this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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The most promising Disco Elysium successor studio says workers must unite to topple Valve's 'digital fiefdom' of Steam (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (21 children)

Right on. I enjoy steam and I find Valve are mostly responsible gatekeepers, but at the end of the day, they’re still a gatekeeper

[–] Charzard4261@programming.dev 30 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Are they gatekeepers though? It's not like they own Windows or Linux and stop you from using any other store. Just having the biggest audience doesn't make them gatekeepers to the market.

I never see people talking about what valve should change other than lowering the 30% cut, but arbitrarily forcing that would set a bad precedent.

Instead of virtue signalling here's reasonable things Valve could do:

  • allow developers to chose what features of steam they use for each game, allowing them to lower the cut by individually opting out of forums, workshop, cloud saves, achievements, inventory items etc
  • offer a purchase = one time download with no drm (still legally one copy) for the closest thing to "owning" a digital game
  • allow someone to inherit a steam account

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure proton is free to use and you can install stores and games not from steam on a Steam Deck, so again I really don't know what they're gatekeeping.

[–] Ashtear@lemm.ee 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

For specifics, I'd like to see consistent, transparent censorship standards, and Steam Workshop files made publicly available.

Steam's censorship issues are only going to be more of a problem as the Japanese PC market continues its explosive growth. The platform's inconsistency is surely frustrating Japanese developers, and the lack of transparency is giving fuel to a (not unearned) narrative that its content reviewers are arbitrary and xenophobic.

The Workshop matter is far smaller in comparison, but Steam is gatekeeping crowdsourced work product.

[–] Charzard4261@programming.dev 3 points 2 weeks ago

The workshop is an interesting topic and one if like to see a larger discussion around - theoretically people are free to upload their workshop content outside of Steam altogether, but arguably it's on developers to support importing non-workshop content.

Censorship is definitely something that needs sorting out. I hadn't heard of much censorship going on but I can definitely see it happening, giv n Japan's standards can differentiate massively from America's. Clear rules need to be laid, and I hope clear reasons are given when it occurs.

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