cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/15970074

Valve:

  • popularized DRM on PC
  • killed the used games market on PC
  • bans people for selling their Steam account
  • contributed to popularizing microtransactions, loot boxes and Battle Pass
  • forces you to run a proprietary app to play your games
  • forces updates on you
  • pretends they invented Wine
  • ships devices with a proprietary SteamOS
  • forces devs to use proprietary libraries to use Steam’s features

Gamers:
Yes uncle Gaben more of that please!!!

    • lemmeee@sh.itjust.worksOP
      0·
      8 months ago

      You should add to your microtnx bullet that they literally invented the Battle Pass. They also recently abandoned it for Dota 2, but that’s probs because nobody wants to work on it.

      Woah, you are right! There is even a Wikipedia article about it.

      I don’t know of any actions they are taking to stop people putting a better OS on their hardware.

      Microsoft doesn’t prevent me from using another operating system on my PC either (you are right that it would be way worse if they did, though). But they developed Windows - an operating system that takes away user’s freedom. Valve does the same with SteamOS. Most software they make is proprietary, but Valve fans get distracted with things like Proton, which is just a fork of Wine.

      I wouldn’t criticize some company for sticking Windows on a machine, if the machine is meant to work out of the box, and the chosen OS is Windows.

      If Windows is an unethical operating system and some company makes money distributing it, isn’t that unethical?

        • lemmeee@sh.itjust.worksOP
          0·
          8 months ago

          Windows and other proprietary software is unethical, because it gives developers power over users. People can’t easily see what such software does on their device and they can’t change it. So they can’t control those programs and as a result they have no control over their own devices. It’s also very easy for developers to abuse those users with spyware, DRM and other malicious features. In case of Windows we know for a fact that it does those things. But even if it didn’t, people deserve to be able to control their computers, so it’s unethical to take that right away from them.

          Free software gives you the 4 essential freedoms. Any programmer in the world can audit what such program does and change it. So it’s very hard for a developer to abuse their users. If they add some malicious feature, any programmer can remove it and share the modified version with others. So with free software, it’s the users who are in control (as long as there is at least one programmer among them that can make the changes they want).

          https://piped.video/watch?v=Ag1AKIl_2GM