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The problem I and others like Jim Sterling have with steam isn't strictly speaking that it does (or does not) curate content, but rather that it makes a lot of noise about letting developers and gamers decide what they want to put on the platform and saying they won't remove stuff, and then going on to cave almost immediately any time the media pressures them. So in short, the problem we have with Steam, is that Valve are liars.
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Who would have ever thought that valve would lie :P
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@maiyannah
Valve just...repeatedly abuse the fact that Steam...doesn't really have viable competitors. So they're in that position of calling peoples bluff, they do shitty stuff then go "what? you gonna just stop using Steam?"
Most people aren't, and if they do...they usually end up with GoG, which does the same calling bluff, but in reverse. They do shitty stuff then go "what? you gonna just go back to Steam?"
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@katiekats Duopoly! In some ways almost worse than a monopoly since it offers false choice. We get similar with ISPs here in Canada too. Rogers and Bell are the only viable ones outside of the niche markets of a few startups.
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@maiyannah
(Side note I like the ! it makes you seem excited to know the precise word for the situation :3)
Yeah, with a pure monopoly, you get the little niche ones springing up. Don't usually do all that well but at the least they're viable enough if you -really- hate the main one.
With a duopoly you mention. It's pushed into "huge one vs big but not quite as big one" so everyone is fucked. They act just as bad as eachother, and if you don't like one, rather than having that potential small timer, you get funnelled into "go to the other one."
In this case I suppose there's technically others? But the biggest I can think of after Steam and GoG is Itch.Io and ...it's pretty awful because it''s purely indie and somehow, god knows how, less filtered than even Steam is.
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@katiekats itchio is proper unfiltered. All they care about is you dont do anything illegal. Otherwise, no holds barred. And as a result browsing there is basically trying to find kernels of corn in shit. Its smelly, messy, and you probably don't really want what you got out of it anyways.
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@maiyannah
Yeah, so you have...Steam, which as noted, essentially just does shit then dares you to leave.
GoG which does shit then dares you to go back to Steam if you don't like it.
And Itch.Io which just kinda...exists, and is only ever really mentioned in the hipster indie circles most of the time.
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@katiekats Well the thing about being true unfiltered is games that can't get through the other two can exist there, so it serves that purpose. That's some genuinely good games too, like the stuff Lucas Pope makes that isn't Papers, Please. Good fucking luck finding it if you aren't looking for it specifically though!
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@maiyannah
It's always sorta...there's a disconnect of sorts for me? I'm trying to think of how to explain.
The only times I ever see Itch mentioned is either, discussions like this, saying how it's unfiltered nature is bad.
Or, ...when someone releases a game on it and has to spend ages spamming about it because barely anyone aside from other indie devs, uses Itch.
So it...Itch seems propped up, for the most part, by the very people who create and put games on there, and that...kinda defeats the point to me.
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@katiekats I agree, from a consumer standpoint, with the caveat that we do need a place that is a repository for the things Steam or GOG's arbitrary censorship squards dislike.
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