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I did not realize they were trying to compete in the first place.

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[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 99 points 2 days ago

The biggest advantage Steam has over other platforms:

  1. They're not publicly-traded, meaning they are inclined to look out for long-term success vs. short term profits.
  2. Steam is already on their systems, and may have been for 20+ years. Nobody wants a dozen fucking game launchers and Steam already has virtually every game in existence available there. Not to mention the "community" features, friends lists, etc. Every other platform is simply too late.
  3. They have 20+ years' experience learning what gamers want and implementing it.

Amazon could probably compete with them if they really wanted to, but that would involve a large, long-term, consumer-centric investment, which probably isn't a good use of their money.

[-] DickFiasco@lemm.ee 43 points 2 days ago

#3 is the key I think. Valve's business model is figuring out what their customers want and then providing it to them. Amazon's model is to capture enough market share so they can start the enshitification process.

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 20 points 2 days ago

Yes but also #3 is closely tied to #1.

[-] dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 15 points 2 days ago

Heroic is FOSS. They have no money, and still made a better launcher for Epic and Amazon's games than Epic and Amazon can.

[-] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 6 points 2 days ago

I have held off game launchers on Linux for a long time.

Then I tried Heroic to play Frostpunk and avoid the hassle of setting it up myself.

It is perfect.

[-] adarza@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 days ago

Steam is already on their systems, and may have been for 20+ years.

since the update to counter-strike that required it. so that's what? 2003?

my original retail counter-strike was the first thing on mine. retail hl2 was second.

[-] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I bet the fallout with Vivendi and the lawsuit that almost bankrupted them taught them a major lesson to never be beholden to outsiders and thus never go public.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

Basically only 2

I want a launcher for each game though

[-] Slab_Bulkhead@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago

do you also keep every single fork in its own kitchen drawer?

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

I keep all my cds in separate cases as a better analogy

[-] Zorque@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago

More like you keep different CD players for each CD.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago

I assure you that I use the same computer for each computer game

[-] Zorque@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago

But a launcher isn't something you use for storage, that'd be your file system.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

Cd player executes the code on the cd

Computer executes the code of the game

Now you see how different drawers or different cd players don’t work?

The launcher can just be the .sh file included with the game

[-] Zorque@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago

I can see how you're trying to justify a bad mangling of an analogy.

If we follow your modification of your modification of the analogy, you want physical cases for your games, which has nothing to do with launchers at all.

Though it seems you don't want launchers at all, you want independent executable files, which isn't what a launcher is in this context.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

you want independent executable files

Those are launchers, are you confusing launchers with libraries?

this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
821 points (100.0% liked)

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