He is just like Hillary. White and milquetoast. The Democrats suck and the only thing special about them is that they’re just not as bad as the Republicans. We need better candidates.

Just a reminder, not using Netflix is free.

“And it was a terrible idea! Cause if you tell Ricky he can do whatever he wants, his brain immediately goes to piss.”

It is awesome that you looked into the phone number carry over history! That is exactly the kind of forced change that everyone thought would be impossible or “iffy” until it became law. Now, we can’t imagine a world without it.

To your point about the difficulty: the reason it feels “iffy” is that we’ve let these stores build walled gardens. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is already solving this for other tech sectors. It mandates that gatekeepers provide APIs for Real-Time Data Portability.

If Valve was designated a gatekeeper, they wouldn’t have to hand out keys manually, they would just have to allow a secure, standardized way for you to prove to GOG or Epic that you own the game.

You are right that GOG is doing great work, but the reason their Library Integration is often buggy is that they are scraping data that Steam doesn’t want to share. My point is that we should not have to rely on GOG’s clever workarounds. We should have the legal right to our own data.

If we move from a world of stores to a world of protocols (like email or phone numbers), the best product wins because it is actually better, not because it is holding a $2,000 library hostage.

I appreciate the civil discussion, but I think you’re confusing “convenience” with “freedom.”

You mentioned adding non-Steam games, but that’s just a shortcut. You lose the “Join Game” buttons, the cloud saves, and the lobby invites. That is the definition of a social moat. You can leave, but you’re socially penalized for doing so.

As for competition, the fact that GOG and Itch.io have to hide in tiny niches just to survive proves my point. When the #1 player has 75%+ of the market, they don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be too big to leave.

My solution of mandated interoperability is exactly how we fixed the phone industry. You can switch carriers and keep your number. We should be able to switch launchers and keep our friends and games. If Steam is truly as perfect as you say, they should have nothing to fear from a system where users are actually free to leave. A benevolent gatekeeper who refuses to unlock the gate is still a gatekeeper.

The idea that they don’t use tricks is not true. Valve’s “Price Parity” rules stop other stores from competing on price. For instance, if a dev tries to pass their 12% Epic savings onto the customer, Valve can kick them off Steam, where 75% of their revenue lives. That is a massive underhanded leverage.

Also, it is not just about making a better product. It is switching costs. Because our libraries and social circles are locked into a proprietary ecosystem, we aren’t choosing Steam every day. We are just stuck there.

The solution is not for a competitor to build a “more perfect Steam,” that is impossible because Valve has a 20 year head start on our data. The solution is mandated interoperability.

We need a system where:
- Digital ownership is portable. If I buy a game, I should be able to launch it on any client, not just the one I bought it from. My library shouldn’t be hostage to one company.
- *Social graphs are open. * I should be able to chat with my Steam friends from a different launcher, just like I can email a Gmail user from an Proton account.
- Price competition is legal. We need to ban the Price Parity rules that stop other stores from offering lower prices.

We did this with cell phone numbers (you can keep your number when you switch carriers) and the EU has been doing this with messaging apps. There’s no reason we should not do it for our multi-thousand-dollar game libraries.

My proposed solution isn’t necessarily FOSS, it is interoperability. We should be able to own our digital goods and social graphs independent of one billionaire’s storefront. Just because he’s been a nice gatekeeper so far doesn’t mean the gate should exist at all.

Raw wealth doesn’t matter as much as market capture. Valve makes more money per employee than almost any company in history. They don’t need Microsoft’s billions because they already own the toll booth for the entire PC industry. When you control the only road everyone has to drive on, you don’t need to be the biggest car company.

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/valve-makes-almost-usd50-million-per-employee-raking-in-more-cash-per-person-than-google-amazon-or-microsoft-gaming-giants-350-employees-on-track-to-generate-usd17-billion-this-year

Just because they haven’t used the power they have doesn’t mean they should have it. A benevolent monopoly is still a monopoly, and we’re essentially just betting that a billionaire’s interests will always align with ours.

The Gaben worship is just PR for a monopoly.

This is so relatable.