I mean…on one hand, it’s pretty easy for
SteamValve to be doing well. They’re the only major platform that’s released a new console this year (except for Nintendo), they’re the hardware manufacturer with the biggest recent success (except for Nintendo) in the Steam Deck, and they’re the only major platform without any well-publicized egg on their face (except for Nintendo). It also helps that they basically own the entire PC space outright, where the other platforms are fighting amongst themselves (except for Nintendo).But that brings up the Italian-plumber-with-a-powerup-that-turns-him-into-an-elephant in the room. Nintendo has been doing really well, too; and while, since the Wii, they’ve largely abandoned the power gamer space to the three players mentioned in this headline, the Switch 2 was a crazy release.
Obviously, Steam has made a lot of great bets that have paid off, they’ve managed to keep up customer goodwill by limiting anti-competitive behavior and focusing on good product and service over vendor lock-in, and they’re clearly the least anti-consumer player in the space right now. But Nintendo’s strategy of “make the games so compelling and polished that people won’t care about the lock-in” is basically the polar opposite, and it’s working too; so I don’t know how well we can draw conclusions about the industry from this.
I hear this every time: CEOs and Exec management of companies telling their employees that costs of production or whatever have gone up, there is need for layoffs in order for the company to stay afloat. At the end of the fiscal year: champagne bottles popping because record profits have been made… and we all play along in this circus show
No mention of Nintendo.
That sure is a lot of people who would probably like to be able to purchase reasonably priced PC hardware.
Valve’s main advantage is they don’t have to make up heinous policies in the quarterly game of “tug off the shareholders”.
It’s all been fucked by AI RAM and SSD (and still GPU) prices. If anyone tries for a next gen £1000 console, they’ll be going the same way as Sega.
Remember when PC gaming was dead according to every outlet for two solid years?
I remember. I also remember it was started by Tim Sweeny when Gears of War was taking off. I also remember when Sweeny come crawling back to PC with EGS after Fortnite became BR king.
Being customer friendly. What a novel idea.
I feel like this is not rocket science here, this is like business 101.
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Make the customer happy
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Enjoy increased sales and revenue
N,o, it is economics and at some point over the last decade or so companies decided that the customer should be subjected to a constant shift of quality until it arrives at a level where it is the worst they are possibly willing to accept. Quality down profits up. Welcome to our new world.
This is the new “the customer is always right” attitude.
The concept of “firing your customers” even became part of marketing strategy in the last decade. Amazing what kind of nonsense bubbles up out of the muck when markets see less competition.
profits down but stocks rise with increased investment.
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20 years ago, the exact opposite was said about Steam and they didn’t change much. People just got used to it.
No.
As a person who resisted hard 20 years ago, they earned it. I didn’t get used to it, I found value. In cloud saves, in steam sales, in no pushy advertising, and so on.
As a Linux user over 20 years they also did what nobody else really tried. That matters a lot.
My husband remembers buying The Ship in a store, and when he went to install it out said he had to install something called Steam for the multiplayer. He was baffled and annoyed.
Now all the games we have save a few from GOG are steam.
They failed at first attempt with steamOS, but they learned the lesson, and came back swinging with years of preparation.
Sure they didn’t change much if you ignored all the improvements they made to the platform.
If they didn’t the other competitors wouldn’t be irrelevant today.
They haven’t changed much? They have like literally a million more games available on their store now.
The basic principle is the same: a DRM-enabled online store, and more often than not the only source for certain games, a monopoly.
Post it. You know which meme.
I want an edit of the “he can’t keep getting away with this” to “he can’t keep winning” lol.
Now if only they can bring down the cost of the Steam Deck and Steam Machine
Treating your customers decently can lead to profits in the long run. What an insight. They should teach that at business schools.
Reminds me of the film Air and the principle “If we do the right thing we’ll make money damn near automatic.”
Valve has fundamentally different goals from Microsoft and Sony
Microsoft and Sony want to increase profit a couple percentage for the next quarter
Valve wants to be profitable 10, 20, 30 years into the future
Thing is, they have been doing this for over a decade. Publicly traded companies can’t compete long-term, if there’s a well funded provate competitor
Thing is, they have been doing this for over a decade. Publicly traded companies can’t compete long-term, if there’s a well funded provate competitor
Of course they can, they can use the same aim. Problem is it’s more profitable to grind a company down, let it bankrupt and do the same to the next company. Hence enshittification arrived, venture capital has a full playbook for dismantling companies from the inside.
There’s still a few old bastions wanting stability, Coca Cola Group is the most obvious example of this
its not actually more profitable though. its only more profitable today, at the expense of future profits. this is more a problem caused by personal gain being directly linked to short term corporate gain. its only rational behavior from the perspective of the individual executives benefitting from the crazy compensation packages for laying everyone off and enshittifying the product. literally everyone else loses unless they get lucky and bail at just the right moment.
That’s only true in an old model of individual investors who go to shareholder meetings and stay with a company forever. That’s not how the world has worked for decades and decades.
Most rich people don’t have investments in individual stock. They don’t give a fuck if a company goes bust or not. Their investments are in giving out loans, bonds, funds etc. They park their money in a family office, and their money moves around the world more than an air steward.
If a company’s stock goes down 1% they diversify into other stock. They sell to buy gold.
It really isn’t “worse in the long-term” for them. The wealthy. They are getting richer faster than any other period of history and you think they are dumb…? Not working in their own best interest? Even in the long-term…?
They pay people dozens of millions a year to make them the most money possible forever. People absurdly more intelligent than any of us here. People who would centuries ago be genius scientists.
I’m sure they know what they are doing. And they are winning and we are losing.
The big investors are earning money on it, the suits has done the calculations and they’re earning a few percentages more a year dismantling companies than they would, had they chosen stability
Parts of it is also how safe of a bet it is to dismantle, as big capital likes safe investments. Which is largely also why AAA isn’t innovative anymore, they consider it too big of a risk to invent a new wheel
Publicly traded companies can’t compete long-term, if there’s a well funded private competitor
That’s why these companies love the idea of purchasing half the industry or using their resources to operate at a loss and squeeze out private competitors.
If they can’t compete, they can consolidate.
Then trust busting needs to happen
Best I can do is create shareholder value by making our product shittier and more expensive. Take it or leave it kid
maybe someone should tell them we’re leaving it. it doesnt seem like theyre noticing.
The gaming industry is fine. The “wall street gaming industry” is not.
It’s about time these corporate feral hogs start to feel the pain of the free market but they deserve much worse, bankruptcy. Xbox still exists, no leaders were laid off, their parent company still supports genocide, and this is all a problem.
Do you really want your games to pay for 8-10 figures a year for a hollow executive team’s risk free compensation? One where they have 0 liability, $0 of their own money on the line, literally not even gamers, to be the last word on what games make it into our hands and how they wring our wallets dry?
Who would have thought that eh?
Online subscription is a joke at this point
But I need a return on my investment now! Short term profits! Short term profits! SHORT TERM PROFITS!
ANOTHER $200 BILLION DOLLARS TO STEAM &VAVLE!
Steam sales.
Are poop now.
One appears to actually like their customers and the other two are actively hostile towards them. I’m sure somebody at Microsoft/Sony are scratching their heads trying to figure out what’s wrong.
Sony’s disc move just screams of a corporate accountant trying to improve the financials and they pick one of the dumbest options to cut costs on. Retailers are obviously upset as digital download cards probably sell like crap compared to physical copies. Outside of gifts I have no idea why anybody would bother.
Also worth mentioning Sony’s CEO and CSO sold 56% and 18% of their shares 2 days after the disc announcement to the tune of millions.
Sony has a 457m lawsuit against them for antitrust issues which they’ve historically defended with…physical disc sales. So I’m happy to see that decision blowing up in their face and I’ll wait for the outcome on that.
That’s the point. It’s not about the disc. It’s about cutting out retailers.
Games sell at the same price or cheaper at the retailer as they do digitally, and the retailer takes a cut. Games sold through PSN or the Xbox store make Sony and Microsoft way more money.
And that’s before we get to used sales.
Don’t get me wrong - not to argue. Hate the fact that they’re doing this but asking this genuinely objective point of view.
Why should retailers’s business would be concern to Sony? Isn’t this similar if I was an iron supplier and decided to not sell my materials to one manufacturer that I’m not tied with an agreement, just because I’ve decided not to?
Sony doesn’t want to come out and say “Best Buy can get fucked” because Best Buy still sells headphones, TVs, and other products Sony makes, including the Playstation itself. They need the retailers to sell their products.
But with digital goods, they can cut out the retailers retailers. The $10 bucks or whatever the retialer would get now goes to Sony.
One could argue, with video games specifically, that they lose part of the market without the retailer.
A lot of games are played by kids, and parents, friends, and other family members still go into a store and buy a game to give as a gift.
Tell me again how many discs valve is selling? What happens to your steam account when you die?
I like valve, but don’t fool yourselves, Gabe N does not give a shit about the customers any more than Asha or Hideaki.
Well, that’s just objectively incorrect. Gabe at least recognizes that piracy is a service problem and being consumer friendly is more profitable in the long-term. People like Asha and Hideaki can’t seem to figure that one out no matter how much evidence is given to them.
i love steam but he does raise a good point. vavle explicitly said that steam acc is legally not transferable. there’s no second hand market and your library is legally gone for good when youre gone.
no matter how good valve is right now. the threat of enshittification is real, and will remain so until the discourse of the right of owning digital game is settled.
Oh yeah, Steam is not perfect by a long stretch. It mostly looks good by comparison with it’s competitors who appear to take being gently asked NOT to shit directly down their customers throats as basically a death threat. Was just pointing out that saying Gabe doesn’t give a shit is incorrect, as he does give a shit insofar as giving a shit has actually turned out to be the best long term strategy for Steam’s profits.
That said, Steam actually does have a history of honouring wills to transfer a dead persons library to someone else on death, despite that technically being disallowed by their ToS. So they aren’t bound to do it legally, but they do currently tend to. Which honestly might get them into some legal hot water if they ever try to enforce that term.
Valve is one of the few companies that has historically honored people’s bequests and allowed bequeathing their libraries to others after they die. Unlike say Apple who has outright said that your iTunes purchases disappear into the ether when you die.
Why would I want more plastic crap? I have zero issue with this.
My account is my entertainment, I see no reason to have it after I die. My kids don’t want it, they have their own.
The savings and convenience far outweighs any second hand retail. I am glad I don’t have to burden my kids and family with even more physical crap they would have to toss out.
In case anyone’s not clear as to why: Sony has announced that they’ll stop producing discs and that they can take your content at any time for any reason.
Historically, Steam has promised they will never do that and will offer DRM-free (clarification: they’ll remove the Steam DRM) downloads.
Also, all of them have jacked prices up. Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam have raised hardware prices around 35-40%. However, Steam runs on PCs they don’t sell, as well as Macs, and they have a Linux distribution they provide for free called Steam OS.
Steam has promised they will never do that
Can you give us a credible source? I want it to be true, but I don’t want my only source to be hearsay.
I have never seen anyone back that claim up, despite it being a very popular one to make. People like to pretend they own their steam games but until that gets enforced by law; you don’t.
You don’t own any software! All software is licensed, yes, even FOSS software. The only software you own in a traditional sense is public domain which not only is a vanishingly small portion of software made, but is also a category that is difficult or impossible for software to be made a part of, depending on the laws in your country.
This is no different for Steam vs. anywhere else you can buy games, even with physical copies. The only benefit of physical copies is that it’s much harder to remove access to those games after you purchase the license, unless there is online activation or DRM.
Edit: I should clarify the only other software you own is the software you create or paid to have created. Then you can license its use for others, or not, as you choose. So MS owns Windows, and I own some small number of applications I’ve created, and other companies or individuals own the software they produced. But none of that has any bearing on games on Steam or anywhere else where you’re spending money to get access to a copy of a game.
Tekinukly. Software might still come with a license, but that license has no teeth without some form of DRM. This is a stupid way to try justifying the DRM steam has. In all practicality, you own whats downloaded to your drives without DRM.
I already addressed that. Steam has DRM, because Steam wouldn’t exist without it, and the physical copies publishers sold instead would still have DRM. There are DRM-free games on Steam - they don’t require publishers to use it. Direct your ire where it belongs.
Maybe it is better expressed as degree of control you have over the data on your drive, disk, whatever. When you choose to buy a game from steam, especially if it is on a website like GOG, you are choosing to have less control over your data. With large companies like Sony moving towards anti-consumer practices, it isn’t wise to believe that valve would never do the same.
As Gabe said, piracy is’nt a pricing issue, it’s a service issue. This problem has been addressed before and it will be again, if need be.
The ESA won’t thank you for spreading their rhetoric, you know.
I would think that the ESA would be happy for free support of their opinion. Unfortunately, the law is on their side. If you don’t like it, you have two options: try to change it or pretend it isnt true. One is easier, and I suspect both are about as likely to change things.
I want to say I read it in an interview like 15-20 years ago
If you reach out to Steam support, you’ll get a response like this.
(Not my support ticket, this was stolen from Reddit)
But who knows what measures are in place and if that would include all games.
Edit: I’m dumb and misread the convo. My response is about if Steam went away, you would still be able to access your games but the convo is about would Steam remove games from your library.
Steam delists games, however, if you already bought it, you still have access to it.
Valve has not jacked up prices: Their game prices have been consistently among the cheapest and the only reason their hardware is expensive now is because part manufacturers are mostly price gouging (lying about AI being the cause of ALL the increased costs, which isn’t true, just like it wasn’t entirely true with the bitcoin mining craze).
It’s also worth pointing out that Valve has made massive contributions to Linux gaming (and Linux in general), which enables people to game on potato-spec machines and compared to other gaming platforms, they are far better than almost all of them except for GOG.
Well, if the Steam Deck hasn’t gone up in price where you’re at, you might wanna buy a couple. Keep them sealed, you can sell them for a profit later. Most places, they’ve gone up quite a bit.
The cost of making the Steam Deck has gone up. Valve can’t sell them at a massive loss or they’ll go out of business. That’s not Valve jacking up the price, like I already pointed out:
Go re-read my post, because you clearly missed an important part
the only reason their hardware is expensive now is because part manufacturers are mostly price gouging (lying about AI being the cause of ALL the increased costs, which isn’t true, just like it wasn’t entirely true with the bitcoin mining craze).
Building a PC for yourself has skyrocketed in price too, blaming Valve is just ridiculous and anyone making that argument is just showing everyone that they are wildly ignorant.
Also, scalping is shitty.
Yeah, but if you give Valve a pass for jacking up hardware costs, you kinda have to give everyone else a pass. Otherwise it’s just bias.
I’m biased toward Valve over Microsoft and Sony, but I try to argue in good faith. Not saying you’re not, just that I try to hold myself to a standard. RAM, GPU, and storage costs are up so all game consoles are up. I don’t give Valve a pass here.
No, I don’t.
I can (and should) look at each one on a case by case basis, compare the parts, the actual costs of said parts, and make a determination from there. In the case of Steam devices, I do not lot believe they are price gouging - you can build a similar device that’s going to be on par with or less expensive than their machine, but not by all that much.
Being a scalper on the internet? It’s more likely than you think
DRM is up to publishers, not Steam. Valve doesn’t enforce or require it, and it’s unlikely publishers would lift DRM from their games because Valve asked.
Steam does have a DRM mechanism - it’s optional and easy to circumvent, but it’s there
Yes, and Steam doesn’t force it on a publisher. They can opt out.
Steam itself is DRM
There are many, many DRM free games on Steam.
Stop spreading this nonsense. There are arguments against Steam, but until they require DRM to be on their platform, this isn’t one of them.
None of them are DRM free. Every game requires the Steam client to download, launch, and play. Stop spreading this nonsense.
Incorrect. DRM free games on Steam do not require the Steam client to be running to run them.
Try it before commenting.
I have tried it. It doesn’t work.
Not by my definition. Not in the same way as denuvo or dvd movie drm is.
It is in the sense that you can’t play the games without it.
You can. Many of steam games you can just archive or copy over somewhere else and they’ll still work just fine.
And you can get a crack for most DRM out there (nowadays, even Denuvo).
Being weak and possible to work around for those with sufficient technical skill doesn’t make it any less a DRM.
Steam’s DRM is clearly only trying to stop the people with average and below technical skills from installing and running the games outside steam, not trying to stop the people with higher technical expertise from going around it (and in fact if you use something like the Goldberg Emulator there are even more games which can be made to run outside Steam than just the “many” you talk about).
By comparison the no-DRM posture you see in with GOG is not only “here are the offline installers to download” directly from the page for the game in your library but even “CONTRACTUALLY game publishers cannot sell games here with ANY DRM”.
“The rules are there but we don’t enforce them” is a very different posture from “we make sure there are no such rules”.
None of this affects the fact that, contrary to what the person above claimed, there are games on Steam without DRM.
No, cracking the game vs just copying the downloaded file is not equivalent. How did you not see that? With copying the file it means the original file is already DRM free and does not require steam. So steam is just a glorified downloader and launcher in that sense
Even if Valve promised DRM-free downloads if they go belly up there’s no chance in hell they’ll ever actually do that
Why do you think that? Turning off DRM would be trivial and they might even end up being legally obligated to do just that either because of laws or because of how whatever hypothetical bankruptcy they go through might be structured. Never mind Valve going belly up seems highly unlikely to begin with. If it does ever happen and it happens in the way you describe, piracy will absolutely skyrocket and people will stop buying games online after they’ve had their trust shaken.
I’ve heard it requires a DLL to disable steams basic drm, and it’s been that way for 20+ years.
You can do this right now with the Goldberg Emulator, but it doesn’t work well for games which are deeply integrated with Steam’s API (for example, to do things like Cloud Saves).
and that they can take your content at any time for any reason.
Its less that they can and more that they definitely will. The fact that they can has been fear-mongered and pearl-clutched over since the dawn of online sales.
Until now its been handwaved away as obviously nobody would actually shoot themselves in the fucking face like that. But then they did.
Sony and StudioCanal isn’t the first time it’s happened, though. It’s just making a lot more waves.
How have Epic and GOG been faring?
Epic is run by an idiot.
GOG had its ups and downs, but I’ve been able to build a sizeable library there.
GoG appears to be around 2.5% market share as of November 2025. For contrast, Steam is around 75%.
Frankly, I don’t give a shit about Epic Games. Tim Sweeney can go suck-start a shotgun for all I care, complete piece of shit human being.
The key is being consistent and transparent. We got gut punched by the Steam Machine price, but it was an expected and transparent outcome. XBOX and Sony are so volatile that it’s making Steam look like a saint. From laying people off, to constant price increases, to the disc situation. Both these companies need to chill tf out.
Add to this MS buying up all of these game studios to do nothing with them and then kill them because they’re so inept.
Their actions look like a typical monopoly. Buy competition to destroy it later so you’re the only one in business.
That is the entire content of the Microsoft’s Guide to Business Practices.
One page, one sentence.
Embrace, Extended, Extinguish.
Microsoft, monday morning: “how the fuck do we buy Linux?”
