Steam is a ticking time bomb

Eventually, the bomb will go off, and the full 'enshittification' of Steam will commence. There will be competitors ready to take its place, but the current reluctance to embrace any Steam alternatives right now makes me worry that even a malicious Valve could keep a stranglehold on the PC as a software platform for years.

I didn’t find this conclusion well supported by the evidence presented

Valve’s faults are very well documented but I don’t understand the ticking time bomb reference at all.
I absolutely appreciate all of Valve’s Linux efforts. Linux wouldn’t be thriving as a gaming platform without them.
- Enshitification usually happens because Wall Street demands infinite growth. I don’t see how that applies to Valve as a privately owned enterprise. If anything the complaint with Valve is that they only work on stuff they feel like working on and nothing more. If what you want isn’t something they care about you’re SOL.
How curious that a certain user (OP) isn't responding to this thread after getting dismantled in this x-post here. Hunh. 🤷🏼‍♂️

If anyone is confused by the title and conclusion of the article I think its because the author buried the real thesis. I think its this:

"It's now a slow and clunky barrier to playing the games I own on my Mac computers—a far cry from the pro-consumer persona that Valve and Steam usually enjoy."

The author is upset Valve isn't supporting the author's Mac gaming desires.

About 30% of the article is directly referencing Steam on Mac with another 30% indirectly. It feels like the author is looking at the small niche of Mac gaming overall, the decline of Valve's interest in Mac, and projecting that decline to every other aspect of Valve. To the author's credit, they point to some massive changes in the Mac ecosystem which invalidated lots of Valve's efforts (Apple deprecating 32 bit support in the OS, full CPU change from Intel to ARM) but they seem to lay the blame at Valve's feet for not pouring development effort into Steam for Mac despite the extremely small market share Mac gaming seems to have.

The author even cites Valve's continued use of 32-bit executable on Windows and Linux as a failing of the company. The irony is that I'm guessing the continued use of the 32-bit code is what has enabled Steam's large and deep compatibly across systems. This further underscores Valve's choice to largely abandon Mac, as Apple removed the option to continue operating on the 32-bit client base.

To the author, your complaints should be directed at Apple, not Valve.

Steam only being 32-bit isn’t improving compatibility, it’s being lazy. You can write code that works on both architectures for the best performance and compatibility across all PCs, like Chrome, Firefox, MS Office, etc.
- Compatibility is greatly being improved, making gaming on Linux very compatible. Steam runs great on both Windows and Linux. Chromebooks aren't made for gaming. And Apple is being Apple, so... Maybe complain about Apple instead. But if you are an Apple user you probably prefer to blame anything but Apple.
- Judging from your Lemmy username and the article byline, I think you're the author of the article, is that right?
  Steam only being 32-bit isn’t improving compatibility, it’s being lazy. You can write code that works on both architectures for the best performance and compatibility across all PCs, like Chrome, Firefox, MS Office, etc.
  You absolutely can, but it doesn't come from now where and the 32-bit version exists. If Valve has to maintain 32-bit for compatibility on some older systems, and you're introducing the 64-bit requirement now too its raising the Valve support burden maintaining two separate code bases which is a huge amount of effort and cost.
  And for what benefit? The only cited problem of a lack of 64 bit client today cited from the article is that some distros of Linux which have removed the 32-bit support libraries cannot run Steam for Linux. However, Linux being very customizable, the users could likely just add 32-bit support back themselves.
- You bought a shit product from a shit company and now are trying to shift the blame so you can justify your buyer's remorse. You were most certainly warned or had to have heard about lack of game support for apple devices but you let your fanboyism get in the way of logic. Keep sniffing your own farts.

I take issue with three things about this article.

Enshittification happens when a company seeks short term profit over long term stability, usually to appeal to shareholders. Valve is privately held, so the shareholders it has to appeal to are just GabeN and anyone else in the company that holds stock, and GabeN at least has a long history of valuing quality over short term profit.
The article seems to just gloss over all the reasons online sentiment about Epic trends negative, such as controversial statements made by the CEO, missing and long overdue features that should be quite basic, and yes, timed exclusives. It just memes about how they give out free games, and now that I think about it that does stink of the first step of enshittification, and the lower cut from developers stinks of the second.
I'm much more inclined to blame Apple for Valve not bothering to support Mac, as Apple is the one that should be responsible for so many of the things that make it not worth bothering. Apple is the one that failed to make their platform attractive to gamers and is the one that made their shiny new computing architecture that is incompatible with all the existing software. It's quite unfair in my eyes to ask Valve to support a platform that nobody else does.

Maybe the author has a point, maybe Valve will sell out when GabeN retires if he has the company go public, but until that happens I'm unconcerned. This all reads to me as someone using the shiny new word for clicks.

There is way more evidence to support Steam only getting better over time than there is to support it going back to shit, like it was when it first launched.

Edit: Oh. Article is written by a Mac boy. No wonder. 🙄

Something that I don't see mentioned, is that gaben is a mortal being, and there's no plan as far as we can tell what happens to the company when he retires.

Even if he runs the company "perfectly" until the day he dies, at some point it gets sold off to the highest bidder, and whoever that is will want a return on their investment. Someone will slaughter that golden goose, it's only a matter of time.

They should turn it into a worker owned business.
Do you really think it’s just going to be sold off? One of Valve’s biggest strengths is its ability to remain an independent private company. I would hope that Gabe’s succession plan doesn’t change that.
- I don't think hoping so makes it likely.
- Don't hope, be prepared. Back up your games.
Even if it's not sold off to the highest bidder, a "new boss" usually likes to "shake things up" to be able to "take full control" instead of letting people who already knew how to do the job well just do their jobs. A good new boss gets to know the systems and often sits back and lets the company run as it was before, a bad boss wants "ownership" over it and so throws out all the old ways and institutes their new ways. This results in enshittification.

Great points, valve is literally committing suicide as a company for not supporting a platform that is damn near irrelevant to then

This is the most ridiculous article I've read this year

WTF, I'm having major deja vu here. Like this was one of the first posts I saw on Lemmy after I left Reddit because of all the API shit. I even remember seeing the comment of @MajinBlayze@lemmy.world.

Time is a flat circle
- Im sorry, a curve? Try a Jeremy Bearimy.

Your argument is interesting. I get that it's upsetting that Mac isn't well supported.

Valve isn't obligated to continue supporting all its games and software features on Mac, especially when Apple's reluctance to natively support Vulkan and other cross-platform technologies makes game development more complex. There's no excuse for Steam on Mac...

You wrote the excuse/reasoning for Steam not to support Mac before saying there's no excuse. If Apple enforces their control over their software and hardware by making everyone developing sign restrictive EULAs and dictating what technologies can run on their hardware, why does Valve have to play ball with that? Apple has had no interest in courting gamers to their platform for several years, so it is their problem why Steam has become unsupported. It seems like they even tried by converting their app to 64-bit just for Apple, then they get shut out because the architecture changes to Apple Silicon. How many hoops is Valve expected to jump through?

Epic is the company trying to be the Amazon, Walmart, etc. of the gaming industry by "disrupting" the existing ecosystem with free games every week, paying devs off for exclusivity with their fortnite cash. It's clear as day when they take over is when they are sure to enshittify themselves.

GOG games I do support, but I'm just sad that they haven't done much for Linux.

You didn't mention itch.io, which has a well-functioning app (at least on Linux), and a revenue sharing model set by the developer, and a pay what you want scheme for buyers.

Steam is still not updated to run natively on Apple Silicon-based Mac computers, nearly four years after Apple's transition away from Intel CPUs started. It's now a slow and clunky barrier to playing the games I own on my Mac computers—a far cry from the pro-consumer persona that Valve and Steam usually enjoy.

Kinda similar situation in linux where steam hasn't been updated to use wayland. It's flickery mess on nvidia hardware and a bit glitchy on intel and amd (like other electron/cef apps running under xwayland). Proton works great though.

As an ex nvidia and recent amd user on Linux, I'd say wayland isn't ready for gaming. X11 is still great, and wayland is the sand dunes of Linux in that they just move too fast for valve to adequately offer stable support. Also xwayland is really what's running most games, and that is just another layer.
Electron apps are shit and just a fancy chrome window get a real app or just use chrome --app=https://url.tld
- All proton games are going to offer native Wayland pretty soon

Apple is the reason for lack of games. Just look at the app store money grab and total lock in.

Install parallels and then windows and play your games.

Oh, but they paid for the feeling of being the most catered for audience, that Apple's ads communicate. Can't be their mistake, so Apple must be fine, it's Steam's fault. /s

One long slippery slope argument.

Shut up epic

It's already gotten shitty on the storefront, but it's been solid for games in your library. Most people likely already forgot when just being listed in steam was a mark of being a quality game, now it's littered with shovelware and asset flips.

My primary complaint with Steam is the quality of the games.

I've had a Steam account now for... let's see here... 19 years:

Being primarily a console gamer, I rarely used it until I bought a Steam Deck. Then I went looking for Steam exclusive games I couldn't otherwise play on my Xbox Series X, PS5, Nintendo Switch...

What I found was a lot of garbage porn games, and a lot of garbage anime games, and a lot of garbage anime porn games.

It's super difficult finding something worth while to play. So it's not a surprise to me to see that the #1 game is eight years old:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/8-year-old-game-is-currently-steam-deck-s-most-played/ar-BB1l2KRV

You’re essentially complaining that of the 50k+ games on Steam, you can’t find a game you like, and you prefer being handheld and told what you like by console companies?
This is… a really weird argument. “Too much freedom, restrict me harder daddy Nintendo.”
- I'm looking for Steam exclusive games that I either can't or haven't already played on other hardware. Not an easy task.
you shouldn't draw conclusions from outliers
The recent 1.6 update for Stardew Valley is likely the reason for this spike in players, with the patch bringing an enormous amount of new content to the game.