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305 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | 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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j1elo ◴[] No.43569520[source]
That's why lots of us are worried about when something happens to Gabe, and some black suited C level raven is promoted as CEO and starts asking questions like "why don't we push for the latest expansion packs? why don't we gate features behind subscriptions?" and all that anti-consumer shit that breaks with the original spirit of so many products.
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freedomben ◴[] No.43572886[source]
Indeed, it's hard to imagine a person (that I don't personally know) who I more want to ensure a very, very long and productive life than GabeN. He has done more for us Linux/open source people than nearly anyone else I can think of besides maybe the Linux kernel team, Red Hat, and Arch, Debian and other bigtime contributors.
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dismalaf ◴[] No.43584353[source]
Don't forget what Linux was like pre-Google and pre-Chrome. Google has contributed a ton to Linux, not even counting Android...
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1. freedomben ◴[] No.43586519[source]
Thank you, that's an excellent point. I have my criticisms for Google but they have really done a lot for Linux and open source in general. Increasingly also Meta has been making significant contributions