I'm struggling to see why anyone would root for Steam.
I've paid $10/month for a library of hundreds of games I can play on both PC and Xbox. We all knew that price was too good to be true but I've paid it happily for 5 years. We were waiting for the other shoe to drop and now it has. I've loaded up 2.5 years on my account at $20/month (the current retail price for Ultimate is $60 for 3-month cards.)
I've played countless indie games that I never otherwise would have taken a chance on. Even if I only played day one AAA games, the same $70 would get me one game on Steam for 2.3 months of the entire Game Pass library at the $30 price point or 3.5 months at the still-available $20/month price point. The game can't be resold on either platform.
Microsoft created a new business model that changed how I play games for the better. I can't see how the service isn't worth $30/month for 500+ games. (For a regular and not casual gamer.) This isn't shovelware like the Netflix library. There's a ton of high-quality games in there.
And I don't see how their price increase, which was inevitable and the timing of which was hastened by tariffs, has anything but a specious like to the merger.
Steam has done nothing but contrive a rent-seeker position for itself on an otherwise open platform. Maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember a time when I could buy from the publisher without that middleman and click setup.exe for myself. And still retain the rights to resell and play offline without a middleman.
GamePass is the worst thing to happen to gaming in the last two decades. It's an unsustainable race-to-the-bottom business model that devalues games and incentives shoveling out crap instead of producing quality titles. Worse yet, it conditions players to dismiss challenging, innovative, or unusual game mechanics due to the siren song of a functionally infinite catalog tempting them to just load up another title at the first sign of struggle.
I don’t like subscribing to things, let me just buy it for some amount of money.
I really really doubt many people on this site have any problems paying fair amount of money to buy their entertainment. Real cost is when the platform tries cutting some part of service or you have a problem renewing the subscription or you move to another country and it causes problems etc.
It is just better to actually own it and steam is really well trusted compared to a company like Microsoft which is bottom of the barrel. GoG model is better though like some other people wrote already.
But tou don't have to pick one, you can have both. I pay for gamepass and most of the games I play I'm fine not owning them ever. But when any is worth it, I purchase is on steam and can have it forever. And I really don't mind "paying twice" because the game is worth it.
> I'm struggling to see why anyone would root for Steam.
Because no way in hell I would support any Microsoft initiative in gaming? Or anywhere else for that matter.
Say what you will of Steam, but they made gaming on Linux not only viable, but in many ways better than on Microsoft. For thatbI will forever be grateful.
> I'm struggling to see why anyone would root for Steam.
> I've played countless indie games that I never otherwise would have taken a chance on.
My very uneducated guess is that 90% of Game Pass subscribers don't play nearly that many indie games. They probably don't even play 1 new title per month.
I've paid $10/month for a library of hundreds of games I can play on both PC and Xbox. We all knew that price was too good to be true but I've paid it happily for 5 years. We were waiting for the other shoe to drop and now it has. I've loaded up 2.5 years on my account at $20/month (the current retail price for Ultimate is $60 for 3-month cards.)
I've played countless indie games that I never otherwise would have taken a chance on. Even if I only played day one AAA games, the same $70 would get me one game on Steam for 2.3 months of the entire Game Pass library at the $30 price point or 3.5 months at the still-available $20/month price point. The game can't be resold on either platform.
Microsoft created a new business model that changed how I play games for the better. I can't see how the service isn't worth $30/month for 500+ games. (For a regular and not casual gamer.) This isn't shovelware like the Netflix library. There's a ton of high-quality games in there.
And I don't see how their price increase, which was inevitable and the timing of which was hastened by tariffs, has anything but a specious like to the merger.
Steam has done nothing but contrive a rent-seeker position for itself on an otherwise open platform. Maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember a time when I could buy from the publisher without that middleman and click setup.exe for myself. And still retain the rights to resell and play offline without a middleman.