Re:Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
by RugnirViking on Tuesday January 18, 2022 @03:23PM
(#29985175)
I'm pretty sure idealogically valve are opposed to locking people into their ecosystem. They don't even make it so you can only play their own games with steam, and they allow you to add non-steam games to your library. They're a weird comapny in general, they have a pretty hardcore horizontal management system going on in their company which as I understand as an outsider is a big reason why they've struggled to bring stuff to market of late.
Their (leaked) employee handbook is literally subtitled "A fearless adventure in knowing what to do when no one’s there telling you what to do"
Re:Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
by criley2 on Thursday January 20, 2022 @07:27AM
(#30008013)
>They don't even make it so you can only play their own games with steam
? You can't play DOTA2 or CS:GO or any of their real moneymakers anywhere but Steam.
Re:Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
by RugnirViking on Friday January 21, 2022 @01:31PM
(#30027887)
I mean that even if steam closed tomorrow, you would be able to play all your games. They're literally just installed in a folder on your computer and steam clicks the exe for you. They also released server code for most of their own games so you can run your own. Most companies would have gated access to their servers so you could only run the game when you could connect to their database
To get that level of market share a company basically needs to subsidize the initial hardware/consoles. I don't think Valve has ever learned that concept and as such they are still selling the hardware at full price. This in contrast to say FB/Microsoft/Sony who actively subsidize their offerings because they understand the benefit of getting people locked in their ecosystem.
I predict a repeat of Steam Machines. (as a Linux user)