Then trust busting needs to happen

profits down but stocks rise with increased investment.

The concept of "firing your customers" even became part of marketing strategy in the last decade. Amazing what kind of nonsense bubbles up out of the muck when markets see less competition.

Right behind us, is what they meant.

My husband remembers buying The Ship in a store, and when he went to install it out said he had to install something called Steam for the multiplayer. He was baffled and annoyed.

Now all the games we have save a few from GOG are steam.

They failed at first attempt with steamOS, but they learned the lesson, and came back swinging with years of preparation.

Yeah the steam "sales" that cost more than used physical games because valve killed them. How generous of Gabe.

The steam cult among PC gamers is fucking absurd. Valve did more damage to PC gaming than any other company on the planet.

If it weren't for national and local governments repeatedly suing them we wouldn't even have their meager 2 hour refund policy.

The basic principle is the same: a DRM-enabled online store, and more often than not the only source for certain games, a monopoly.

They literally cornered the digital sales market from the very beginning with HL2. It has nothing to do with "improvements to the platform". By the time other companies had the infrastructure to try to catch up it was far too late. If you wanted to sell a PC game digitally, you had to do it on steam.

So much ridiculous counterfactual revisionist history in this thread.

That is the entire content of the Microsoft's Guide to Business Practices.

One page, one sentence.

Embrace, Extended, Extinguish.

Microsoft, monday morning: "how the fuck do we buy Linux?"

I want to say I read it in an interview like 15-20 years ago

You don't own any software! All software is licensed, yes, even FOSS software. The only software you own in a traditional sense is public domain which not only is a vanishingly small portion of software made, but is also a category that is difficult or impossible for software to be made a part of, depending on the laws in your country.

This is no different for Steam vs. anywhere else you can buy games, even with physical copies. The only benefit of physical copies is that it's much harder to remove access to those games after you purchase the license, unless there is online activation or DRM.

Edit: I should clarify the only other software you own is the software you create or paid to have created. Then you can license its use for others, or not, as you choose. So MS owns Windows, and I own some small number of applications I've created, and other companies or individuals own the software they produced. But none of that has any bearing on games on Steam or anywhere else where you're spending money to get access to a copy of a game.

Steam delists games, however, if you already bought it, you still have access to it.

Yes, and Steam doesn't force it on a publisher. They can opt out.

Not by my definition. Not in the same way as denuvo or dvd movie drm is.

There are many, many DRM free games on Steam.

Stop spreading this nonsense. There are arguments against Steam, but until they require DRM to be on their platform, this isn't one of them.

You can do this right now with the Goldberg Emulator, but it doesn't work well for games which are deeply integrated with Steam's API (for example, to do things like Cloud Saves).

They'd get sued to oblivion if they disabled DRM for all their games and you know it. This is just delusional.

The cost of making the Steam Deck has gone up. Valve can't sell them at a massive loss or they'll go out of business. That's not Valve jacking up the price, like I already pointed out:

Go re-read my post, because you clearly missed an important part

the only reason their hardware is expensive now is because part manufacturers are mostly price gouging (lying about AI being the cause of ALL the increased costs, which isn't true, just like it wasn't entirely true with the bitcoin mining craze).

Building a PC for yourself has skyrocketed in price too, blaming Valve is just ridiculous and anyone making that argument is just showing everyone that they are wildly ignorant.

Also, scalping is shitty.

Being a scalper on the internet? It's more likely than you think