The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

No company is your friend. But Valve does a great job at being consumer friendly. Steam is a great low-pressure sales environment. It provides features that make it more enjoyable for users to play, hang out, communicate, share content, mods. It doesn't harangue you or change your settings, or the UI, or your games (mostly) without reason and warning. Things work like you expect them to in other apps, back buttons work. You can pop open multiple windows. It gets out of your way. You can even set your kids accounts to not have access to the store, something that literally no other company does. I'd love to disable the Minecraft Marketplace for my kids because sometimes they spend more time looking at things there than playing.

GabeN called piracy a service problem. And he's right. I've received games free on other platforms like Epic or EA and I've bought them from Steam just so I don't have to use the terrible apps. If I was younger or couldn't afford it, maybe I'd be sailing the seas. I bought Alan Wake 2 on Epic since it's a timed exclusive. I plan on buying it again once it releases on Steam because Epic is just so terrible. All the effort went into the store and almost none into the actual act of playing the game which is where I'm spending the majority of my time while I'm in the app!

Most companies don't care about customer satisfaction or post sales support. They have your money, why would they. Oh, yeah, repeat customers.

EDIT: Just to add a gripe about Amazon. Their games app is so bad that if you use the back button on your mouse while a screenshot is open the page changes but the image stays until you close it. If you click on a game to view the details in a long list of games and then go back it loses your sort order and position in the games listing. It's frustrating to use even just to find something to play. Steam has its own rough edges, but they're not in the golden path of discover -> buy -> install -> play -> share

> Steam is a great low-pressure sales environment.

Eh.. It seems very common for Steam users to have libraries of thousands of purchased games, 99% unplayed, purchased at steep discounts during sales. The way Steam operates does a great job of instilling Fear Of Missing Out, and getting people to buy things they never end up using.

It's not like this is Steam fault. You can always return games you played under 2 hours no questions asked. Some people just like to buy stuff they dont need or hoard random things, but it's as old as humanity itself

At leastrented digital games on Steam account dont contribute to global warming, waste problems and dont use tons of electicity to mint some tokens.

I guess only major issue Steam really have to solve is ability to inherit these digital purchases if owner has died. Their license agreement dont have proper procedure for that.

> You can always return games you played under 2 hours no questions asked.

Within 14 days.

14 days is pretty much standard cool off window for lots of services.

If you havent played game at all most likely Steam will just accept return in much wider return window especially if there some new sale has started making game much cheaper or something.

Also if for some reason game was compatible with your platform (Linux, Mac) there are cases where Valve refunded money years after due to developers breaking compatibility.

PS: Yeah in the beginning Valve was certainly forced into implementing return policy by authorities, but today their return policy is one of the best of all software distribution platforms.