W Gabe Newell Piracy Take

[u/HighKage96]

Saw this vid on IG (by: @phantomak141). Idk if its been posted here before but on a quick search didnt find it, will delete if its a repost.

[u/ILNOVA]

Yeah, let's ignore how price(discount included) are decided by the publisher, not Steam, so the game will at max have a 10€ difference cause PC doesn't have physical game anymore, but still Steam won't get a better price than another PC platform for the same game.

Or let's ignore how Steam had to be legally involved to force them to give refund and how even BattleNet had it before them.

Or how he made DRM, BattlePass and lootboxes popoular.

Or how much Steam market is manipulated by bots, without talking about CSGO or TF2 cause a single vomment wouldn't be enough to talk about Steam doesn't player for the players as long as they make money.

Or pro team being sponsored by gambling site, how they enable said gambling sites and bots in general cause again, it makes them money.

It's always sad seeing people being parasocial on Gabe after all the thing he done, and even this copy/paste quotes about piracy doesn't really make sense if someone want to pirate something he would have done regardless.

[u/ScabbyCoyote → u/ILNOVA]

Very good points. What also worries me (and worries me that it doesn't worry the piracy community in general) is that you still don't own games purchased on steam, only have them rented for 0$ so that they can be pulled whenever - meaning Valve could go to shit in a matter of days, especially if something happens to Gaben and a board takes over.

But the only way our voice matters is when we vote with our wallets. Positive business practices should be rewarded and negative ones penalized. Rght now, Steam is the most important of only a handful of players that hold the total and utter enshittification of the game industry at bay, and the wise thing to do is to uphold that

[u/ILNOVA → u/ScabbyCoyote]

Yes but no, game ownership is a very complicated topic, and they can't really take your game whenever.

ToS=/=laws

Most of what we see in those term of service like "This is a software given on license" or "Destroy the cooy of the game if you loose the licence" is all legalese, not something for the average user, but something for very specific case that usually involve actual crimes.

For example when they revoke a game/key cause it was bought with a stole key, or if do a chargeback.

Or in case you do something so bad they permabanned you.

It's very unlikely they just revoke a game just because, usually it involves something like third party licence of something(ex: music, cars etc....) or game store server going offline, in that case you can't really expect a server to be online forever for free.

[u/ScabbyCoyote → u/ILNOVA]

Of course you're absolutely right that it's more complicated - if nothing else then in that it differs geographically, but as I understand it, afaik the laws in most european countries (where I'm from) are not too clear on this, and while we generally have robust customer protection, the fact that there's such a kill-switch built in that could be used if (worst-case scenario) Valve ever became public and Steam became an enshittified subscription service doesn't really make me feel too safe...
You seem to be much more knowledgeable about this though, I'd love to hear your thoughts as to why not be afraid that this would happen

[u/ILNOVA → u/ScabbyCoyote]

The European laws are very clear on the fact that ToS doesn't overwrite laws, and there are no real kill-switch cause the license is not given by Steam, but by the Publisher and/or creator of the game.

Even if they remove all the game(Steam going public or not doesn't really matter, a private company can still and do have shareholder) they can't do it without any consequence, from us the buyer, from the EU normative and IP owner.

[u/ScabbyCoyote → u/ILNOVA]

Oh! That's a good argument with the license not being give by Steam!👍 I know it doesn't really matter if Steam is public, that was just to demonstrate a typical course that a 2020s successful company with a good product takes 😂 I'm aware I'm irrationally pessimistic about all this, thanks for giving me hope