Gabe Newell says no-one in the industry thought Steam would work as a distribution platform—'I'm not talking about 1 or 2 people, I mean like 99%'
Gabe Newell says no-one in the industry thought Steam would work as a distribution platform—'I'm not talking about 1 or 2 people, I mean like 99%'
"It was a very weird time."
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I remember hating the idea, during the age when games came in boxes. Now i support Steam with the tremendous support they've given the Linux platform. Most games i have are games on Steam, but i do have a bunch on GoG, as well as Itch.io. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket, but have to admit the Steam basket is humongous.
I still have a bulk of those CD’s (not the boxes anymore). I keep them in a binder with the CD holder sleeves. Same for my drivers, and operating systems. I have disks of going back to NT, 95b, and 98. I only started in to PC’ in 1998/9. I wish i had my original Voodoo3 driver disk. I remember buying that card in my way back from school one afternoon. I was so excited to install it.
I was skeptical of Steam when it launched as well. It has proven to be a good service.
Beware bit rot.
Granted most of those are going to be archived anyway but I wouldn't count on them being useable indefinately.
Good news is that disc rot doesn't happen as quickly for stamped CDs as it does in CD-Rs.
But that's just a happy little accident. Gabe is too much of a good guy, so he actually built a good distribution platform that also pushes for improvements for the whole ecosystem (like the Linux thing).
When he's gone, capitalism dictates that enshitification must ensue in order to squeeze out every single cent of short term profit, and we'll be screwed.
Depends on what happens to the company. Maybe he has children that can inherit his company shares and maybe they don't want it to change.
Maybe they set up a trust or something that can take ownership.
I really hope valve never gets sold.
I remember hating the idea, during the age when games came in boxes. Most games i have are games on Steam
If they are yours can you send me a copy as proof that they are actually yours?
You can easily zip up a steam game and send it yes. And if the game developer did not implement any drm, You can play it as well. It would be piracy tho... so i support that ;)
I know you're just trying to prove a point about physical disks, but if you actually wanted to borrow a copy of someone's game, Steam will let you do it
You know it's also illegal to send a copy of a physical game right?
GOG is pretty good but they have zero Linux support that I'm aware of. Had to return a game I bought off there last year. Bought it through Steam and it worked seamlessly.
Some of their games have Linux support but also it seems very much that they do not care about going out of their way for Linux so it gets forgotten about for most titles
I feel like proton is going to bandage it all together. Most indows games that don't have kernel level anti cheat are going to work using a proton layer.
In GOG's defense, they don't have the resources that Steam does but it's still pretty annoying. I have no plans to personally seriously use Windows ever again for personal use but Linux desktop usage is low and not something I'd expect a company that's GOGs size to spend much time on yet. Steam can and does. I respect that a lot.
Companies can choose to be a part of the solution, or a part of the problem. And i can choose to spend my money on the solution. I would love some redundancy on the linux gaming store front tho, just valve seams a bit fragile. And afaik gog or anyone else can also use proton or???
GOG actually has a relatively good selection of Linux games.
Relatively is the key word. I haven't had a serious issue with anything running on Proton and the way Steam implements it. I've had one issue out of one trying to play a game on GOG. Don't get me wrong, I think GOG is great though.
it's time to learn how to install umu and use it in heroic then, my GoG games run with proton through heroic, no problem.