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Comment by add-sub-mul-div | Hacker News Reader

It's not cool that they successfully made themselves a rent seeker on PC game installation because gamers below a certain age didn't want to learn how to click on setup.exe. We needlessly gifted them a closed platform where it had previously been open in a way that Playstation (for example) is not.

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You're completely missing the fact that they established themselves as a trusted e-shop, with consumer friendly policies, in a day before people trusted PayPal. It had a lot less to do with 'not wanting to click setup.exe' and more 'Mom trusts Steam because her coworker told her it's safe' to a generation of kids without CCs.

I think Roblox, Minecraft, WoW, LoL, and Fortnite all prove it's fully possible to operate outside that closed platform and see success, as well.

> with consumer friendly policies

Only up to a certain point. Valve still doesn’t recognise inheritance and people dying as a very real thing.

They expect families to just throw away dad’s login details because he died.

I understand that this is most likely the licensing legalese they have in place that forces it this way, but it really is time that someone in the EU took Valve to court to test this.

I'm in no way trying to white-knight them or say they're perfect. Valve might literally be the origin of Loot-boxes in video games, a mechanic that's essentially a slot machine in disguise, and packages it to children.

I just think they're currently top of the class, all things considered

I forgot, I think the most important part, they had Gift Cards at Game Stop(EB Games, whatever your local chain was). Even before people really trusted online transactions, a Steam Card could be purchased in a store where you were fairly confident you weren't being scammed.

>because gamers below a certain age didn't want to learn how to click on setup.exe

launching the installer/game is probably one of the least impactful components of steam, and certainly not why it got popular

Difference here is that absolutely nothing is stopping you from still distributing your game that way. You are not forced into the Steam marketplace nor must you to be successful (ex. Starsector), it's simply generally good business to do so.

As a small game developer, the steamworks SDK takes care of so many things I no longer have to care about. I don't have to run NAT punching infrastructure, I don't have to run a presence server and matchmaking services, handle user PII, cloud saves, workshop mod hosting (which can get very large with texturing and media), etc etc. It has an attractive value as a game developer too, not just as an end-user.

People use steam because they actually like the software. It isn't a big mystery.

> rent seeker

Well, it's clear now that you've neither used Steam nor developed a game yourself (or, you have, but you're engaging in propaganda), because the value that Steam provides for someone either playing or developing/selling games is insane.

Local currencies, regional pricing/payment methods, gift cards, Steam Wallet, game gifting, product keys, wallet/credit system (Steam wallet), bundles, DLC, complex storefront (topics/labels, discovery queue, wishlist, sale notifications), user reviews, game refunds, CDN, a really good download/update system, player metrics, shader pre-caching, shared runtime management, cloud saves, game management across multiple drives, LAN downloads/updates, beta/release/build management, DRM and anticheat, game collections, developer updates, forums, Big Picture/Steam Deck UI, Proton, Steam Input, a complex social system (friends, text chat, voice chat, add codes, profiles), social integration with games, account 2FA, and many, many, many more things. (go and ask a LLM and I'm sure it'll be more than happy to give you a far longer list :)

They have refunds only because they were sued and lost.

They also run a huge child gambling ring. A big NFT market. Popularized lootboxes , microtransactions and paid battlepasses.

This is an attempt to shift the goalposts from an argument about value to an argument about morality.

It's also committing whataboutism.

The funny thing is even with those fallacies, it's still wrong.

> They also run a huge child gambling ring

Where are they specifically targeting children? Citation needed.

> A big NFT market

Where's this "Valve NFT" you're describing? I've never seen it.

> microtransactions and paid battlepasses

I have no issues with either of those.

Two bad things (lootboxes and refunds needing legislation, that are far exceeded by most of their competitors) out of the dozens of good things they've done.

> Where's this "Valve NFT" you're describing? I've never seen it.

https://steamcommunity.com/market/

That's not an NFT. You're trying to redefine words that have extremely well-established meanings to push a political agenda. That's evil.

People of certain age remember just how much pain the whole CD/DVD process was. Finding patches, having annoying DRM later... And then early download stores or having game specific launcher for every single game... Some of which worked okay... Some of those games don't even work anymore...

There is clearly user experience reason why Steam gained and hold so much ground. Things really were not better without it.

Like many other terms, "Rent seeker" has lost all meaning. A company providing an innovative and superior service is now "rent seeking".

The largest games of all time never came to Steam - Minecraft and Roblox. but their launchers are light and accessible - Pretty close to Steam in terms of experience, even though they are filling with ads and bloat more recently. GTA V took forever to leave the awful Rockstar launcher and suffered for it.

Having played through literally every era of PC gaming, back to typing "mode co80" to play Zaxxon on my IBM PC... this is bunk. Steam is fantastic, and the first place I go to for most gaming. In fact, I get annoyed if I can't go to Steam in some cases.

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