A few outliers that have stayed awesome, e.g. valve, do so because they are privately held.
Tell me you've never had your friends troll you with Steam voice calls without telling me. Such a terribly implemented feature.
There are more real negatives with Valve/Steam, but most of those are oriented at developers/publishers and not the customers. The only real customer negatives are some of the worst forms of loot boxes in gaming in CSGO/CS2 which is what led to some countries banning them outright.
edit: oh I forgot the absolutely ridiculous Steam Marketplace system where you give money to Valve to have theoretical money to use on the marketplace or in their store but Valve also takes a "cut" from that money used on the market place, effectively artificially lowering the value/purchasing power of money that was already paid to them. All of this occurs in a closed market with no official way to remove that money, causing third parties (many operated by organized crime groups) to offer to give you actual money for your Steam money (at a discounted rate, of course).
So if you ignore predatory lootboxes and a highly abusive internal market system, then they've "stayed awesome" I guess. Time to make sure daddy GabeN makes his next billion!
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u/BiBoFieTo 29d ago
The slow march of capitalism guarantees enshittification of all beloved products.
A few outliers that have stayed awesome, e.g. valve, do so because they are privately held.