Yeah, honestly that’s the primary, convincing argument against Brave, I feel: they’re helping Google monopolize the browser market, and, consequently, enabling Google to further dictate how the internet operates.
The article skipped over that entirely, and the author had never heard of LibreWolf, the current zeitgeist in privacy-focused browsers, so I question the motives for writing the article and question that the author has the technical chops to be able to speak to this issue with authority. Seems like he mainly doesn’t like that the founder of Brave donated $1000 to Prop 8, which, while fair, is hardly the main reason to not use Brave.
The really really concerning thing he actually mentioned was that Brave was at one point adding affiliate links to URLs without the users’ permission, but that was buried lower in the article under comments on Eich’s admittedly cringe politics and weirdly angry blurbs about Brave’s crypto token, which he never mentions requires a voluntary opt-in (probably because he didn’t know).
He’s not wrong, but he’s right for the wrong reasons.
Which is really sad, because I like Vivaldi and I like the team behind it and I like their post denouncing WEI, but at the end of the day Vivaldi is also a chromium skin. They're Brave without the personal baggage, but they still carry the much heavier technical baggage of being downstream from Google.
and there's still a lot of people on the windows side not using a package manager
I think "lots of people" here can just be simplified to "nearly everyone". Anyone that is ware of a package manager and why it's useful and thinks to look for an equivalent for Windows is not going to be bothered by a few extra configuration steps.
I run it secondary to Firefox when I need to use IPFS, have been for about 6 months now. I also occasionally use it because it also blocks Youtube ads by default, AND when combined with privacy badger, it is the only browser that still works while giving half decent anti-fingerprinting. Firefox, Chrome, nothing else even gets close. They just straight up lie about your screen rez and plugins to keep you from being fingerprinted.
Their account sync is pretty nice. Encrypted P2P syncing of configs and bookmarks. No need to make an account with them to store your settings.
Yeah, if you use their new tab page, there's an crypto option there which you can remove. Their new tab page sucks and I don't use it anyway.
There is ONE crypto button to the right of the URL bar, which you can right click and hide. The other stuff is actually the controls for their PWA install , share and privacy/ad block settings. You can just run full block everywhere and flick off the extra blocking for a site if it's a problem.
I also refuse to use their search, but it does work really well last time I tried it. DDG is good enough and the smaller the company selling my data, the better.
Updates don't generate any crypto popups for me, perhaps because I don't use their front page.
It's open source, so they at the very least aren't hiding what they're doing.
The fact that they offer shitty crypto with hideable buttons should be the least of your objections.
They replaced webpage ads with their own when you enable bat. (I don't crypto so I don't see those)
They swapped referrer links on unreferred things to make money. (which is sunset now, but is an indicator of how they DGAF)
They used their crypto as a pyramid scheme to sell to investors, even got in trouble over it with the Government.
Once their crypto pyramid scheme fails, They'll either fold up, or double down on selling data passed through them.
They have an insecure TOR implementation
They are likely to sell your data
They are likely to sell your data to AI projects.
Their CEO is a POS, but that's hardly unusual these days.
If a product creator’s ideologies are the deciding factor on whether you use that product… That’s OK. I think there’s some interesting territory for conversation with that attitude, but I’m sympathetic.
But just say that. It’s enough reason to not use something. Stop there.
When you have to also make a bunch of bad faith arguments about the actual functionality that just don’t hold up it undermines what I think is the more valid (though still murky, as you pointed out) concern of supporting harmful attitudes.
Brave as a product seems fine. It’s not the second coming of privacy jesus. It’s not the absolute dumpster fire of browser purgatory. It’s fine.
Apparently one of the main developers of GrapheneOS is a bit unhinged (see the Louis Rossmann video about that if interested), but he makes quality software so I highly recommend other people use it.
I’m never going to agree with everyone who makes software I use, I only care about the quality of the software. In fact, I very much disagree with the politics espoused by those who make lemmy, yet I’ve contributed code and spend a lot of time here.
Firefox is my main browser, but I use Brave when I need a chromium-based browser. I disagree with the politics of a lot of people at Mozilla, and I disagree with Brendan Eich as well. Both are high quality browsers, so I use them.
In this case it makes a difference because there has been an alarming increase in harmful lies made by the far right. This is a purposeful spread of misinformation that many people hesitate to get involved with in any way, and for good reason.
I do not trust the creator of Brave to be aligned with the far right and to still be guided by ethical conduct that I can trust. If you align yourself with people who lie and put others in danger for profit and control, you're condoning such behavior and may be capable of it yourself.
I always recommend brave to less tech-savvy people,
Why exactly? The tricks like "optional things to click" are explicitly targeted on less tech savvy people and defeat the point of privacy focused browsers.
I've literally installed Firefox and uBlock Origin for elderly people, and walked some other elderly people through installing them. In, like, 2 minutes. This is not difficult.
Just getting somebody on Firefox with ublock origin is enough IMO. I’m not going to also remove their ability to use Google search. Especially if they’re older. I am very privacy oriented but you have to make some compromises for people lol.
Those are choices, not requirements. Using Firefox is better than using Chrome. Doing the extra stuff is even better, but if doing that means someone gives up and goes back to Chrome, that doesn't help, either.
If these people really want to ban technology based on the views of the author then they might as well live in the stone age. And even then the tools they used was probably invented by some nasty people. The US space program was built by literal Nazi scientist. Most of the research on how humans survive in space was based on experiments done to Jews. The first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research are the HeLa cells taken from a black woman named Henrietta Lacks. She did not consent to have those cells taken nor was she or her family compensated. Are we gonna boycott cancer research because of this injustice? No? Only the things that make them feel uncomfortable?
You mentioned that politics should not be mentioned with software. Consider Hans Reiser, the author of reiserfs. He murdered his wife and was sent to prison. Would you be okay with running code written by a murderer on your computer? How about a vase made by a murderer in your house? Would you enjoy the voice of a murderer in music?
It is an extreme example, for sure. I thought I’d mention it to test your moral boundaries with open-ended questions. Everything is subjective, and morality is fluid. There are quite a few people that decided not to use reiserfs from the circumstances, though. Even though it wouldn’t make as much of a difference to you personally, I’m sure you could probably see how this matters to some.
Go look up all the nasty stuff stallman's said and firmly believes in. I don't see people boycotting gnu which is a vital part of linux as a result of this
People are already aware of the shit Stallman does. Hell, you don't need to read the shit he writes, dude's a real-life creep.
And besides: GNU project's tools have continued popularity despite him. Do I need to remind you of XEmacs? EGLIBC? EGCS? A whole lot of projects that reminded GNU equivalents to "oh yeah, maybe we should get gud instead of being an inferiour code base" (XEmacs) or "oh yeah, this fork is clearly superiour, we should merge and call it official" (EGLIBC, EGCS). And now people are like "Hey guys, I just found this compiler called Clang and-" and GNU is like "FFFFF-"
[Ad experiments and crypto] is opt in.
If you download an ad blocker, I'm pretty certain that you don't want to "opt in" to any advertisements by default.
Hey, you thought that was easy to debunk? How about this: When Brave advertises that content creators are able to accept BAT crypto tokens as donations, should the content creators themselves first opt in? They most certainly didn't. Brave specifically said that they would accept donations on behalf of all content creators and held the donations on their behalf until they would opt in.
If these content creators never would actually opt in, what then, I wonder? Did they just deceive the fans of those content creators?
This is dangerously close to the whole rhetoric NFT bros had during the peak. "Why, someone made illegitimate NFTs of your creations? Well you SHOULD have minted those NFTs while you had the chance. Oh, you prefer to NOT participate in this whole NFT ecosystem on principle? Have fun staying poor!"
I have my criticisms of Steam, but I see no sign of it marching toward some kind of big anti-customer explosion as suggested in this article. Unlike most others, it’s run by a privately owned company, so it doesn’t have investors pressuring toward enshittification. We can see the result by looking back at the past decade or so: Steam has been operating more or less the same.
Meanwhile, the author offers for contrast Epic Games, a major source of platform exclusives and surveillance software (file-snooping store app, client-side anti-cheat, Epic Online Services “telemetry”), all of which are very much anti-customer.
AFAIK, only one of the other stores listed is actually better for customers in any significant way: GOG. (For the record, I mostly like GOG.) But it was mentioned so briefly that it feels like the author only did so in hopes of influencing GOG fans.
Overall, this post looks a lot like astroturfing. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be sponsored by Epic or Microsoft.
Edit: I forgot something that has changed in the past decade:
Valve has spent the past five years investing in open platforms: At first by funding key parts (often the most difficult ones) of the open-source software stack that now makes gaming great on linux, and more recently by developing remarkably good and fairly open PC hardware for mobile gaming. No vendor lock-in. No subscription fees. No artificially crippled features. This has already freed many gamers from Microsoft’s stranglehold, and more of us are reaping the benefits every day.
This is the polar opposite of what the author would have us fear.
Well said, private companies are incentivized to make their customers happy. Corporations are incentivized to make their shareholders happy. Sometimes those goals align, but they are not the same.
I get the risks of putting all eggs in one basket, but whenever people argue for competition using Epic as an example, a company that is demonstrably more anti-competitive and anti-consumer, it shows that they just think of the matter of theoretical ideals of evenness as opposed to benefits to the customers. I don't see any good coming from Epic having as much or more marketshare than Steam.
Unlike GOG which only offers DRM-free games, a substantial advantage compared to any other store.
Makes me think of a Walmart opening up in a town and people arguing that the residents should buy from there because it’s competition. Company just existing doesn’t make it good.
The always-on nature of phones and tablets is incredibly convenient. Wouldn’t it be great if your (non-ARM) laptop or desktop could do this too? Save power when you’re not using it, but still be ready at a moment’s notice?
Microsoft certainly thought so, which is why when Windows 8 was released, it introduced a new feature called Connected Standby. If the hardware indicated support (foreshadowing), instead of telling the BIOS to enter system standby, Windows would enter Connected Standby.
I first ran into the wonders of Modern Standby on my Dell Inspiron 5482, an 8th generation Intel 2-in-1 laptop with a spinning hard drive. After a few months of owning it, I started noticing that it wasn’t sleeping properly. If I closed it, I could still sometimes hear the fans running even 15 minutes later. If I put it in my backpack, there was a good chance I’d take it out at 0% battery or to the fans running at full blast and the CPU dangerously close to overheating. Half the time the hard drive wouldn’t even spin down, which sure is nice when you’re planning to be jostling it around in a bag for a couple hours.
The worst part of this all was that Dell gave you no official way to disable Modern Standby. Windows itself isn’t any help, either. If the BIOS says it supports Modern Standby, Windows takes it at its word and completely disables the ability to enter S3 sleep (classic standby). There’s no official or documented option for disabling Modern Standby through Windows, which is incredibly annoying.
Another issue with Modern Standby is what can trigger wakeup events, and for how long. Supposedly, only certain built-in Windows functions, like updates and telemetry can actually wake the device up, but so can apps installed through the Microsoft Store.
Microsoft probably deserves most of the blame for this mess. It created the feature and has been (allegedly) pressuring vendors to implement it and discontinue support for S3 sleep.
Was running into the same previously. Putting my desktop to sleep only to find it waking up in the middle of the night, and for some reason not going back to sleep afterwards. I believe the solution for me previously was disabling wake timers. Hasn’t been an issue since. However this is a much larger issue on things like laptops where preventing sleep while in a backpack could lead to excessive heat generation. Infuriating that it’s forced by default
That’s different: probably due to Windows Update, but there are other things that can set wake timers to do various things at night. For some genius reason they never go back to sleep.
Mine also did that, but with the added ‘benefit’ of forgetting how to turn on my graphics card when it did had to wake up at some point without my input.
I disabled wake timers, wake on lan, and peripherals waking from sleep. It worked for a bit until an update completely destroyed my computers ability to sleep at all. The screens would shut off but nothing else. Still running, still logged in.
Half the time the hard drive wouldn’t even spin down, which sure is nice when you’re planning to be jostling it around in a bag for a couple hours.
I’m pretty sure this is what trashed my first laptop. Thankfully I didn’t have a lot of information on there yet and was able to replace the hard drive. But absolutely ridiculous that this passed quality control.
The problem there it’s your hardware, my humble opinion it’s grab a cheap Mi TV Stick 4K(don’t get fooled by the general opinion of Chinese stuff)from AliExpress and pirate all the way up. I personally didn’t like Roku cos their Hardware and Software it’s so closed you can’t do anything with them unless you pay and you will have to eat up all the adds.
well, YouTube (specifically RedLetterMedia) is the only thing with ads. I specifically avoid the ad laden shit, and am gonna (yeah right. Eventually) get a headless Plex set up downstairs. I’m fucking drowning in blurays and DVDs. Lol
if you’re using an iphone, you can sideload uyou+enhanced through Altstore. it comes with an adblocker, shorts blocker, sponsorblock, a downloader and more.
And for ad-free YouTube specifically on Android-based smartphones, LibreTube is my personal fav but there are plenty of other options such as NewPipe, Clipious, and YouTube Revanced.
This may be an entirely separate conversation but I end up sticking with Firefox+uBlock because I can never get any decent performance out of other front ends.
This doesn’t work for most streaming services. The ads and the actual video come from the same server. I know this is the case on Hulu (probably YouTube, too).
Yeah it doesn’t block YouTube ads, because YouTube hosts the ads locally. No reason to have the ad provider host their own, when YT already has the infrastructure built to host them. Trying to use DNS to block YT ads would also block the videos themselves, which sort of defeats the entire purpose of using the site.
If your smart tv is android based you can try side loading Smart Tube, which integrates ad block, sponsor block and a whole pile of QoL settings you can tweak to suit you.
After looking to solve this exact issue I ended up grabbing an Onn 4k streaming box (Google/Android TV) for $20 from Walmart. Not on sale, just full retail is $20, compared to the 4k Chromecast with Google TV at $50 msrp. It’s fast enough and even got better performance out of streaming games through Moonlight than I did from my Steam Link.
Doesn’t really solve the issue, I have one but could never find a way to cast YouTube to it and not have ads, since both Vanced and New pipe can’t do it.
Yeah slightly annoying that, the default YouTube app should be able to cast to smart tube and you still won’t have ads though. Vanced used to be able to cast to it, before it was killed and revived.
A must have, if you want to browse the web without ads, trackers, malware and more. There are other browsers you could use, but with #firefox, you can install add-ons to help you mitigate all the tracking and ads. You can even install desktop only add-ons now, and supporting a engine which is not #chromium (controlled by Google) like every other major browser.
There are multiple forks available on the F-droid if you don't want to use plain firefox. This works on desktop too, I recommend #LibreWolf.
My favorite way of blocking ads, you have control over which domain the app can connect. It works like a VPN, but it does not make any outgoing connection. The bad thing is, if you want to use an actual #VPN, you can't have both at the same time and you need to disable your custom DNS.
I recommend to enable in settings > advanced options > block system apps, and individual domains too. When you open the app for the first time, it asks you if you want to block essential request for the apps to work, I recommend to enable this if you don't want apps breaking.
You android vendor may be killing the app, for this reason is necessary to add the app in the list of apps not be optimized by the system. If this issue keeps happening follow the guide from dontkillmyapp.com (advanced)
A DNS works like a translator, computers are good with numbers, but we are not good at memorizing long numbers. Computers communicate with each other using the Internet Protocol (IP), which are pure numbers. For example, your instance #IP is 104.26.8.209 but is easier to us just type lemmy.world.
A DNS is like a table where it has a relationship between keys pointing lemmy.world to 104.26.8.209, so your computer knows where is the computer is trying to connect.
Let's imagine an app is trying to connect to "https://ads-from.company.com", if you are using a DNS which blocks known domain ads it will redirect that request to "0.0.0.0" which is like sending it to a black hole. There are multiple DNS available, which different purposes, for ads, malware, porn, gambling, etc.
Have in mind that these are not full bulletproof protections, one may work better than the other, and can break from time to time. With popular services with ads, like social media, you could use alternative front-ends to their official client or website.
Here is a list of alternative front-ends and an add-on to automatically redirect to them, you have to use it with a browser and you can add as a shortcut to the home screen, better if it works like a #PWAhttps://libredirect.github.io
@whou Don't forget the time they made it possible to 'donate' to creators, but when creators weren't signed up with their program #Brave would just keep the donation. So users would think they have donated for example to Tom Scott, but in reality he never received anything. Overall just a scummy company.
Valve won’t stay that way forever—the company is not immune to the pressures of capitalism
I’m glad that the author recognized the actual root cause of their argument, which is that Capitalism is bad and ruins everything, but why blame Steam for essentially just existing in a Capitalist world? They didn’t choose that, and they’re certainly doing a hell of a lot more than almost any other company their size that I can think of to resist shitty Capitalist practices.
It really feels like this author is just saying, “they’re resisting anti-consumer enshittification practices now, so the only place to go is down, ergo ‘timebomb’!”.
“Every person who isn’t a murderer is just a murder away from becoming a murderer. Timebomb!”
The difference between Valve and almost every other company that suffers from “capitalism” is that Valve is a private company, they don’t have shareholders, investors and an outsider asshole CEO demanding enshittification in the name of exponential growth.
The issue is Steam and Valve being held up as the ‘one good company’, when there are plenty of examples to the contrary. Valve does many of the same practices as Epic, EA, etc., but there’s a double standard with Valve because it’s the default experience. The inevitable decline of Steam is going to be much worse after people spent a decade giving it a free pass on lesser issues.
It’ll be fine until they go public (though maybe a few billion is enough for gaben and they won’t, but I’m not banking on it), then it’ll be an inevitable decline like all the others.
The inevitable decline of Steam is going to be much worse after people spent a decade giving it a free pass on lesser issues.
What specifically are you envisioning? If this is just a general kind of, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” supposition, I don’t think that really holds any water; it’s just a platitude. If anything, Steam being so ubiquitous could more easily make it’s eventual decline a catalyst for legislation to give software license ownership stronger consumer protections. The idea that we should either condemn it now or stop using it, before its decline, makes no sense to me. Is GOG better? Sure. Can it fully replace Steam? No. Is Steam better than Epic, Origin, UPlay? Absolutely. I’m just not sure what the real point of all this condemnation is when they’re by far trying, by and large, to treat consumers well. It’s just blaming Valve for not being totally and eternally immune to the effects of Capitalism.
the ‘one good company’
No one claims this. The only thing remotely close to that which people claim is that Valve is uniquely positioned to be one of the best digital games distribution platforms due to its private ownership insulating it against shareholder demands (which is by far the largest driver of enshittification), which is also true for GOG, but obviously Valve is still beating them out in capacity and capability currently.
there are plenty of examples to the contrary
Of course, it’s a company. But it’s still a billion times better than most of its competitors.
“Every person who isn’t a murderer is just a murder away from becoming a murderer. Timebomb!”
I get your point, but this metaphor would be more applicable if historically every human on earth murdered someone during their lifetime. I think Steam/Valve will remain the same as long as their current leadership is in place. 999 times out of 1000, once the original founders are gone, any company begins the enshittification process, whether it’s a major business like Valve or a local chain of grocery stores.
Sure, and when that happens we should (and many will) abandon the platform. But since, as you seem to be implying, all businesses under Capitalism will eventually enshittify, there’s no point abandoning it beforehand, because any alternative you move to will also eventually do so.
The difference between a person and a corporation… is that once a corporation goes public, it’s like having a person whose only goal in life is to get as much money as possible, no matter how. Those people usually end up in jail; corporations, not so much.
On the other hand, something like 2/3 of businesses “fail”, or close, during the first 10 years, never going public. The ones surviving… are the ones that probably should be in “jail” 🤷
I do this too. If it’s on Gog I buy it there. I hope gog manages to stay around but even if it doesn’t I can grab the offline installers for the games I have purchased and back them up elsewhere.
Does anyone actually use offline installers on a regular basis? I tried a few times and I had problems. Dunno if just bad luck. Never managed to install Pillars on eternity with it because it errored out every time. Another game’s offline installer (can’t remember which) would stall for hours then crash. I suspect a lot of users would be in for a surprise if they actually tried them.
This looks like a problem with your system to me. Run a few checks on your RAM and storage devices. I had files corrupt on my NAS and a PC of mine, because both had defective memory. I only noticed it, because installers and 7zip began to produce errors.
Honestly, between the telemetry data collection, the strange hardware requirements, advertisements, bloatware, and unknown future licensing model, Linux is looking like an attractive option. At this point, I only use Windows for Office and gaming, and Linux + Proton has gotten really good lately. I don’t see a reason to use Windows on my personal machine any more.
Linux is fine for people like you and me who are comfortable installing our own operating system, and trouble-shooting any problems. Most ‘normal’ people though will continue to walk into a store, buy a laptop, and use whatever came installed.
Of course, the year of Linux on the desktop actually happened some time ago without anyone noticing. It’s called ChromeOS, and that’s a whole different can of worms.
To add to that, Android is likely the overwhelming market share of Linux-based operating systems in use today. For that matter, an absolute ton of Intel CPUs have Minux installed on them too, but I wouldn’t call this “on the desktop”, just interesting.
While true, how much troubleshooting does windows require? Because as I sometimes use windows, it’s not that much less work to get it to do what you want it to do, or solve issues, than linux.
Especially since it feels like windows tries to fight you every step of the way.
It depends on ehat youre trying to do. If you are teying to debloat it, of course you go out of your way, but it has the reverse problem for most drivers, where youre almost guaranteed to plug in an arbitrary USB device, and itll probably have drivers or software in the windows environment.
Linux is great. With the caveat that you specifically pick hardware that works well in Linux for it, else you have the problem of “a choice fighting you every step of the way”
Linux is easily fixed but the problem is that the issues that crop up needing to be fixed are generally not pain points on Windows. The first Arch install I did this year was busted and I thought I had broken my networking setup because it wouldn’t connect, but the issue was that the system clock was wrong. Something like that may pop up in Windows but you can quickly press the sync time and date button in the settings and it’ll sort itself out, while Arch requires a lot more work than just that, especially if it has no connectivity.
I’ve been using Linux for like 15 years and Arch for about a decade. I’ve never had an issue where the system time prevents the network connection from working. That’s odd.
It makes sense because all of our cryptography is based around time limits. If the system time is way off it can’t verify the cryptographic signatures and it’s not going to validate any certs since the time doesn’t line up properly.
Most distributions require little to no troubleshooting, and if they do, someone has probably already posted the solution online. It’s pretty rare these days that you run into a problem that someone else hasn’t and you’re stuck figuring it out yourself.
The only pain point is trying to find the Linux equivalent of the Windows apps that you commonly use. Web browsers are the exact same, but that’s about it. A fair amount of apps to offer Linux counterparts though.
When people are talking about Linux Desktop they usually mean GNU/Linux. Chrome OS and Android both use the Linux kernel, but they aren’t GNU/Linux like we understand Linux desktop.
GNU/Linux needs a company that will create a Macintosh equivalent. A company that will design quality hardware. Restrict the hardware they support tightly, but highly optimise the drivers in their devices. Selling their equipment with a distro that’s well supported with bug testing and user support. Each update being tested on all their devices.
This would allow people to buy their devices without much thought.
I think people in the past thought this could be Ubuntu and Canonical. But their business is server, so there desktop will never get to the place it needs to be.
The steam deck is pushing Linux closer to this place. But I don’t think it will be enough.
System76 aren’t there. They sell rebranded ugly generic laptops with low quality screens. They sell them for a similar prices to low end macbooks. You put the average person in front of both in a store and they are going for the macbook. Better screen, better battery life and good quality hardware.
PopOS has the best chance to be ‘the Linux’ desktop. But they need nicer hardware. System76 are selling laptops to Linux people, that’s their market. They don’t have nice hardware design to compete in the high end of the market. And they aren’t cheap enough to compete in the low end.
System76 are also going after the server market. I suspect they will go the way of Ubuntu. Chasing the server market and being too distracted to follow through with their desktop ambitions.
I wouldn’t call System76’ hardware ugly. It’s generic looking, sure, but it’s not ugly. It’s also designed by them. They used to only customize OEM systems with their own designs, but they started designing and manufacturing their own desktops a few years ago. Their first fully self designed and manufactured laptop is coming out soon. They have never just rebranded other companies’ designs though, so that’s just flat out wrong.
Their screens are fine. Have you seen them? They’re nothing to write home about, but they’re not low quality.
They have a range of laptops from $999 to $3,299, so I’m not sure what you mean when you say they’re a similar price to a low end MacBook.
They are very much not abandoning their desktop ambitions. They are putting a lot of effort and investment into their own desktop environment.
There is no company that designs all their PC hardware and all their software. Not even Apple does (but they’re probably the closest). Everyone has suppliers they work with for stuff they don’t want to design or build.
Once people get over the initial Windows indoctrination, Linux is simple to use and doesn’t require tons of complex troubleshooting like people think. Before the COVID lockdown I tried for the Nth time to get my dad to use Linux. I had it installed and told him to stick with it for a few weeks (he only browses the web and plays solitaire). If he still didn’t like it, I’d reenable Windows. Well that few weeks turned into 6 months. Now both he and my mom have been happy Linux users for about 2 years.
I’m not the guy you asked, and I hope he responds because I’d like to hear his answer too, but a lot of that depends on the Linux distro you select. On rolling releases you get continuous updates automatically, not major upgrades like forced Windows Updates.
What do you mean, automatically? Arch is a rolling release and I have to explicitly run pacman with the correct flags to update. At the same time Debian, which is not a rolling release, has the unattended upgrades feature which installs updates automatically.
But indeed, many things depend on the distro. For example, user-centric distros such as Elementary and others provide an easy to use GUI for updating the system.
And yes, Windows Updates was (is still? not a Win user) a nightmare.
What do you mean, automatically? Arch is a rolling release and I have to explicitly run pacman with the correct flags to update. At the same time Debian, which is not a rolling release, has the unattended upgrades feature which installs updates automatically.
I was thinking Tumbleweed, Manjaro and the like which have GUI updaters, lol. @pete_the_cat was pretty clear that his parents are the ultimate Linux beginners; he’s not going to give them Arch or Debian out of the box and bark command lines at them.
I’m OP, he runs Manjaro and I handle the updates whenever I see him, every month or so (I live out of state). I could do it over SSH but if something happens to break, it’s a pain to fix. I showed him how to do it in the GUI but he doesn’t care to do it.
A GUI software center is used (or if the said dad is comfortable with an interactive console application)
The said dad actually realizes the importance behind updates. From my experience, many people don’t.
So, unless both of above are true, the dad will never (want to) update his system because “it works as is”, sticking to old versions of software, never receiving bugfixes and neglecting security.
You’re a wise (wo)man. That is exactly the case. I’ve shown him how to do it in the GUI but he doesn’t care to because, like you said, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
Thank you for answering. I can relate to manually updating my parents’ systems once in a while but at this point I’m seriously considering unattended upgrades (updating over SSH is also a good idea).
Most distro nowadays come with a gui to update. A pop up window appears asking if you want to update/upgrade. You can press “yes” and the password of the sudoer or admin user is asked. It has been like this for over a decade. For popular distros as Ubuntu or fedora over 15 years
Yes, probably because I stick with Arch and Slackware plus a lightweight environment. The only time I saw such a GUI was when I tried out Elementary just for fun.
What I consider a problem is that the user can simply dismiss or disregard the updates notification indefinitely. I know many non-tech-savvy people who do not understand the importance of updates, so they would be inclined to do exactly that. That is why unattended upgrades are probably a better option in such cases.
The process is so simple that there is no reason to not do it. My wife is non-tech person, I installed ubuntu on her laptop and she’s very happy because it’s faster than windows. I have never updated it for her. She does it. Only thing I have done is the upgrade to a new ubuntu release
I do it for them whenever I come over every month or two (I live out of state). I could also just SSH in and do it remotely if I really wanted to. I showed my dad how to do it with the GUI package manager, but he’s the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” type. Linux will run perfectly fine without updates for years.
The subscription rumor was debunked pretty quickly. I honestly don’t see that happening anytime soon, PC makers would get pretty upset (especially if they don’t get a cut of the revenue).
The original source for that is an internal presentation with poorly-worded language that said Windows will “move” to the cloud, the whole presentation slide makes it clear they’re talking about Windows in the cloud as an option: theverge.com/…/microsoft-windows-11-cloud-consume…
Forcing everyone to stream Windows from a cloud server would not work well for the vast majority of PCs and internet connections. Microsoft isn’t dumb, they’re not going to try that and lose even more market share to Apple. I was linking to the article to show the correction, the original article was junk based on nothing and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Cost wasn’t mentioned in the original scope. OP was saying he hates the telemetry, ads, etc. and then you stated that companies have software that needs windows to run, to which I stated that there is a version that doesn’t have OPs concerns and runs custom apps that companies use.
Storage is super cheap these days. Just buy an extra hard drive for Windows and boot into that on the rare occasion you truly need to use Windows. Or just use a VM.
I’ve worked as a SWE at Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn, and none of the devs I worked with used Windows. Everyone either used Mac or Linux. It’s just a matter of time before the dev world bleeds out into the consumer world.
At LinkedIn everyone had a Linux desktop that matched the server environment. Very few people actually coded on their desktop though. Most of us used a MacBook then either tested on the desktop or tested on a dev server.
At Google, almost everyone used a MacBook or their Goobuntu desktop (Google’s custom version of Ubuntu). Basically everyone would remote into their desktop to write code. Some people used Windows and some used Chromebooks.
At Facebook, most used MacBooks, the rest were pretty evenly divided between Windows and Linux (on Thinkpads). Everyone had a Linux dev server in one of the data centers to test on.
At every one of these places, the production environment is 100% Linux, so eventually, everyone had to test their code on Linux (except mobile or desktop app developers).
Again, I never worked with anyone who used Windows, but I knew there were some people who did, cause they would stick out.
Should probably clarify that I meant their home PCs, not work provided ones. Our dev is all done on Mac and then we have remote Linux dev environments for testing if needed.
Windows for development is asinine, can definitely agree there. But for home computing it still isn’t taking over.
Using ModOrganizer2 to launch a Windows game from Steam using Proton is a massive pain in the ass, I’ve tried to set it up a few times before. I finally got it to work correctly, where it would actually run the game with ENB, and I was getting 15 FPS on an RTX 2080 Super and Ryzen 7 5900.
Also trying to get all the other programs like DynDoLOD and xEdit to work with MO2 was a pain as well.
I was using Mint for a while but the system got hosed. I plan on modding Starfield, and there was another game I can’t recall that wouldn’t work on Linux. After I best Starfield I fully expect to wipe my system again and go with a more stable distro of Linux (e.g. Gentoo or something).
There are gaming phones, phones with crazy cameras, and iPhones where the lack of features is a feature. What I wish to have is a phone with as many features and functionality as possible.
That includes (but not limited to): IR blaster Headphone jack MicroSD card slot FM Radio RGB Notification/Status LED
Rather than a slim phone with a glossy finish that will pick up scratches right away unless wrapped in a phone case, the outer cover of the phone should be rugged and replaceable. Like with old Nokia phones. I don’t care about few extra grams, or another millimeter of thickness. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.
I was hopeful about the Fairphone at first, but they started removing features as well.
Yea, I wasn’t ready to upgrade yet when the v60 came out. I guess I should have said “nothing I looked at to upgrade has come close” looking at it now though the non removable battery is a deal breaker.
Still have stacks of batteries for my V10 and v20. I thought it would be a deal-breaker too but it’s not as bad as I thought. The huge battery they put in the v60s really been lasting. I do admit I prefer to wirelessly charge slowly which possibly helps.
But when the battery wears out you’re fucked if you can’t find an upgrade. I’m on my 3rd battery on my V20 because I can always just pick up a new one (or at least as long as someone makes them). I’m not saying the v60 wasn’t a nice phone. Just I don’t want one that’s lifespan is limited by the battery. That is a big deal to me.
Disappointed Moto Mods didn’t catch on. The obvious approach of “skinny phone with minimal features but you can slap whatever you like onto the back (radios, projectors, beefy batteries, gamepad, etc)” - just makes sense for me. I loved my old Moto Z.
That includes (but not limited to): IR blaster Headphone jack MicroSD card slot FM Radio RGB Notification/Status LED
My Poco F2 Pro has all of those but microSD slot (none of my recent phones have had it, and I’m starting to miss it right now with 128 gb of base storage) and the IR blaster has saved my ass more than once!
I actually meant to reply to your comment but replied to the main thread by mistake, I had the same frustrations with modern phones losing features, and even fairphone dropping the 3.5mm jack was a wtf decision to me. See my comment on the ulephone 18t, it had virutally everything I wanted in a phone.
When I changed in my iPhone 3g for an original Galaxy S, with barometer, I thought that by the iPhone/Galaxy 10 we would all be rocking tricorders. What kind of crazy sensors would they jam in by then? Zero. Here we are at generation 15 with no additional cool sensors.
It’s intentional. They’d like to drop features to cut on design and manufacture costs, while taking out features most of the target audience doesn’t really care about. Some of these are just greedy. Phones used to rely on microSD expansion, but once you drop this option you could charge for additional space much more than what the equivalent microSD card would cost. You can also stop shipping phones with chargers because most people have them anyway. This is pure profit as the customer is paying the same price, but doesn’t get a charger.
As for other features, they probably dropped them because people just didn’t care enough.
It seems to be incredibly difficult to design a phone from scratch, and that’s why we only see a handful of manufacturers, with the small endeavors being able to make something that looks obsolete by the time it rolls out and even then it takes a few months to overcome all the bugs and glitches. Fairphone is the closest we’ve got, but it’s still far off and strays further with each generation.
Here’s my current problem: I use Firefox mainly, but I need a chromium browser for work occasionally. I feel like brave is better than chrome proper right? But the CEO is also terrible. Is there something I can use that’s chromium based (occasional usage) that is at least “the least bad” option?
While I agree with this, it’s kind of a pain in the ass if you use extensions. You have to roundabout install the Web Store through a crx download, tinkering in the settings and enabling dev mode, then use that extension to install other extensions. And may the cosmos grant you mercy if you need to use DRM for Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc, and have to download the Widevine DRM stuff separately and unzip it deep in the AppData folder.
It’s not impossible, but I guess I’m just saying that this probably isn’t going to be the answer for the everyday, average person.
If you need chromium, your best option is probably ungoogled-chromium which is basically just bare bones chrome with as much telemetry and tracking taken out as possible.
Yeah it takes a few extra steps to get extensions/chrome store stuff like that. Probably not the best option if you’re just trying to slap it on a work computer in 5 mins.
What, you don’t like to install the Web Store through a separate extension crx download, mess around in the settings, and enable dev mode? Wait til you hear what you have to do to get DRM working (Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, etc) with a download of Widevine that you have to extract deep in the AppData folder. 😂
I would love to use librewolf but somehow it stops being able to resolve web pages where every other browser I have installed is still able to. It’s the only thing stopping me from making the jump full time.
Sure, you have to sign up for it but you can’t remove the hardcoded crypto wallet extension and therefore can’t actually opt-out of having it shoved in your face (at least, it was the time i tried their browser and found it to be inferior in every way to just using Firefox and uBlock Origin).
The referral links weren’t. That should have been a thought that crossed a developers’ mind and immediately left it. It definitely shouldn’t have made it into a test build, and it super shouldn’t have made it into a public release. That it ever made it that far is enough reason to never use the browser again. The developers have proven that they cannot be trusted with your privacy.
Yup, that’s a huge red flag about the culture there. That said, Mozilla also enabled Pocket by default as an opt out feature, so it’s unfortunately common.
What a garbage article lol. The only two arguments I can pick out are 1. Old steam games haven’t been updated to work on macOS and 2. Some games require 3rd party launchers. I think the author was just angry that his mac dropped support for a 20 year old game.
But I always assumed that, unless you are blocking competition, it’s not legally a monopoly and harder to penalize (not that they actually penalize monopolies much in north America)
Other than making a good product and easier to run games on Linux, there is nothing preventing anyone to install other launchers or games on their own or game makers from selling through other launchers or independently, etc
There are two requirements to be considered a monopoly, or fall under antitrust laws:
Have a large market share
Be able to force competing products out of the market
Steam meets point 1, it doesn’t meet point 2. On the other hand, things like the Apple App Store, don’t meet point 1, but meet point 2, which makes them more likely to fall under antitrust. Windows meets both points, which is why the US sued Microsoft for not letting people choose their browser.
[…] Amazon violates the law not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging. By stifling competition on price, product selection, quality, and by preventing its current or future rivals from attracting a critical mass of shoppers and sellers, Amazon ensures that no current or future rival can threaten its dominance.
That isn’t what we see from Valve - in fact it’s the opposite, as Valve’s strategy with Steam is simply to provide the best service and be the gold standard. The competition is almost always compared unfavorably to Steam, because gamers know how it feels to use a mature platform that isn’t trying to abuse them.
Valve has even taken some steps that wind up increasing competition in adjacent markets, such as operating systems (Proton has contributed significantly to Linux popularity) and even handheld game devices (Steam Deck set off an arms race when electronics manufacturers realized Nintendo is asleep at the wheel). Steam is as pro-consumer as it gets, with the exception of GOG and possibly itch.
It isn’t a monopoly though. Even ignoring the Blizzards, Epics and GOGs of the web, any developer can host their game on their own Web site and market it completely independently of Steam and keep 100% of their takings.
The monopoly on storefront argument holds water in mobile land where side-loading a game is not possible/easy. In the world of computers though, I don’t think the same standard applies.
That’s still a monopoly. The article says it too, if you don’t put your game on steam, your sales suffer. It’s similar to how spotify has a monopoly on the music streaming market.
Citing this article that is upset about lack of Apple support but is silent on lack of Linux support from other launchers while probably using an iPhone that locks out everything compared to Android is funny.
If you market your game better it can “survive” outside of steam as well. I didn’t hear about Ready or Not having funding issues. They didn’t even announce a Steam release when they started their funding campaign.
It may result in less sales because users have to download and update the game manually. Can’t deny that assumption but it’s not a mandatory thing to publish on steam…
How are either of those a monopoly? A monopoly generally means you only have one option and that option is taking advantage of their outrageous market share by jacking up prices.
Where I live the only broadband internet is Comcast which is why I pay 2-3x more for my service than comparable services in areas where they don’t have a monopoly (or areas with sane regulations).
Saying that you’ll not earn as much money if you don’t put your game on steam doesn’t mean steam has a monopoly, it just means you’re not getting as much reach as you could. Being popular doesn’t equate to being a monopoly.
Monopoly on a platform that they don’t own? That being Microsoft? Then seeing how epic isn’t even profitable on the launcher side and is a loss leader while their launcher is barebones it raises the question of what cut is actually realistic that allows a company to have a feature rich launcher and branch out into stuff like Linux, VR, and Steam Deck.
Current state feels more like Walmart expanding into new territory and trying to lure people with low prices, but isn’t sustainable with the main goal just being expansion.
You don’t need to own the OS to have a monopoly. What a weird thing to say. You don’t need to own the United States to have a monopoly in it. That’s an equivalent statement.
Your point about Epic not being able to compete means they have a monopoly. Steam is great, but part of that is because they essentially have infinite money to spend improving things to make sure no one else catches up.
Epic hasn’t given me a reason to buy from them. Fanatical, humble bundle, gmg, etc I find better if the only selling point is price with them having more consistent sales, bundles, and choice of platform.
Epic has done more to make me not consider them an option with their foray into the market being removing Metro Exodus near launch and taking monopolistic approaches to taking the approach of denying games from being sold on other platforms. Not just steam but GOG too with exceptions only being given to owners of the platform.
Agreed.
Them withholding a game makes me not consider them in the future. I’d rather pirate it if they were to keep withholding it.
But I “allow” them to withhold 1st party games (or studios they aquire like Psyonix) from 3rd party stores. Same goes for Valve, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard and Microsoft.
They did the work and sure are entitled to keep it. It may not be in the interested of the consumer to have the need to install yet another launcher but it’s fine.
Them buying up 3rd party releases are what I have issues with
Epic isn’t able to compete because their launcher is missing major simple features like reviews.
I don’t want multiple extra steps when I’m interested in a game. Steam has a big market share because they are giving people what they want in a launcher. That’s it.
Epic can put in the effort if they want but it’s already been like 2 years and as far as i can tell hasn’t really been updated with anything new, I use it for the free games sometimes but otherwise not really. That would only change if they make the launcher more attractive.
I know they’re missing features. Steam didn’t always have all the features they have now either. We take that for granted now, but that wasn’t always the case. Steam has their market position because they were one of the first to market, and they invested their profits into making their product better. A newcomer is now met by consumers with the expectation that they’ll be equally as good, and when they inevitably aren’t they don’t use it. That’s how a monopoly works.
I agree it sucks, and that Steam is a nice piece of software, and the Valve has done good work supporting Linux. That doesn’t change whether or not they hold a monopolistic position in the market though. The barrier for new entries into the market is too high because Steam is good. It’s nothing against Steam, but it is a monopoly and that isn’t good for consumers —which includes game developers, not just end users.
That steam didn’t have features is like comparing steam from decades ago. I don’t feel like that is even a valid defense anymore when new smartphone companies are expected to come with a feature filled OS as opposed to pre smartphone expectations. Same for any other products be it televisions, monitors, etc.
Barriers can be brought up, but if someone is introducing the equivalent of a dumb phone to the market to compete against a smartphone and expecting to make money for just existing and only bothering to try to corner the market with removing products then no wonder things are playing out the way they are.
And Epic is a billion dollar company making stuff like unreal engine yet can’t scrap together a launcher that doesn’t feel like it is from decades ago. Or chooses not too. Can’t even put in Linux support despite community efforts like heroic launcher.
You can’t put out a shit product and then cry about why people aren’t buying it. It doesn’t work for any market. Can try to coerce people with monopolistic practices of trying to deny product availability, but that’ll only get you so far.
If anything if your argument is that it is hard then that just seems to bring to question of maybe a low cut actually isn’t realistic if a company wants to make a feature rich launcher and platform if even a billion dollar company is finding it hard to accomplish. But, it seems to me epic is only choosing or only knows the approach of trying to buy their way in and not want to “waste” resources improving anything else and banking on consumers not being able to resist not buying a product epic paid to only be available on their launcher.
You keep making good points. Unreal Engine has been around since 1998. They’ve had a long time developing the engine and it makes it hard for other engines to compete. There are a few, but not many. They’ve invested a lot of money into making their engine the premium option and making sure consumers avoid alternatives that aren’t as feature rich.
You can’t put out a shit product and then cry about why people aren’t buying it. It doesn’t work for any market. Can try to coerce people with monopolistic practices of trying to deny product availability, but that’ll only get you so far.
You clearly can coerce people with monopolistic practices. You’re defending Valve over Epic, which Epic has a much smaller market share. You can call it anti-consumer if you want, but monopolistic? Yeah right. When one store is the default, devs have to sacrafice to not be a part of it. Again, I agree it sucks, but it’s a monopoly by Valve, not Epic.
If anything if your argument is that it is hard then that just seems to bring to question of maybe a low cut actually isn’t realistic if a company wants to make a feature rich launcher and platform if even a billion dollar company is finding it hard to accomplish.
There are two consumers here. There’s consumers who purchase games, and consumers who utilize the product to sell their games. Epic gives a smaller cut to entice devs, because otherwise they have no reason to participate because all the game purchases happen through Steam.
It all sucks for the consumer, which is why monopolies are bad. We shouldn’t be defending some company who’s making tons of profit just because we are simping for their product. Steam is undoubtedly superior, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t monopolistic.
Point is that the alternative isn’t even trying to be a legitimate option. It’s like wanting better streaming options for videos and blockbuster popping up and removing videos from being available on other steaming options.
There’s nothing that can be done when other companies don’t even bother with the new competitor being a billion dollar publicly traded company taking a monopolistic strategy. They aren’t even trying except throw money around to remove options. For there to be competion that is good for consumers the competion has to actually try, but they think just talking about cuts that don’t matter to consumers and taking a monopolistic approach to games is going to bring people who actually spend money.
All these cuts talks are useless when the company hasn’t even proven to have an sustainable actual business model with it not turning a profit. And given trends of other businesses that promise low prices then raise them is one of the least reliable ones. I’m not sure why you are simping for epic and defending them when my point is they aren’t even a good option worth defending like you are. It’s like defending a Walmart that showed up in a town despite all their strategies being more red flags.
I get pushing for gog or itch. But some company just existing doesn’t merit defending if they aren’t bringing value. The defense of them hasn’t been earned. Their end goal seems more suspicious to me. An option just popping up doesn’t entitle it to being defended if they haven’t earned it.
Another good point about video. Go try to stream Battlestar Galactica right now. It’s one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever made, and it’s impossible to stream reasonably. There actually is competition in that space, yet stuff like that still happens due to licensing deals. It used to be available on Netflix when that was the only streaming option, but it left a long time ago.
There’s nothing that can be done when other companies don’t even bother with the new competitor being a billion dollar publicly traded company taking a monopolistic strategy. They aren’t even trying except throw money around to remove options. For there to be competion that is good for consumers the competion has to actually try, but they think just talking about cuts that don’t matter to consumers and taking a monopolistic approach to games is going to bring people who actually spend money.
There is something that can be done. We have a government for a reason. It has laws in place to handle when monopolies appear. That shouldn’t matter if you like them or not. Monopolies are bad. For example, look at GPU prices. They are as high as they are because Nvidia can set them that high. They could be better than they are currently too, but there’s no reason to do that when they’re in the front. They’d rather sit on it until they need to advance to stay a step ahead. It’s bad for consumers, even if you like Nvidia for some reason.
Epic could compete. But I believe they did their approach too forcefully.
I personally refuse to use EGS because I don’t like how they approached the market by starting this exclusive war on PC. I wished they kept that to consoles only. If they did a co-release on both Steam and EGS but offer a consistent 10€ discount compared to Steam I’d be more open to it instead.
This in addition to Tencent (and by that extent the chinese gov) have a ~40% of shares of the company. That’s a considerable amount of foothold. And I vote with my wallet by not giving them more of my data.
I have to mention though, that I have an EpicGames account and have played Fortnight as well as use and play UE-games and tried out the UE-engine. But I have the option in life to not give them more.
Not like any other app store does take 30% except for some high volume games/publishers.
Apple does the same. Hell they seem to have custom rules for each of the app devs (according to Linus and Luke from LTT: I believe this clip contains most of it. They recently talked about it again. Essentially they developed the app payment like Netflix. Apple said “No, that’s against our rules” and refused the submission of the update. Meanwhile Netflix supposedly still had the same communication for a long time.)
Same goes with Google and probably a number of other external stores.
Amazon seems to take up to 20% depending on the item (Source: sell.amazon.com/pricing.
At least Steam does provide a forum, community features and the update framework and infrastructure.
Personally I would be happy to take the offering over maybe needing to host and maintain the tech stack myself. Now mind you, maybe some other dev would rather do it themself and maybe wish to opt-out of the ecosystem. That is totally valid.
(Warning/Disclaimer: I only heard about that. I do not have first hand experience!) Apple for example takes a percentage for processing a payment and offers an invoicing system. Some may like that. Others could maybe negotiate a better deal with another provider and maybe even offer tools that integrate better with their existing accounting and ERP software.
A 30% cut for steam games sold on steam and a 0% cut for steam keys sold by the publisher wherever they want with the caveat that they must give steam users the same sales at around the same time. They get their games hosted on Steam's industry best CDN, a page with support for images and videos, an API with features users like, workshop API for mod hosting and delivery, and other SteamWorks API stuff for stuff like multiplayer, patch management without charging a fee for it, forum hosting to hit the highlights. Pretty much all of that drives engagement and is mostly turn-key though you do have to programmatically interact with their API when it makes sense.
Steam provides a lot of benefit for a 30% cut of what is sold on their store front and a lot more benefit for getting all of the above for a 0% cut if they sell steam keys outside of steam.
I’m not saying Steam is the worst thing out there right now. I’m saying monopoly is inherently bad, and 30% is a crazy high cut even including the features you mentioned.
And even then the same sales around the same time seems very lax with games often going on sale for pre-orders for a steam key that Steam games never get at launch. Most my Steam games are purchased from other storefronts than steam with more frequent sales and faster price drops.
Well the third-party launchers is extremely annoying, I have to say. Buying a game on Steam and then it forcing you to install yet another launcher (I have like 8 on my gaming PC now) really pisses me off.
I tend to buy on GOG now if I have the choice because they don’t stand for that kind of shit nor DRM either.
I also really love the overview of GOG of the games you have in different launchers. Before that it happened to me multiple times that I bought a game on sale without realising I had already bought it on another platform years ago on another sale. Oops.
Ethics, features that are actually great for me instead of stuff that’s just great for them. Love it. Reminds me a lot of a company that used to be like that. It was called Valve I think.
The person you’re responding to is one of those people that thinks Steam is the DRM, because 1) it checks games against your account the first time you run them, and 2) they don’t provide offline installers like GOG.
The only “DRM” that they have is checking the game against your steam account the first time you run it. Is that great? No. Would it be nice if they offered offline installers? Of course.
Truth be told, it's a little bit more complicated than that.
PC Gaming has had tons of DRM examples - from SecuROM (anyone remember those times?) to modern day Denuvo DRM.
So there are a few unpopular DRMs out there:
Disc checking based DRM (if the disc was cooked, that's your paid game down the drain)
CD Key based DRM (if you lost the CD Key, that's your paid game down the drain)
Online activation (you registered the same game on two different PCs? Try that again one more time and you're done for. For added bonus, sometimes the activation software would register the same PC as different hardware because someone had the audacity to upgrade their hardware!)
Always online - need I say more?
Cloud gaming - now with the added joy of not owning the ones and zeros you paid for!!
Steam has managed to use account based DRM while avoiding the trappings of pretty much all of the above (for some games you can enter a CD key, and that game is permanently attached to your account, which is great if you lose the disc, but sucks if you want to sell the physical game on afterwards), while the competition used any of the above (some used multiple layers of DRM, which is eurgh).
Then on top of that, hats off to Valve - they do tend to listen to their customers and give them what they want, even if the whole point is to keep them tied to using Steam and strangle out the competition:
Cloud saving
Steam Workshops
Game streaming via local network
Sharing the game library with family
Controller support with button remapping for legacy games with poor support
In store game reviews
Store algoritm suggestions based on the game categories you buy and what you friends buy
Discussion forums (even if they can be thoroughly toxic at times)
Guides (the formatting is awful)
Fairly deep and independent social integration
Built in audio streaming via Steam
Those card things that you can sell for a bit of money or craft
Compare that to Origin, Epic Store, GOG etc. They just cannot compete with what Valve offers in terms of features on top of features.
What bothers me about Valve is that
They have such a chokehold on PC gaming that everything else feels inferior, and no other company can really compete in terms of features
They have fought refunds in the past (as mentioned in the article)
The whole paid modding fiasco because Valve really wanted to financially exploit a community known to give stuff away for free
How they often abandon their own products due to lack of customer attention and their limited size due to wanting to remain a limited company
I'm looking at Valve Index, and apart from Half Life: Alyx, I don't see much in the way of new games. Even worse is that I watched someone on YouTube basically explain that there are still glitches and weird stuff that occurs in the Valve Index - aa product that costs £919 here in the UK.
I'm also looking at the Steam Controller, which has been very, very neglected with no talk of a sequel (given how successful the Steam Deck has been, I'm shocked at the lack of a "companion controller")
I'm also looking at the infamous Steam PCs that completely flopped
How TF2 started the trend (at least on Steam) of microtransactions in games, and how CS:GO has carried that flag (and started a gambling community which has probably done untold damage to young children as they grow into adults and are confronted with the world of gambling)
How Valve, as a company that started off making games, has absolutely no desire whatsoever to make games anymore because of how wildly successful they are.
And this is the stuff I can think of at the top of my head. I was going to say it also concerns me they don't have a bug bounty program, but it turns out now they do.
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