GOG didn’t become dumpster fire.
I’d argue that ease of use is a major component of quality.
this, valve did not make those games. So the quality of steam is the ease of use
Didn’t Gabe say this like 15 years ago?
Piracy is not a price issue, it’s an availability issue. Steam makes it so easy to just… buy a game.
I mean, it’s true that there are lots of games sold on Steam that aren’t great games, but that doesn’t hurt me much.
There are lots of products on Amazon that aren’t that great.
There are lots of websites on the Internet that aren’t that great.
As long as I can get to the stuff I want, all good.
EDIT: I think that a better selling point for GOG than that it excludes more not-good games is that the offline installer model can survive GOG going down.
Or maybe that GOG gives you control over updates. There are ways to do this with Steam, but it’s not an intended mode of operation, and some people, like heavy Skyrim modders, where an update can cause major breakage, really want control over when they update.
If the dev isn’t a bastard they can make different versions available through steam. Rocksmith found the last shred of decency in their body after breaking cdlc and put the previous version up. Outside of that, yeah it can be rough.
The publishers can do it via uploading beta branches, but there’s also a way to tell the Steam client to fetch old versions independently of that. I remember it coming up specifically with Skyrim, because updates broke a lot of modded environments, and it takes a long time for a lot of mods to be updated (during which time people couldn’t play their modded installs).
searches
https://steamcommunity.com/app/489830/discussions/0/4032473829603430509/
The
download_depotSteam console command.The above link is about Skyrim, but also links to a non-Skyrim-specific guide that talks about how to obtain manifest IDs for versions of other games.
But, yeah. It’s really not how Steam’s intended to be used, and I imagine that hypothetically, one day, it could stop working.
There are also IIRC some ways to block Steam from updating individual games, but again, not intended functionality.
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https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3205995441631274440/
If you specifically want control over game updates for some game, then GOG can be a major benefit for that.
One concern I have is that games can be purchased — Oxygen Not Included, for example, was purchased by Tencent, which added data-mining. Fortunately, in that case, Tencent was open about what they were doing, and allowed players to opt out — if they let Tencent log data about them, they could “earn” various in-game rewards. But I could imagine less-pleasant malware being attached to games after someone purchases IP rights to them and just pushes it out. Can’t do that with GOG, since there’s no channel intrinsically available to a game publisher to push updates out (unless the game has that built-in to itself).
searches
Not using Kagi anymore? What have you moved on to?
DDG mostly. I’m not unhappy with Kagi on any particular technical aspect, but I’m not happy about the fact that I learned that it was operating out of Serbia (it was often listed as being based in the San Francisco Bay Area; this appears to actually be a residence of the founder, not where the employees and offices are). I’d be much more comfortable about them getting in practical legal trouble if they wound up retaining data after saying that they don’t if they were operating in a US or EU or something legal jurisdiction. I posted about it to [email protected] a while back.
If they moved operations to the US or somewhere like that, I’d have no problem using them.
Thanks, good to know. I split between DDG and Kagi, not entirely happy with either.
I miss the old google.
To be fair, Steam/Valve shouldn’t be the one that judge the quality of the game, it should be the customers by voting with their wallets.
Ah yes, the market will decide. And famously, the market has always been good at deciding.
No, I think that’s bullshit. I think Valve should curate more of their games. I don’t think they should allow Nazi trash and fucking hate crime simulators on their platform.
While I agree there are people who still buy those crap, so gotta put this here:
nice slur you got there…
It’s true, but so are those that run things. Billionaires, politicians, CEOs, they are all.
And they’ll enjoy the game or refund it, since both options are incredibly easy to do.
Of course but I meant people who buy for buying’s sake, for +1 on the badge.
There are also some cases you cannot refund after 14 days, happened to me once.
What a complete and utter idiot this piece of crap is.
However they’ve banned games without reason many times. Wanting to be a broad marketplace is fine, but I just wish they were either committed to the bit or went back to curation because they had a higher density of good games back in the days of Greenlight.
I would guess that he’s looking for a response to someone pointing out that Steam has a larger game library than GOG.
Like, he’s gonna say “yes, but a higher proportion of the excluded games aren’t good”.
Agreed. Open publication, as opposed to gatekeeping publication, is desirable for creative expression in society.
Just imagine how many great works never saw the light of day or reached completion because publishers didn’t bite. Obviously the internet and digital media broke this dynamic to a degree, but I’m sure it’s a significant amount.
Valves competitors love to complain. Compete or don’t, the whining is lame as fuck.
That’s specifically what he’s aiming to do.
GOG has a new owner and CEO and he’s read the room in gaming journalism. He needs to make sure people understand that this isnt some Embracer Group buyout situation, and he’s doing that by specifically targeting Valve’s shortcomings:
- DRM and questions of ownership
- Contracts starting at a 70/30 split
- Censorship of adult content
This is exactly what competing with Valve looks like. They just need to stick the landing.
