Is Valve's Steam antithetical to Linux and the very core of the open source spirit?

[DanLamb]

Where are all these exploited small guys? Name 5. Nah, don't tax yourself, name 3.

My points are broader than specific developers.

And this quote is from 2009 and brighter (sober?) members of Gearbox soon backpedalled his rant http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...Steam-Comments
and there's this story from one of the "small guys" - read how much he hates Steam http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...eam-Criticisms but, I'm sure you've read all of these stories as part of your thorough and extensive research into Steam. Anyone accusing you of simply finding the first negative story about steam you could and posting it as though it proved anything you've said would, of course, be totally wide of the mark, wouldn't they?

It's 2013 now. Look at Gearbox's actions with regard to Steam, not the 2009 "I'm cutting my own throat putting my games on steam" nonsense. Go and ask Gearbox now how unhappy they are with Steam. Now that borderlands, borderlands 2, xcom et al are on there.

For a guy that supposedly doesn't want Steam to win, he's acting very oddly.

Why do you suppose is it the small guys that seem to be creating linux versions of their Steam hosted games if they are so badly exploited by the service?

I did read the counter points and I read the articles that you linked. I understand some indie developers and some customers are absolutely fanatical about Valve. Gearbox is also trying to be political about it and it's not in their sole interest to be the Valve/Steam bashers. I don't think Randy Pitchford is in a position to champion some war against Steam. He is just one guy inside of one development shop.

Many developers are eager to use Steam because Steam has such a lock on PC gaming. Developers are under pressure to use what the masses of consumers demand.

[Gps4l]

From Randy Pitchford:



What he is saying is just wildly obvious. Some devs are happy, because Valve could use their notoriety to generate hype and therefore revenue, but this general mindset that Valve has rightfully "earned" a substantial, secret share of other developers games and there is this group think that they should have a monopoly on doing so is ridiculous.

And we all know hoe reliable that ass hole is.

If you don't have a clue what I referring too:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-03-sega-adds-disclaimer-to-aliens-colonial-marines-trailers-after-admitting-they-didnt-accurately-reflect-final-game

That asshole showed a vid, and claimed it was actual gameplay.

To quote a fellow mapper / gamer about something Randy said.

I have been stealing all my life from Aliens, now its time to rip off the fans.

Borderlands :

http://savenload.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/borderlands-more-than-inspired-by-codehunters/

Borderlands more than inspired by CodeHunters

January 11, 2010 ? 1:08 am
Posted in Gaming
Tagged art style, Borderlands, CodeHunters, copy, PR, Randy Pitchford

quote:
I loved the time spent in Borderlands. Every minute of it. The game was up there in my best of 09 list. I?m saying ?was? because of this video of CodeHunters, winner of the ?Best Design? award at the 2007 Berlin Internet Film Festival. Yeah, that?s right Borderlands, you have been demoted for copying and not giving credit. Lots of similarities between the two and I find it somewhat strange that this was kept quiet until now.

[ArchLinux]

Linux doesn't need a Steam at all for games.

So your main problem with Steam is that it takes rights away from open source games, but then you also complain that Steam shouldn't exist on Linux at _all_?

Try some Source games through Wine and then come back to tell me what a pleasant experience it was. Now that we finally have these things natively on Linux (and there's even more to come) where the _hell_ would you suddenly get it in your head that that's somehow a bad thing?

And about the whole "Steam takes away our rights" argument; if you don't want to do that, then bloody don't do it. Most "decent" games on Linux are freely available in the repos anyway. If you _gotta_ have a client, use Desura.

[zxcvbnm]

From Randy Pitchford:

What he is saying is just wildly obvious. Some devs are happy, because Valve could use their notoriety to generate hype and therefore revenue, but this general mindset that Valve has rightfully "earned" a substantial, secret share of other developers games and there is this group think that they should have a monopoly on doing so is ridiculous.

He's not saying anything. Which I suppose is the kind of argument you seem to like best - one that's full of innuendo, rumour and suspicion with no actual evidence or facts to back anything up.

Where are all these exploited small guys? Name 5. Nah, don't tax yourself, name 3.

And this quote is from 2009 and brighter (sober?) members of Gearbox soon backpedalled his rant http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...Steam-Comments
and there's this story from one of the "small guys" - read how much he hates Steam http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...eam-Criticisms but, I'm sure you've read all of these stories as part of your thorough and extensive research into Steam. Anyone accusing you of simply finding the first negative story about steam you could and posting it as though it proved anything you've said would, of course, be totally wide of the mark, wouldn't they?

It's 2013 now. Look at Gearbox's actions with regard to Steam, not the 2009 "I'm cutting my own throat putting my games on steam" nonsense. Go and ask Gearbox now how unhappy they are with Steam. Now that borderlands, borderlands 2, xcom et al are on there.

For a guy that supposedly doesn't want Steam to win, he's acting very oddly.

Why do you suppose is it the small guys that seem to be creating linux versions of their Steam hosted games if they are so badly exploited by the service?

[ownagefool]

This is the worst logic, that Valve has somehow "earned" a rightful competition free monopoly on taking a revenue cut on games completely developed and funded by others. For games that Valve funds/develops, sure they should get revenue for those.

There is nothing wrong with that logic but there is something wrong with yours. Valve has to run steam, which includes indefinitely hosting a growing number of games. The bandwidth, hosting, and technical competence does not come free, thus it's impossible to offer the service for free and why should they?

They may have a solid position on the market but steam is not a natural monopoly other than the desire to have all your games under one service. Anyone can self publish a game and yet valves customers, which includes both publishers and gamers, find it beneficial to utilise the steam platform. That's the market working.

[Calinou]

Buuuut... Steam is awesome, right? All the real gamerz are praising it. Open source games suck, they look like games from 1999 at best and only beardy Gentoo users play them (2 of them right now).

Sent from a Dell PC with an HD 5450.

[DanLamb]

From Randy Pitchford:

I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I?m just saying, Steam isn?t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it?s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that?s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It?s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we?re going to sell the units and it will be fine.

What he is saying is just wildly obvious. Some devs are happy, because Valve could use their notoriety to generate hype and therefore revenue, but this general mindset that Valve has rightfully "earned" a substantial, secret share of other developers games and there is this group think that they should have a monopoly on doing so is ridiculous.

[DanLamb]

Valve has NDA to hide their special contract deals with Devs whom want to distribute their game on Steam. But I dare you (DanLamb) to prove that Valve is coercing Devs over their games to be distributed on Steam. Also what would be their reasons?

I don't think Valve coerces developers to use Steam at all. Some community members do: I read users saying they won't buy a game unless it is offered through Steam which is pressure/coercion.

I suspect Valve employs coercion related to pricing. A pure choice approach would be for devs to offer their title through every distribution option: Steam, Desura, Ubuntu, Amazon, direct purchase -- and then pass the cost of each service along to the customer to leave it up to the customer to choose if the added value of the service is worth the cost it imposes. The fact that I don't see Steam games offering this type of split pricing structure, and the fact that Valve has it's terms hidden, suggests coercion.

In other words, if a distribution service requires a flat X percent revenue cut, and the dev sets the raw price of the game at Y, then passing the cost to the user would price the game at Y/(1-X) through the distribution service.

What would be their reasons? This is obvious: if the cost of the distribution service was so openly and transparently visible to the users and there was an obvious alternative to avoid the middle man surcharge, people would avoid services like Steam.

[DanLamb]

Everyone would have a store like steam if it was easy

Steam definitely isn't easy, but it's primarily not a technical issue. Similarly with Facebook and Twitter. There is real technical craft and excellence in those sites but they are really entrenched due to their user base and there is no room for a competing service that merely offers technical competence. Of course various other entities could build a DRM + auto-patch + social network service like Steam but there isn't room or demand for another service like that. Maybe Desura or Ubuntu's store front could take off on Linux.

Valve have earned their place in the market by being forward thinking while offering added value to your experience. There is a significant amount of logical justification for them to take their cut, which most people will point out is siginficantly less than publishing via bricks and mortar would take from you. Unless you can argue valve employees should work for free

This is the worst logic, that Valve has somehow "earned" a rightful competition free monopoly on taking a revenue cut on games completely developed and funded by others. For games that Valve funds/develops, sure they should get revenue for those.

[fewt]

The communities greatest strength

.. is that the GNU zealots can go use gnusense and leave everyone else alone. So go do that and allow the people that want to use Steam to enjoy their freedom to use Steam.