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305 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.235s | source
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TehCorwiz ◴[] No.43569014[source]
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

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SOLAR_FIELDS ◴[] No.43569332[source]
The sticky thing that keeps me in the steam platform is the software itself: notably, Steam Workshop. I normally source my games DRM free but after some experience trying to manage mods of heavily modded games like Rimworld I have come to discover that the value add of package management via Workshop for the exact same price is 100% worth it. Even though I trade DRM for it.
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candiddevmike ◴[] No.43571754[source]
FWIW RimWorld on steam is DRM free. You can copy it and launch it without steam.
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atrus ◴[] No.43574133[source]
Yeah, people complain about steam DRM, but it's not even enforced. Games have to choose to enable steam drm. I'm not going to begrudge Valve for having an optional tool.
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1. SOLAR_FIELDS ◴[] No.43577840[source]
I think for me it’s less about the games themselves and more about not wanting to support a platform that embraces the concept at all.