

[trinosan]

I don't know about this sort of things, but when you call a company a monopoly, what is the company supposed to do about it?
get worse so other companies can compete?
genuinely asking.
I don't think valve is my "friend". they're a software company and I'm a customer.

[xanrerkazuki]

I am not trying to defend valve, and this is a genuine question. As a Linux user, what other option I have that is not going to make me pull my hair off? I know you can use Lutris with gog or... unethical ways to download a game but even with protonup-qt chances of a game working out of the box are rather slim, at least at an optimal performance. I hate the fact we need to give our human rights to this renting service and that is why I don't use any movie streaming service but, Valve is unescapable if you use Linux. Although I like what Lutris does with installation scripts, not everything works, or even exists there. I know I can just use Windows instead of Linux, but Microsoft is (in my eyes) much worse than Valve, and I don't want to trade what left of my freedom to just play games. Can't say I'm proud of it, but I am a steam user for the foreseeable future.

Thank you again for the informative video, as always!

[realryleu]

I'm about halfway through, talking about the steam agreement. You are incorrect. The agreement only requires that _steam keys_ be sold for the same amount, not that all listings be for the same amount.

[phrogtesem]

I think steam mentioned somewhere that if the store was to ever go bankrupt, they would remove the DRM from the games, effectively allowing you to store your own games wherever you want. Of course there is no way for me to believe that.
There's also the GOG store, which I will mention here for gamers, how might not be aware of it. The GOG store is selling games without the DRM, and once you have bought the game, you effectively own it. You can store it anywhere you want on external media, as long as it has enough space for the game.

[shroomtogo]

If you're on Linux, I think Steam is the only easy option. I would be happy if there was an official, reliable (e.g.) GOG client that I could use at least alongside Steam.

[st.altair]

If Steam ever gets enshittified I'll just revert to pirating everything.

[Мирич-зе]

I'm a gamer since like 2005, and I'm very proud to anounce that I have never bought a video game in my life.

[glowinthedark]

I miss 2000s when games were good and small enough to fit on DVDs. I can't believe we don't have physical games on PC