Steam is doing the same thing as Microsoft, between DRM-locking everything so you don't own it, and gatekeeping what titles are actually allowed in their store. They're both locking you into their vision of the future.
DRM is optional on Steam. The dev can opt to not include it, and the default Steam DRM is trivially bypassed anyway.
Valve barely does any gatekeeping that isn't caused by outside pressure, i.e. Visa and Mastercard in the latest instance, which they're atleast trying to fight back against, from what I can tell.
Valve does some important gatekeeping that has a real impact:
There's (almost?) no ads and microtransactions in Steam games. If you look at mobile games or browser games, you can see that developers would put them in, if they could.
Fair point! Although that's a gate I very much like.
I don't think Steam has any complete blockers to microtransactions, given that there are games that do have it, although I don't think they're as predatory about it as mobile games are. Maybe that's down to cultural differences between PC and mobile, or maybe there's more too it.
Ads standing in the way of gameplay are indeed banned,[1] although there are ways around that I'm sure if devs really wanted to be knobheads about it, but people on PC tend to be more loud about ads in their games than on mobile.[2]
There's no way to identify ahead of purchasing a game whether or not it's got DRM.
Valve has been gatekeeping long before this year's Visa and Mastercard crackdowns. It's been an ongoing problem since at least 2018. They'll flunk a title at review without telling the developer what they did wrong, or even allowing them to resubmit with adjustments. I don't see any sign of them fighting.
> There's no way to identify ahead of purchasing a game whether or not it's got DRM.
For Steam's own DRM I do believe that to be true, but mostly not a problem, since Steam's DRM is just there so that the DRM checkbox is ticked. Any user can bypass it if they care, and the ones who do go to GOG for their games.
For DRM beyond that, this isn't true. Denuvo and Securom is listed on store pages for games that have it, and the same goes for kernel-level anti-cheat.
PCGamingWiki has a good list outside of that,[1] but from what I can tell, Steam has a warning about DRM on all the store pages listed there.
> I don't see any sign of them fighting.
Quoting this article:[2]
> Apart from that, both Valve and Itch.io explicitly stated that payment processors are the reason games were deindexed or removed from sale entirely.
Given that Visa and Mastercard some pretty big giants, I'd say they're making a fight of what they can. Valve's hardly to blame. They're just in a bad situation. Blame Collective Shout for starting the ruckus.
No they are not. You can install the Epic store and others right on a Steam deck and use it. You can start any binary you wish, direct from the steam launcher. You can use the steam deck as a full-on desktop if you wished.
If Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus, what happens when his estate sells majority control to pay the inheritance and estate taxes?
With federal taxes of 40% over $15 million, there's no way his estate maintains majority control, no matter Gabe's good intentions. After that, we can look forward to Microsoft Steam. Or, if the FTC is annoyed, Amazon Steam.
C. And the estate may just want to sell more Steam shares to keep whatever they are intact
D. Even if by some miracle Gabe Newell still owns the required ~85% of Steam to barely squeak by on federal estate taxes ($16B presumed valuation = ~$5.5 billion tax bill if he owned 85%, leaving him with ~51% after payment), who is taking the reins?
- edits - additional points -
E. I forgot Gabe Newell lives in Seattle. If Washington is his actual residence, then Washington has an additional 35% tax rate on high-value estates. Which makes it completely impossible even with 100% ownership.
F. Why would his estate even bother trying to salvage Gabe's vision at this point, when they're left with an illiquid minority stake? A very possible scenario is to sell all shares they possess, in one transaction. The possibility of majority control could inflate the share price dramatically over a piecemeal sale.
G. In which case, within 9 months of Gabe's death (IRS deadline), there is a high likelihood there will be an estate auction of all shares to any willing purchaser (highest value per share extracted + tax bill paid). And that purchaser will then have immediate intent to cash in.
H. Betting on Steam then, promoting them as better than other companies, is completely dependent on Gabe's actuarial tables. Not to be harsh but just honest, considering Gabe's decades of obesity before getting to a healthier place now, they're probably worse than average, as long-term obesity has persistent irrevocable effects. (This sounds harsh, but actuarial analysis is directly used in insurance and estate planning; you can be assured every major company's CEO has been assessed.)
I’d have to assume that a man of his wealth has an army of accountants and attorneys working for him and they have his assets sufficiently shielded from taxes through webs of trusts, shell companies, charitable foundations and so on.
Just speaking from things we can see, he owns yachts, a yacht building company, and a racing team. He also quite likely has a large investment portfolio like every other billionaire on the planet.
Let's say all those things added up to even $2B, as a hypothetical.
That means there's a $800M tax bill to keep those assets. If the estate has already lost majority control of Steam regardless; there's no real reason to not hand over even more of Steam, to keep hold of those other assets.
