Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming

But Valve is just like any company. Their survival only ever depends on their customers.
If you think the terms of a feature (like workshop and stuff) are unfair, refuse to use it!
For example, I never publish reviews on commercial sites (Steam, Amazon, ...) because I refuse to contribute to their store for free.
If all those sites gave reviewers a few cents for providing honest content, things might be different.

So a company was in for the money all along?! Oh noe! We must tell others immediately! Thanks Polygon, at least you're not a company and you do things for us!

I read that article yesterday - it's total trash.

Valve is a business, and like every other business, it has its share of problems.
Steam is a distribution platform for games and just every other platform, it has its share of problems.

You don't like it - don't use it, and if you are going to use it remember that it's not perfect. I have been a Steam user for 8-9 years now, it's never been perfect, and it's had its share of frustrations, but I still use it. I'm making a game which I plan to publish to Steam. I know what I'm getting into. I also use GOG, Humble, Indiegala, Origin, Uplay and even Desura when it was a thing, knowing that they all have their pros and cons.

Bashing a service because it makes changes without knowing what the effects are in the long run, is a waste of time. Valve/Steam have made changes that many don't like, but it's all a work in progress, and still subject to change.

If you don't like Steam, don't use it. It's that simple.
If you don't like Value, fine. There is no gun at your head or wallet.

Valve is company, companies exist to make profit. Get over it. As long as they offer superior service, I'll keep on using Steam.

What you should know is that COMPETITION IS GOOD. Origin and Uplay are both crap but they have value for me because they create competition and push Steam to be better.

One suggestion, if you care about "healthy gaming" use GoG Galaxy. It's good, creates amazing value for users and they'll be around for a looong time.

TL;DR: GoG.com is an excellent site and they're leading the way in terms of fairness, community engagement, transparency, customer service, user experience and helping promising small developers. Not only is it better for developer and gamers, but it's also more profitable.. I recommend given them a chance and seeing what they're about: https://www.gog.com/galaxy

(deleted my long gushing ramble about gog.com because 1. no one has time to read that and 2. when i'm tired i tend to ramble and write gigantic monologues and i apologise. but i do hope that companies like steam adopt a more customer-friendly, developer-friendly and less-greedy system like gog.)

Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming

View attached image.

Cand somebody add an TL;DR ?

is not healthy? if Valve forced exclusivity on their platform i might see a point there but as it stands thats nonsense, if consumers want to keep spending their money on Steam is their right...

maybe is easier to have contempt for the platform that started digital distribution when it was a bother to you, but as someone who didnt have any chance to get into legal gaming but only thanks to steam, as someone who lived trough years of articles about "Is PC gaming dead already?" when this little platform help it keep afloat,... i guess sry for having a preference for steam?

I dont get all the fuss..
Personally I bought GTA pack (for 10 bucks) so I wouldnt have that wierd limited account. And I havent bought anything on steam since. Only humble or other platforms that sell keys.
Valve is business. Its there to make money.
And besides that - I think steam is one hell of a platform. I use all of them - uplay, origin, gog (I dont just go around hating on everything just because), but I truly enjoy steam. Achievments, trading cards, being able to create my profile to my needs.
I dont get all this hate. Nothing of it all really affects you that much that you have to go around bashing them all the time. Seems like its going to become another hipster thing to do - hate on steam.
As long as they dont fuck me over and take away games ive bought or take away possibility to play them - I dont give a hell about their tricky conditions and schemes. One could argue that its not ethical - yes.. but so isnt majority of companies on earth.

If could move to GoG all games, i say... All games i got on steam, i might able transfer there. And i mean here Skyrim, Orcs Must Die etc.

I knew it pretty well for long time, that Valve is no better than Blizzard, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo or Konami. But somehow we must play games right?

Valve was maybe your friend when they made counter strike and half life in their backyards. now they are like any other company. Money is number one. Costumers are the last.

it smells 10cent...

"Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming"

Even though the Steam platform stimulated the PC market and played a major part in making it the leading (?) gaming platform on the planet?

Are they perfect? Nope. Should we blindly follow whatever they say? Of course not. But name me one thing that has helped PC gaming more in the past decade.

Perhaps most people don't remember PC gaming beyond 10 years ago.

Yeah but Steam achievements.

I don't care, there's no one better.

The truth is hard to digest, specially when you have 1000+ games in a service like Steam. Reading several comments from butt-hurt fanboys was funny. I bet less than 10% of the people who wrote a comment, both in this thread and in that website, have read the entire article.

It is excellent, it has lots of links to other websites with evidences. This linked article is specially good:
No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there

Thanks for sharing it with us.

LOL Criticizing Steam on STEAMgifts, I bet you are using GOOGLE chrome installed on MICROSOFT OS also you share your opinions on FACEBOOK maybe on your IPHONE ... I can go on and on.
You can say that I am a STEAM fanwhatever :)) , I did get 2 10 for papers that had steam as subject .
I buy from where is cheap and store the game on the largest digital platform for PC games that is Steam. Also I have 53 game on GOG but that platform is for good old games .
HB, buy from there, I also do when the price is good, but you still need steam for the keys , steam goes away , HB will go away as the current business model.
Steam needs competition but to criticize for the sake of, it is ... call it what you want :D

I didn't expect such a great article from Polygon. Steam needs to be considered an enemy just like Origin or Uplay (that people hate) if we want it to improve itself.

I can agree with some of the points risen by the article but ultimately I use Steam because it is very convenient for me as a user. I have made most of my purchases on different stores in recent years but in the end it was still steam keys since I like having everything at one place (even so I still have Origin, Battle.net and even Uplay installed and have some games purchased on those since in some cases there is not other choice if I want to play a game legally).

That said, I can get behind the people who create content for Workshop feeling betrayed, and while Valve is responsible for that with their greed, it is Valve that has created this platform and has the right to take whatever the cut they want and they will get away with it as long as people still ship in new content (and players keep buying it).

In a same way I can get behind the devs and publishers not being happy about the 30% cut, which Valve can get away with thanks to its position on the PC games' market (which is in my opinion deserved since they were, AFAIK, the first to take the idea of a platform for gaming so far and spent a long time getting where they are). Whether the cut is acceptable in exchange for the exposure and buying power of steam userbase is up to the devs to decide.

To somehow sum this up, most of the points the article makes are valid but IMO not applicable to the general users, though I appreciate the debunking of the "Goog Guy Valve" facade since at the end of the day Valve is indeed just another company out there to make money but as long as the platform works without major hicups and is convenient to use I will just keep using it and do not see any reason not to do so despite the ever increasing number of people trying to tell me not to do so.

I've read it all yesterday. Some numbers are really oustrageous. 25% only for modders who put hours of work on workshop??? damn.

Valve needs to change. We need too.

But I understand how difficult it may be. We are stick to our beloved steam accounts because it feels like a part of us. It's "our" library of games and statistics, our main portal for the gaming world.
But what happens when we need customer support? We read threads full of amazing users trying to help each others, pointing solutions for all our problems. Gamers made what steam is now.

Change to GOG seems the more reasonable choice because DRM feature but it will take a while.

Uplay and Origin are improving, with more games on their store, but..we need a universal solution were we own what we buy. Don't you think?

It's hard to have a solution for this..

Valve is not the only issue at hand the consumer is also part of this problem as without them Valve would not exist.This a two way road my and at some point paths will cross.The moment consumers bought Half-Life 2 and accepted Steam to play the game is when this ball started rolling.Usually the things that seem the most harmless tend to do the most damage.I am sure a lot who opted into Valve to play HL2 did not think it would be what it is today Valve succeed with there Trojan Horse.

I will instead shift to other platforms and other sources to get my games to cut Steam out of the loop as much as possible.This will matter little in the big scheme of things thanks to Steam market and CS-GO trinkets and cards and so on.I can at least still try and do my part and vote with my wallet and hope others due the same.The thing is this will do little until they realize they are not the only real game in town and this most likely will never happen because it is far easier to accept Steam no matter how terrible it may be so they can have everything in one spot convenience always comes at a cost

Origin,Uplay are not viable competition though they may have been if people did not hate on them so much.I am okay with having a couple platforms with games on them if it means I get choices and better service.As much as people hated on EA at least they had refunds way before Valve and was not forced to offer them.The only reason Valve has them was from being forced to offer them by Aussie law yet Uplay and EA are the evil ones with shitty platforms.

As a commited market liberal it saddens me seeing the state of gaming forums, youtube or subreddits for valve's games. People are very oblivious when it comes to Steam. I have a vast library on Steam and sometimes the fact that I don't actually own those games like I did the boxed copy of Grim Fandango that somehow found it's way to my cupboard stings.