Valve also used equally awful tactics when they wanted to push Steam in the beginning.
They sold physical games in stores where the only thing on the disk was a Steam installer and a code, forcing everyone to install their store in order to play the game.
They aren’t much different from other companies, they can just afford to do nothing now because of their semi-monopoly.
I mean, most of the time when a company gets as much of the market share as steam, they start enshitifying to squeeze more pennies out of their user base until everything that made them good in the first place is tainted and worthless.
Valve also used equally awful tactics when they wanted to push Steam in the beginning.
They sold physical games in stores where the only thing on the disk was a Steam installer and a code, forcing everyone to install their store in order to play the game.
They aren’t much different from other companies, they can just afford to do nothing now because of their semi-monopoly.
Oh my god, this is how 17yo me discovered what Steam is. I was forced to install it and i was SO mad.
Still using Steam 13 years later.
I mean, most of the time when a company gets as much of the market share as steam, they start enshitifying to squeeze more pennies out of their user base until everything that made them good in the first place is tainted and worthless.