this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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He literally made online authentication DRM mandatory for the biggest single player PC game of 2004 in an absolutely unprecedented move.
People were furious.
How has everyone forgotten how big of a ragefest it was to force everybody who bought HL2 in a box to connect to Steam? I swear that guy stumbled upon the One Ring or the spear of Longinus or some mass mind control device, because it's absolutely nuts how much people have memory holed all this stuff.
I think the mind control device is speaking to values people actually hold and then doing something completely different, kind of like mainstream political parties here in Australia. There's an imaginary honest, oldschool merchant Valve that lives in people's heads, and there's the actually practicing Valve the megacorp.
Or, more broadly, just the incredible power of cultivated charisma and rhetorical prowess and a cult of personality. The fervour with which people take any impersonal criticism of a business as a personal attack on a close friend, family member, or community is evidence of that.
See also a certain Square-Enix director spouting conservative, transphobic rhetoric and somehow being hailed as an ally, minus a small amount of people who saw through the smoke and mirrors act.
I swear there's a cohort of people that could have gotten into politics but decided the games and tech industries would make them more money.
Okay, by your own account Valve's good standing is "imaginary honest,old school merchant". So can you point out at least some malicious acts they performed?
I am not just blindly defending them, I have no benefit in doing so. But in reality, especially compared to other publishers, they are really benign. I can't remember when was the last time Valve screwed over their customers. Sure they disappointed some people with bad game releases, but all those people got their money back. Compare that to what Blizzard, EA or Bethesda do. It's night and day.
Again the memory hole.
Valve fought against pressure from regulators to have a returns policy tooth and nail. Memory holed.
The first major platform to establish one of those was actually EA's Origin. Valve only agreed eventually when the rest of the competition started making that a standard and it seemed easier to just go with regulator requests at that point. Memory holed.
I'll say this for your argument: Valve is much more likely to screw over devs than end users, as a matter of both strategy and corporate culture. Most of my issues with them historically go in that direction.
But still, there are plenty of examples of Steam getting weird about these things. You just acknowledged them using their position to enforce DRM minutes ago, and that's already down the memory hole.
I actually agree that Valve is pretty solid operationally when it comes to customer service, at least for their size. They have a good view of short versus long term gain. But there's a big, big gap between being good at community management and customer service and being "night and day" against the "malicious" competition. That narrative is nuts.
They did abuse their position to push Steam as a distribution service. Valve was ground breaking in many moves, good and bad. As for how people forgot how big of a ragefest it was, because people love to rage and Steam turned out good.