The reason they can “sit back” and count their money is because they’re a private company. As soon as there’s rumblings of going public, then buy a sextant for navigating.

I find it hilarious that despite competition from a dozen game studios and publishers, steam essentially destroyed all of them by doing basically nothing and merely maintaining their service.

That's the thing. You can launch Steam and have it just get the hell out of your way, and go enjoy your games. You don't really have to interact with any of the features on a regular basis. For many players, that's perfect.

But it's actually been incredibly innovative. Proton has made Linux gaming a reality when it previously seemed impossible. Remote Play Together is basically wizardry. Steam Input is fucking brilliant and lightyears beyond other control customizations. These things are available to every Steam user gratis if you want them.

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I like the controller support and streamlining of Linux working compared to stuff like heroic launcher.

It's not innovative anymore, but it sure was when it released. But they kept it near its peak instead of making it utter horse crap.

I don’t even view Steam as being particularly innovative. They just don’t suck

Sadly, that's basically 'innovation' in this climate. Not being a shitty corpo is an innovation for a lot of MBAs that have more years in school than sense in their head.

Better yet:

Dear Gabe Newell,

Please never die so you can continue running this company as you always have. You make my life as a Linux user much better, and I'll keep paying you as long as that remains the case.

There may only be dozens of us, but we love your product. Never change.

They're the perfect example of why profitable companies should stay private. They make bonkers money, and if next quarter they make the same amount it's fine, as opposed to a public company where they only have value if they increase.

You'd be surprised how many steam games have no DRM other than steam itself. And how easy it is to put in a replacement (open-source) dll that acts as a steam emulator and runs the games without steam. I'd say... pretty much every non-AAA game on steam can have DRM removed this way. It's such barebones DRM that I can't really find reason to be angry at it.

Yup, but they need to support Linux better. I'm glad that Heroic exists and apparently they're now taking a cut of GOG purchases made through their launcher, but there's still a lot missing from what Galaxy does.

FYI games on Steam don't actually have to use any DRM. e.g. Kerbal Space Program -- you can download it, close the Steam client, copy it to another folder, unplug your network cable... then go launch the .EXE from its directory and play anyway.

I like gog the site not the gog galaxy app. I always have to look too hard to start a game up.

I used GOG much more when they were the only ones in town releasing old games, especially DOS games, that actually ran on modern systems. Steam has a lot of what I wasn't able to get anywhere but GOG now; many are even updated graphically or on new engines because certain old games are in vogue now. This isn't Steam or GOG's fault though... If anyone can be blamed, I'd blame Nightdive for making kick-ass source ports and not having them available on GOG.

Nothing I appreciate more than checking out the reviews and seeing "don't let it go unnoticed that this is an Ubisoft title, and therefore uses their launcher and drm" saved me regretful purchases (before the 2 week/2 hour return window) many times.

Really wish Valve or at least Steam became a steward owned company to save it from future owners ruining it.

I tend to buy on both Steam and GoG. That way I can have my preferred client but also have downloadable full copies of games.

You're ignoring a ton of stuff Valve has done. Look at what they've done for Linux gaming at a bare minimum.

If all you're doing is buying games for Windows, Steam doesn't offer much more than GOG. But if you're playing those games, well, that's a different story.

Not to mention that Steam lets you use keys bought from other platforms.