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

[FlyingPenguin]

https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622 ... estructive

[Pugsley]

Meh... sounds like somebody is butt hurt he didn't think of the ideal first.

[Genom]

Yeah. A company that makes money. What a fucking shock. And they do whatever they can to make more money? Thats unheard of! Right?

[FlyingPenguin]

Haven't read it yet, but I think this has all been gone through before. Does Valve wield a lot of influence over gaming? Certainly. Could it be a abused? Sure.

However, overall, Valve has been very good for PC gamers, and for sure it's practically the only game in town for serious gaming on Linux.

I for one am extremely happy I don't have to worry about updating games anymore. That used to be a serious PITA.

The service has also been pretty damn reliable. Yeah when it's down occasionally when you want to game, it sucks, but down times are generally pretty limited. Heck my phone service is down more often than Valve.

For those who make use of it, the discussion groups on Steam are also very useful. You have a problem with a game, you can usually find answers a lot quicker there than the game publisher's own groups.

[wvjohn]

Someone has some sour grapes in the undies. I would not expect that AAA artists would be designing skins for DOTA. But I bet a lot of b+ artists got their feet wet there. There was clearly some scamming going on with the gambling for the skins, and likely money laundering. Folks have been laundering money through online games for a long time - back to early WOW and EVE. The author is correct that if you're the big dog you can make the rules, and if you're smart, you can make the $$. So it goes.

[Pugsley]

I think that by them making the opportunity for your stuff to become real parts of games and not just simple "mods" is great and you get to earn some money on the side.