cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/15970074
Valve:
- popularized DRM on PC
- killed the used games market on PC
- bans people for selling their Steam account
- contributed to popularizing microtransactions, loot boxes and Battle Pass
- forces you to run a proprietary app to play your games
- forces updates on you
- pretends they invented Wine
- ships devices with a proprietary SteamOS
- forces devs to use proprietary libraries to use Steam’s features
Gamers:
Yes uncle Gaben more of that please!!!
Recovering/relapsing Valve fan here. You should add to your microtnx bullet that they literally invented the Battle Pass. They also recently abandoned it for Dota 2, but that’s probs because nobody wants to work on it.
I think there are some absolutely brilliant people at Valve that do incredible work. I think they have the benefit of corpulent levels of wealth because of Steam’s success, and they use that to release some fantastic software, games, and build great systems. However, I have a hard time saying OP is ‘wrong’ about much of anything. Maybe the SteamOS thing? I don’t know of any actions they are taking to stop people putting a better OS on their hardware. I wouldn’t criticize some company for sticking Windows on a machine, if the machine is meant to work out of the box, and the chosen OS is Windows.
Woah, you are right! There is even a Wikipedia article about it.
Microsoft doesn’t prevent me from using another operating system on my PC either (you are right that it would be way worse if they did, though). But they developed Windows - an operating system that takes away user’s freedom. Valve does the same with SteamOS. Most software they make is proprietary, but Valve fans get distracted with things like Proton, which is just a fork of Wine.
If Windows is an unethical operating system and some company makes money distributing it, isn’t that unethical?
I think the limitations of my first post are pretty much the limitations of what I’ve come to think about these big tech corporations. I agree with your basic premise but it will take me more time in my journey until I can totally get to grips with the full argument. :) My pause is primarily on how Windows is itself an “unethical” product and how that affects other people and corporations other than Microsoft (sure it is an unethical arrangement, but I need to do work before I can make that argument myself).
e: for coherency
Windows and other proprietary software is unethical, because it gives developers power over users. People can’t easily see what such software does on their device and they can’t change it. So they can’t control those programs and as a result they have no control over their own devices. It’s also very easy for developers to abuse those users with spyware, DRM and other malicious features. In case of Windows we know for a fact that it does those things. But even if it didn’t, people deserve to be able to control their computers, so it’s unethical to take that right away from them.
Free software gives you the 4 essential freedoms. Any programmer in the world can audit what such program does and change it. So it’s very hard for a developer to abuse their users. If they add some malicious feature, any programmer can remove it and share the modified version with others. So with free software, it’s the users who are in control (as long as there is at least one programmer among them that can make the changes they want).
https://piped.video/watch?v=Ag1AKIl_2GM
Thanks :)