I typically try to buy games from gog if available and on epic if not and steam if it’s on sale. The only harm I see is how janky the other storefronts are and how frequently they break or refuse to load and that’s not steams fault. I don’t play a lot of online games but epic and gog are my primary platforms to play on.
I’m not defending steam but I also don’t see how the advantage a platform like steam has is a direct result of any anti consumer practices. Honestly I prefer a storefront over rootkits and heavy handed drm any day not to mention downloading gamepatches directly from the publishers website.
Spedwell@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Note that the main argument Wolfire is making is that game marketplaces (buy/download the game) and game platforms (online features, mod distribution, social pages) need to be decoupled. By integrating the two, Steam is vertically integrating, amortizing the cost, and then forcing every other marketplace to bear the cost of a platform in their pricing.
If you bought a game and paid for platform services separately, then competition can better exist for both of those roles. Which is good for consumers.
BURN@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m going to be real, the seperatization might be good technically from a consumer standpoint, but mostly will just prove to make consumers lives harder for no reason. One of the major benefits of Steam is that it handles everything, and isn’t something I, or anyone else, would be happy to give up.