Ensh*ttification of Steam

[Baran B.]

I've been on steam more than ten years at this point, and have 550 games on my library. None of them are one of those 20 cent shovelware to farm achievements either. All 550 proper games that I've carefully curated over the years. I've bought games that I have actual physical copies of, I've bought games that I previously pirated. I'm saying all this because I want to prove to the reader that I'm not some steam hater, on the contrary, I love steam.

I just noticed that I unintentionally referred to one of the shortcomings of steam in my second sentence there. It probably didn't even register to most of you reading this, because it has been normalized. All the shovelware.

I came to talk about what broke the camel's back for me, and I ended up finding out steam is stopping support for Win 7 as well. Who makes these decisions, I don't know. Biggest games on steam, CS2 and Dota 2 are both fully capable of being played on older machines which are likely running Win 7. To me it just makes 0 business sense.

Over the last month, steam discussions have been filled with people complaining about currency changes in Turkey and Argentina. I remember when steam introduced the Turkish Lira in 2012, or maybe 2013. That's when I properly started using steam. I had a friend who stopped gaming since PS1 start gaming again thanks to steam's currency change. Thanks to that, we played Payday 2 for hundreds of hours together during our college years. I have so many memories with steam.

Out of the 550 games I have on steam, there are so many I've yet to play properly, or finish. I bought them even though I couldn't play them, because steam made it convenient to buy games. Since I have some games in my backlog, like Darkest Dungeon 1, I was waiting for a sale for DD2. But now the game is twice as expensive than it was when it first released. I could've bought it for far cheaper on release. That's crazy to me. I was waiting for like a 20%, 25% sale, because the game's value for me was lower than what it was going for. Now I have to wait for like 75% off? Forgetabboutit. I don't even go into steam store anymore, when I do go to the steam store, it's just to look at how much more expensive games are now. DD2's value for me didn't immediately go x2 for me because my perceived value has been anchored to the initial value. As in, now that I know how cheap games can be, I cannot justify spending x4 x5 x20 for the same product. This is just basic economic theory.

But I'm not here to complain about the changes. No. In fact, I think they're a good thing for the consumers. Not so much for steam.I just bought Darkest Dungeon 2 on Epic. I don't need DD2, I'm not even going to play DD2 as I haven't finished the first game yet, and yet, I bought DD2. Because it was convenient.

Gabe Newell said piracy is an issue of service, not price. And he's completely correct. If you provide a better service than pirates, people will buy your games. Epic right now provides a better service than pirates. Steam doesn't. One downside of Epic right now is that it has terrible NFT games on their store front. Sure, say there are 500 terrible NFT games on epic. But there are 500 terrible shovelware games releasing on steam EVERY DAY. Epic is simply the better service right now.

Back in the day, I would rather pay slightly more money on steam to have my games on steam, than to pay less to have my game on Epic. Because I valued steam as a platform. Because I was used to using steam. It's a matter of comfort, of habit. Once I lose that, steam will cease to have value for me. So I think this is goodbye. I still have all my games, I'll still use steam. But it's no different than EA's app or Uplay or whatever now.

PS: I just realized how many times I didn't capitalize "Steam" because to me, Steam is so ubiquitous that it's not even a proper noun. To me, steam is just steam. There's no other steam.

[BJWyler]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Alenthas:

Steam pushed out customers from two countries, granted, they were low income countries with worthless money, but Epic has been bleeding money just to eat away at steam userbase. Steam just gave them thousands if not millions of new users.

Worthless currency is still worthless regardless of the platform. You won't be finding games all that much cheaper on EGS, if it even lasts another year.

[Crazy Tiger]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Alenthas:

Steam just gave them thousands if not millions of new users.

If Epic has the games one likes, yes. Epics main issue still is the limited catalog. Most people will have to keep Steam besides it.

Though many people use multiple stores anyway. Why be "loyal" to only one store?

[Kargor]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย gelbphoenix:

It is more costly to maintain a legacy version of a heavily modified web browser (the steam client isn't anything else) which base (Chromium/Chrome) abandoned Win7 in Jan 2023.

They wouldn't have to.

The cheapest immediate solution would be to make a special version of the Steam client that keeps using the old browser engine and disables all access to external websites, and basically call this the "legacy client". This would keep things running smoothly until the client starts using "state of the art" HTML or Javascript that the old browser engine doesn't understand.

A more reasonable solution would be to make a minimal client that doesn't use the browser stuff at all, BUT only implements the absolute minimum required of a Steam client: login, install games, run games. For stuff like achievements, they should be sent to Steam, but this being a minimal client means there will be no popups.

Yes, this means no overlay, no forums, no store. Just the very basic functionality.

Such a client could be made to run on WinXP and MacOS 10.3 (or whatever -- I'm just giving examples here), and they would require minimal maintenance -- basically, only when one of the relevant items in steam changes (how logins are done, how downloads are done, and how the games talk with Steam).

[ReBoot]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Alenthas:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย ReBoot:

Won't happen. Simply won't happen. People have calling out the end of Steam getting near for years. I am not kidding, threads like yours have been there 10+ years ago. What ultimately happened, is growth. All. This. Time.

What makes your call for the decline of Steam different from all the others?

I'm not calling out for end of steam. I don't want steam to end. I like steam. I want them to lose money so they have to work harder to gain back the customers they lost. I just think having all these alternatives is a healthy environment because steam has been stagnating for too long. Steam pushed out customers from two countries, granted, they were low income countries with worthless money, but Epic has been bleeding money just to eat away at steam userbase. Steam just gave them thousands if not millions of new users.

... which won't happen either. Ok, let me peraphrase: "the decline of Steam for the benefit of Epic or whatever else you're 'leaving' Steam for". People have been calling for that to happen for 10+ years, still didn't happen. Won't happen this time either.

Don't get hung up on a detail, missing the bigger picture. Yeah, I got that detail wrong, I admit. Doesn't change a single thing about the point of the statement though.

[wesnef]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย gelbphoenix:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Neo:

Or just upgrade which is quick and easy and then don't worry about the problem.

The free upgrade method via the activation servers provided by Microsoft has ended in 2023.

Several years after they originally said it would end. MS really made it easy for people to upgrade, it's not on them if people didn't.


---

Every computer system I've used in my life has had 1. things that forced/"encouraged" you to update the system, and 2. software that stopped working because of that.
This is nothing new, this is nothing unique, this is not some Vile Assault On Our Personal Freedoms (or whatever unhinged rant someone wishes to spew).
It's just life. /shrug

[Baran B.]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย BJWyler:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Alenthas:

Steam pushed out customers from two countries, granted, they were low income countries with worthless money, but Epic has been bleeding money just to eat away at steam userbase. Steam just gave them thousands if not millions of new users.

Worthless currency is still worthless regardless of the platform. You won't be finding games all that much cheaper on EGS, if it even lasts another year.

I doubt it. Epic's business model is growth focused. They're bleeding money on their store which they're subsidizing with Fortnite. They keep their store cheap in order to grow their userbase.

Steam switched the currency because it keeps being devalued, and devs can't keep up with the changes. Which is a reasonable change. But they, again, aren't keeping up with the changes and now the pricing is way higher than steam suggestions, which is closer to Epic's pricing. So Epic being cheaper isn't outside of the norm. I doubt that they would do something so disruptive like this because they at least keep their storefront curated, more or less.

[BJWyler]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Alenthas:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย BJWyler:

Worthless currency is still worthless regardless of the platform. You won't be finding games all that much cheaper on EGS, if it even lasts another year.

I doubt it. Epic's business model is growth focused. They're bleeding money on their store which they're subsidizing with Fortnite. They keep their store cheap in order to grow their userbase.

Steam switched the currency because it keeps being devalued, and devs can't keep up with the changes. Which is a reasonable change. But they, again, aren't keeping up with the changes and now the pricing is way higher than steam suggestions, which is closer to Epic's pricing. So Epic being cheaper isn't outside of the norm. I doubt that they would do something so disruptive like this because they at least keep their storefront curated, more or less.

Then you truly don't understand how business works. Epic may be cheaper now in some aspects, but there's only so much holding up that Fortnite can do. And Epic certainly isn't going to devalue their store even further and sustain even more loss for a handful of people whose currency is barely worth more than Monopoly money.

[nullable]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Alenthas:

A lot of people responded to different parts of the OP without understanding it in its whole. I'm not using Win 7, I just think it's silly business decision for steam to drop it considering Russians and Chinese are their main demographic with games like Dota 2 and CS2, both are dollar poor countries and more people are likely to have old machines with win 7. Of course these systems have poor security but its users don't care about security, and apparently steam doesn't care about its users enough to support win 7. It's just part of the ensh*ttification of steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey Windows 7 64bit 0.69%, doesn't seem like your claims match with reality. And a fraction of 1% of "dollar poor users" may not make a compelling case for forever support.

Windows 7 is old, and it's users are not a significant or prime demographic. And I doubt they make up 0.69% of revenue on Steam or even in the CS2/DOTA2 ecosystems.

Standard updates and end of support isn't some crime, it's a core part of the PC platform, period.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

So here some point.

* It's bad decisions to stop support for unsupported OS*

Here the problem when using any LIVE services there are expectations changes can happen in the future it can happen soon, or right away. Steam isn't first, nor the last company that does support drop to OS. Been a thing for last 30 years, and somehow people keep making Pikachu faces when times does come when they fully know they're running into by doing backflips, cartwheels like in action movie just to use LIVE services, compare to just thinking for one moment just a moment before doing all that to wonder do you want a permanent support, or do you want live services support that could change overtime? You're ok with DRM vs not wanting any DRM period, that what this is mainly. And so far I seen fail attempts to try justify their poor decisions, and excuses.

Truth is, if someone want to stick to said OS for LIFE, and I mean they will never touch another OS in their life, they should've only buy DRM free software, point why DRM free exist is to have exactly as that, never changing so never worry even if you lost connection to most sites in the future due to new protocols, and such that happens not work for older OS. People who jump into DRM should've at least knew it gonna happen at some point, and shouldn't be shocking really, like steam dropped OS almost a dozen times, I mean how many more until one realize oh that how DRM works vs DRM free.

Lastly if support get dropped it due to number of reasons, it can be due to lack of interest, lack of sales, lack of support to be able to move forward, and so on, and people have to realize no company is a friend, there can be personal opinion liking companies which is normal, but there fact people may mistake it for friendship, as things are never simple, or understanding because companies are not charity case looking for friends.

*Argentina and turkey currency dropped*

The problem is those currencies had insane market crash with corruption that kept making it worse. This created problems hence why people were complaining for years why devs, and publishers keep raising the prices over & over every couple months, until you realize wow it just keep going up, that because due to market crash devs want their X amount $, they don't want to see how their game was making $$ ~ $$$$ to pennies ~ $, hence why prices kept going up.

To make a stable fixed prices so devs don't have to keep coming back, over & over to keep raising prices on the peope, just use a stable currency hence why got switch to USD because there no reason to needing to keep readjusting the prices every couple of months. Another fun fact the devs, and publishers can set custom prices for said countries that using USD, some may just charge same prices in rich countries, but some do make custom prices for those in other countries using USD.

[KiRA]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Neo:

I stopped reading this wall of text before even reaching half way down. Hard to pin point what the OP wants to say.

Get out of the forums, people like you are the reason discussions cant exist.

[Ganger]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Alenthas:

Back in the day, I would rather pay slightly more money on steam to have my games on steam, than to pay less to have my game on Epic. Because I valued steam as a platform. Because I was used to using steam. It's a matter of comfort, of habit. Once I lose that, steam will cease to have value for me. So I think this is goodbye. I still have all my games, I'll still use steam. But it's no different than EA's app or Uplay or whatever now.

I and many others steam users felt the same as you at one time or another. Just goes to show how much control a company can have on a person. Loyalty only goes one way, from the customer to the company and never the other way round.

When something goes wrong and you seek help from the company but said company just fops you off and treats you like a number, it can feel like a loved one has all of a sudden thrown you to the wall and the betrayal can be hard to overcome for some people (I posted this study into this not so long ago, sorry don't have time to find it).

You should treat steam as a place just to buy and play games, period. You should still continue to purchase games on steams but shop around first too find the cheapest deals. If a game is cheaper on epic then buy on epic, let steam fight for your dollars m8 and not the other way round.

[Lokiator]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Ganger:

I and many others steam users felt the same as you at one time or another. Just goes to show how much control a company can have on a person. Loyalty only goes one way, from the customer to the company and never the other way round.

Part of the problem with loyalty going from Steam to the customer is that every time Steam has tried to do something nice for customers, there has been a small percentage of the user base who try to exploit it to the point where they ruin it for everyone else.

Take the Saliens event as an example... Someone almost immediately wrote a script to automate the game so they (and all their multi-accounts) could participate in more boss battles and increase their chance of winning a free game. Others followed, and soon you had boss battles being over in minutes and any casual user was screwed out of a chance to participate.

Or the scandal around TF2 / CS key reselling that basically gutted the original versions of Steam Points and resulted in the removal of discount coupons.

Virtually every Sales Event that I can think of since I joined Steam was abused by certain people for their own personal gain. It's no wonder Steam stopped doing anything nice for users.

[Haruspex]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Alenthas:

I've been on steam more than ten years at this point, and have 550 games on my library.

Congratulations? This isn't much of a qualifier. I've been on Steam over 19 years, and I have over 1,300 games in my library. I witnessed Steam stop support for Windows 95/98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. There is absolutely nothing new or surprising about them ending support for windows 7/8, an operating system that hasn't gotten a security update since January of 2020.

I do note you have games that don't work in Windows 7 without workarounds, and their requirements are as such that suggest you certainly meet the requirements to run Windows 10 or 11. Seems you would actually be much better off just upgrading than stubbornly sticking to an outdated and unsupported OS.

As for where you live, nobody but the citizens of your country and your government can fix that. It's not Valve's fault that your currency is almost worthless.

[☎need4naiim☎]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Kargor:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย gelbphoenix:

It is more costly to maintain a legacy version of a heavily modified web browser (the steam client isn't anything else) which base (Chromium/Chrome) abandoned Win7 in Jan 2023.

They wouldn't have to.

The cheapest immediate solution would be to make a special version of the Steam client that keeps using the old browser engine and disables all access to external websites, and basically call this the "legacy client". This would keep things running smoothly until the client starts using "state of the art" HTML or Javascript that the old browser engine doesn't understand.

A more reasonable solution would be to make a minimal client that doesn't use the browser stuff at all, BUT only implements the absolute minimum required of a Steam client: login, install games, run games. For stuff like achievements, they should be sent to Steam, but this being a minimal client means there will be no popups.

Yes, this means no overlay, no forums, no store. Just the very basic functionality.

Such a client could be made to run on WinXP and MacOS 10.3 (or whatever -- I'm just giving examples here), and they would require minimal maintenance -- basically, only when one of the relevant items in steam changes (how logins are done, how downloads are done, and how the games talk with Steam).

This.

Absolutely.

There are always legit solutions. Especially for a company which has developed very few games over the last two decades but made billions of dollars from being the most popular storefront.

A billion dollar software company can easily make one of those solutions above. The problem is that "does that company care about those thousands of gamers who are on older hardware?"

We shouldn't be that naive to think that these multi-billion dollar companies like Valve, Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Microsoft haven't discussed this topic together at a meeting, completely away from any journalist, behind closed doors.

NOTE: i am using Windows 10 since September 2015.

[Boblin the Goblin]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย ☎need4naiim☎:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Kargor:

They wouldn't have to.

The cheapest immediate solution would be to make a special version of the Steam client that keeps using the old browser engine and disables all access to external websites, and basically call this the "legacy client". This would keep things running smoothly until the client starts using "state of the art" HTML or Javascript that the old browser engine doesn't understand.

A more reasonable solution would be to make a minimal client that doesn't use the browser stuff at all, BUT only implements the absolute minimum required of a Steam client: login, install games, run games. For stuff like achievements, they should be sent to Steam, but this being a minimal client means there will be no popups.

Yes, this means no overlay, no forums, no store. Just the very basic functionality.

Such a client could be made to run on WinXP and MacOS 10.3 (or whatever -- I'm just giving examples here), and they would require minimal maintenance -- basically, only when one of the relevant items in steam changes (how logins are done, how downloads are done, and how the games talk with Steam).

This.

Absolutely.

There are always legit solutions. Especially for a company which has developed very few games over the last two decades but made billions of dollars from being the most popular storefront.

A billion dollar software company can easily make one of those solutions above. The problem is that "does that company care about those thousands of gamers who are on older hardware?"

We shouldn't be that naive to think that these multi-billion dollar companies like Valve, Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Microsoft haven't discussed this topic together at a meeting, completely away from any journalist, behind closed doors.

You saying they should make a specific client for less than 1% of their users.

That isn't reasonable in the slightest.