Is Play Store or Steam any better?
All these stores are basically little monopolies with zero incentive to not suck. They also suck from a user point of view. Search is terrible, they’re full of shovelware, etc.
All these stores are basically little monopolies with zero incentive to not suck. They also suck from a user point of view. Search is terrible, they’re full of shovelware, etc.
IMO this is directly due to Gabe Newell's leadership. Taking an attitude of "piracy is a service problem", and proceeding to offer such a good service that it's preferable to pirating, results in a great service for everyone involved.
Whether this will outlast GabeN's tenure as CEO remains to be seen, but for now my understanding is that both users and developers are overwhelmingly happy with Steam.
My favourite way to phrase this is that "steam is the most anti-piracy store available. With piracy, you play games you didn't buy. On steam, you buy games you never play."
https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-takes-steps-against-steam-revi...
I don't think it's unreasonable to flag that.
And Valve saw that coming some time ago, and invested in making both Steam and the games sold through it run on Linux.
No experience on Steam but a few indie-game devs I know think it's OK. I've not heard them complain like App-devs on those phone-stores.