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I love steam, but let's get real here for a second. Valve will change some day. Enshitification is inevitable.
GabeN will not live forever. The vultures circle endlessly, and one day they will win. There is no good ending here (for now).
Consider building a tower, downloading everything youve purchased on steam, and keep it offline. Maybe have a 2nd set of hard drives as a backup. Put these priceless artifacts in your will.
Plan accordingly and enjoy the ride while it lasts.
I love steam, but let's get real here for a second. Valve will change some day. Enshitification is inevitable.
Steam is an example where I'm not sure when it would happen.
It already comes with a hefty fee of 30% per sale on the platform. I don't think they can raise that without serious backlash. And there also isn't really a need, Steam prints money. It prints money because it's where users are. Users are there because they like the features. Some good features are only there because of laws (e.g. refunding); Valve can't remove these.
So how would you make the service even more profitable?
Enshittification happens because corporations want (more) money out of a service that built a userbase. These were often running at a loss. To turn a profit, they need to change.
Steam can sell you licenses to games you don't own already. It's up to each publisher. Valve doesn't care, they just deliver.
They could add a fee to re-download games, a subscription requirement to use friend invites, start throwing spam notifications on your screen/in your email inbox about “sponsored content”, upload your browser history for better ad targeting, etc. the list gets pretty long pretty quickly. Just look at what the Epic store does right now (hint, it’s almost all of those things already).
The Epic "Store" barely qualifies as such, no wonder they're trying to get at least something out of it
Think of it more like Netflix. Netflix was great, then the market fractured and Netflix enshitified in response.
What it would take here is for a publisher to become a real distributor in the space, but competition is weak right now. Just like it really took Disney wading in to disrupt Netflix, it would take someone equally large, like Microsoft, to disrupt Steam. Sorry Ubisoft, but you don't cut it.
Publishers already tried this (EA, Ubisoft, etc) and it didn't really work. They came back to Steam.
Arrg matey!
I don't play many AAA games but I'm forever gutted that the fight to make them able to be pirated is a losing battle. I want to pay for my indie games but on occasion I look online at the crack status of AAA games from oecen 2-3 years ago and they're still not playable.
It creates a weird dichotomy where people who pirate or at least don't buy expensive games don't take part in the mainstream gaming conversation at all, which is totally different from the rest of pirated media.
Which AAA aren't cracked?
The only two I can think of (that I've ever thought of playing but haven't been able to pirate) are the newer Dragons Dogma and the recent Black Myth Wukong game but those arent from 2-3 years ago so I'm curious which ones you are thinking about.
They will never go public so enshittification rules don't necessarily apply
Never say never, but I don't think it's going to happen while Gabe is in charge
I doubt gabe would choose a successor that would make steam public either, though.
Maybe, maybe not. As equity holders get older they may be looking to cash out so they can fuel their retirements.
I don't think that's something Gabe is interested in, but we're talking about what will happen when he dies.
Sure, but hopefully that's a very long time away, and there's always piracy. Hopefully Gabe lasts for another 20 years or longer. Hopefully he has a high-quality person as a successor.
steam survey says 1.92% is on linux. So there's about 736,651 linux users on steam?! neat
Many of those Steam Deck, I bet.
Bazzite on my desktop and a Steamdeck here!
https://partner.steamgames.com/ says there are 132 million monthly active Steam users, so that's more like 2.5 million Linux users on Steam.
Wild that the video game industry is so big, and this still isn't even 1% of people on earth.
Also keep in mind this is peak concurrent players. I imagine the MAU is much higher, since most of the world doesn't game at the same time.
This is just steam. It's estimated that about 3 billion people regularly play video games.
Yeah but you'd think more what use steam. I wonder what the platform breakdown is .
90% mobile phones my guy.
Sure, but 38,000,000 x $60 = $2,280,000,000. And that's if they all spend only $60/year, and only on Steam, and the average I'm sure is much higher.
huh, what dropped in 2020 that caused that big spike?
COVID-19. 😏
Damn, you reply quick. yep, I realized the instant i asked and felt stupid, eheh.
Don't delete your comment for asking a legit question! Others might be ignorant as well and benefit from the Q&A.
I remember when 9 million was a lot.
I remember when 1 million was a lot.
It's still crazy to me that this is the same program I used to browse CS zombie mod servers. There was no real store to speak of then.
All of them playing that KFC dating Sim
Cant believe this actually exist xd https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colonel_Sanders_A_Finger_Lickin_Good_Dating_Simulator/
Still wild to me how competition shoots themselves in the foot. It's even worse than streaming services.
At this point, there's nothing anybody can do to compete with Steam. GOG exists, and despite their awesome raison d'etre, their launcher UI is crap. Epic is probably the closest thing to a competitor, and even its nonstop free game offerings (mostly unheard of indies now) isn't enough to get me to switch. Also, its UI is crap and the launcher itself is really unstable (constantly refreshes your library and sends you back to the top). The time to launch a competitor was in 2005, when Steam wasn't that good yet.
I honestly thought the number of concurrent users was a lot higher a lot longer ago, but either way, it's come a long way since ~2003?
38 million only? I thought there were way more gamers out there. Isn't it a market bigger than TV and cinema combined? (maybe even sports included?)
These are concurrent users, i.e. the number of players all playing at one time. The total number of Steam users is WAY higher.
Believe in Gabe 👁️ 👃 👁️