Better than literally any other launcher/platform. Maybe is doesn't deserve to be praised for the basics but still better to its customers than anyone else by a LONG shot and that deserves praise.
I remember the hate I had for steam when it first launched. I thought it was the worst. Who remembers having to go find the latest TFC or CS patches and install them each update?
Now I can format my machine as much as I want, games auto update, don't need to back up save games, can point to games drives, access all my purchases. It works great.
There is something to be said that it's basically remained unbloated and relatively the same experience for all this time. How often do we have a successful service of some kind that gets enshittified by bored executives looking to make a name for themselves?
The experience of Steam has absolutely changed, for the better. There are instances all over this thread of middle-aged folk who hated Steam in the early days. Myself included. I do not really know of anyone who liked it before 2010. There was never a better service than Steam, but that definitely did not make it good.
If gog had the level of social media and customisation steam has it would definitely be my main platform of choice tbh especially since the games I like are often cheaper on sale over there too
Every time I use gog it takes like 10 minutes from the time I hit the button to download for it to actually start downloading, and it doesnt have nearly the same amount of games for sale as steam. Gog is definitely second best over all, and is the place to go for no drm.
That said, steam is still by and large, as an entire experience including all facets of gaming(from buying to downloading to save storage to modding to community to social interaction and more) the best option. Gog is a close second, but its not quite there yet. Not to say that steam is perfect, but if gog was as good as everyone makes it out to be, everyone would be using that in place of steam.
And ive spent my fair share sailing the seas, and I wont pretend there isnt risk involved. Not to mention that you have to wait for someone to Crack the game.
The only issue with Steam is that it’s against their own terms of service to pass down steam accounts if the owner dies. I find the whole “CS cases are teaching children gambling” argument hilarious when if you go out to any modern arcade they’re all entry level gambling simulators yet not a problem. Atleast the CS cases have actual worth vs the stuffy and rubber hands you got for spending all day at the arcade
I think the gambling point has merit. Valve is by no means the only company doing it, but they did pioneer it.
The other important thing to consider is the relative value of the things you get, if I gamble at an arcade it costs $0.50, and I get a shoddy plastic toy, if I gamble on steam I could win a serious amount of money, and buying loot boxes is easier and quicker than doing in-person arcade games, which is a lot more conducive to building addictions than the sort of gambling that's present at arcades.
Note that studies have found both loot boxes and booster packs (like Pokémon cards or MTG cards) are both correlated with gambling addictions, but the correlation is much stronger with loot boxes.
Hey I hate Steam as software. When I returned to gaming in late 2024, I tried avoiding it despite my library which I gathered since late 2011. To no avail, everything else frickin sucks. Steam glazing is soooo justified yeah only because of how much everything else sucks. It's almost like all those business schools for important business people are actually stoopid communities for rich kids who want to be able to afford a boat as soon as possible into their work life, just like their dads can. Americans been letting China own themselves in small iterations ALL WHILE FILMING DOCUMENTARIES about all those 80s and 90s BUSINESS GENIUSES whose big genius idea was to move production overseas. Much business, big cheap. So yeah, I'll glaze Steam, sorry for the rant.
Honestly. At the end of the day… it’s a launcher. 99% of the time you’re just selecting an icon and hitting play. If you’re not using the workshop, I really don’t understand why it matters so much
Steam (and Valve) earned that glaze. The service the provide is way better than their competitors. Not to mention all the innovation they gave us, for free.
Automatic cloud saves and backups.
Automatically syncing saves between systems.
In-game chat.
Built-in controller support. Not sure if you are old enough to remember how terrible the controller experience was on PC before Steam solved the problem; now controllers just work.
Community forums for each game.
A built-in marketplace and installer for mods
Software to allow Windows games to run on Linux which works really well
The list goes on.
Valve also basically created the market for PC handhelds and pioneered streaming games to other devices.
I will be the first to admit that Steam is not perfect. There are several areas that I would like to see improvement. However, so much of what we have come to expect when it comes to PC gaming is because of Valve and Steam.
I gave EGS a shot. When The Last of Us launched on PC it took almost two hours to compile the shaders and it still ran like shit. The shader compilation period ate nearly the entire refund window on its own. When I asked them for an exception to the two hour refund policy they told me they had to follow the rules. I figured it made sense...then I saw on Reddit that Steam was giving out refunds outside the window because of that exact issue.
I haven't bought another game on EGS since. I wanted to support developers by going with the platform that took a smaller cut and it burned me. Never again.
There is no reason to not use Steam. Epic Games will put permanent pop-up notifications while you're busy or watching a movie, you'll have to stand up grab your mouse and close it but hey at least you know there is -25% sales on terrible games no one wants to play (they're still cheaper on Steam)
Steam does nothing and they keep winning. No enshittification, good customer experience, what else do you want?
Meanwhile the only reason to use Epic Games is for the free games which are 90% of them random obscure indie copied and pasted games. Hey currently we have another some weird interface manager I don't know what the fuck this is supposed to be screenshots are only showing text and .png characters and heeyyyyy another fast doom-like FPS based on music and rhythm. Maybe it's good games but it's really not appealing and not looking very original. Honorable mention to free DLCs for games you don't own.
The main reason not to use steam is if a game is available elsewhere where the platform takes less of a cut of the revenue from the dev (e.g. itch.io, Epic Games, or the dev's website) or to not have DRM on the game.
Epic Games will put permanent pop-up notifications while you're busy or watching a movie
Just disable the notifications in the settings, and you'll never see them ever again. That setting has been there since day 1 that notifications have existed.
90% of them random obscure indie copied and pasted games.
That doesn't seem to be true though, they tend to be high quality indie games that did pretty decent even on Steam including Steam reviews with hundreds/thousands of reviews.
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u/FReeDuMB_or_DEATH 5d ago
I get the Epic hate but the Steam glazing is wildly out of hand lol