Not really. Games would’ve gone digital either way, it was the obvious path to go. Steam might’ve sped up that process by a few years, but pretending that without steam, digitalization of the games industry would’ve never happened is naive at best and dishonest at worst.
And yet consoles still have physical game copies available all these years later. Why is PC so much different?
And I’m not saying to be happy that Epic is competition, I’m saying that if GOG dies, you’ll only really have Steam and Epic. That sucks ass, but it’s still better than only having ONE option. And like I said, once Gabe is gone, I 100% believe Valve will go full on enshitification mode. I wouldn’t have to worry as much if I could still buy physical fucking copies of modern PC games.
As for Epic competing by creating better platform, I completely agree. Their launcher has made improvements, but it is still very bare bones and not great. I try to remember that tons of common sense software features we take for granted get patented. Hell, that’s why so many streaming services felt so much shittier than Netflix for so long. It’s not as straightforward as just emulating what Steam does but slightly better. That’s still no excuse though, and they still fall very short of offering the mostly comfortable user experience we’ve grown accustomed to. Steam didn’t start off where they’re at now, they’ve had 20 years with an entire company dedicated to developing it.
My main point is, we all love Steam and Valve because they’ve been a mostly ethical corporation so far as well as mostly improving the experience of PC gaming, especially with Linux (minus expediting and enabling 100% digitization so they could attain better profit margins on Half-Life 2 sales). But nothing lasts forever, and pure monopolies are bad. Fuck Epic for buying exclusive rights for third party games, but in this specific context, it is their game, so it is what it is.
And yet consoles still have physical game copies available all these years later. Why is PC so much different?
And I’m not saying to be happy that Epic is competition, I’m saying that if GOG dies, you’ll only really have Steam and Epic. That sucks ass, but it’s still better than only having ONE option. And like I said, once Gabe is gone, I 100% believe Valve will go full on enshitification mode. I wouldn’t have to worry as much if I could still buy physical fucking copies of modern PC games.
As for Epic competing by creating better platform, I completely agree. Their launcher has made improvements, but it is still very bare bones and not great. I try to remember that tons of common sense software features we take for granted get patented. Hell, that’s why so many streaming services felt so much shittier than Netflix for so long. It’s not as straightforward as just emulating what Steam does but slightly better. That’s still no excuse though, and they still fall very short of offering the mostly comfortable user experience we’ve grown accustomed to. Steam didn’t start off where they’re at now, they’ve had 20 years with an entire company dedicated to developing it.
My main point is, we all love Steam and Valve because they’ve been a mostly ethical corporation so far as well as mostly improving the experience of PC gaming, especially with Linux (minus expediting and enabling 100% digitization so they could attain better profit margins on Half-Life 2 sales). But nothing lasts forever, and pure monopolies are bad. Fuck Epic for buying exclusive rights for third party games, but in this specific context, it is their game, so it is what it is.