steam games don't have discs either

the real problem here isn't lack of plastic circles

Valve have shown themselves to be reasonably trustworthy unlike say, Sony and Microsoft. If there are no disks then there is no point in consoles in my view, they're just worse computers.

plus, nothings stopping you from distributing a physical PC game. Heck, iirc steam still supports it. Even if it didn't, you could still buy a physical PC anyway since they can just have an exe, flatpak/snap/appimage, or dmg

Steam only exists because Valve forced players to install it, force an online activation, and permanently bind their retail copies of Half-Life 2 to a Steam account. They also forced patching which meant in an era of dialup you couldn't play your single player game for hours, and needed to be connected every 30 days or your game would stop working.

None of the console manufacturers pulled that shit, that Valve gets a pass is wild to me.

They are the only platform owners championing for an open platform. That should be enough to consider them above all others, no trust required.

And "open" platform where they get a 30% cut.

I mean the devices where steam operates are fully open, even the ones valve makes. You can install any OS you wish, any software or competing store front and thus give them 0% cut.

You wouldn't complain that Walmart takes a X% cut when you have a healthy competitive market and can chose other store fronts with better prices.

Can’t I back them to physical media?

On PC you can fight this by buying from GOG DRM-free digital storefront or the second more sinister option

Gog might consider linux more, which will make me reconsider it. I stopped buying from them because the lack of linux support

Use something like Heroic Launcher which lets you easily download/install GOG games via Proton.

I'm in the same boat, GOG's lack of Linux support has been unfortunate.

Yeah, but games get bigger and more frequent discounts on pc, besides the base game price for a lot of games sometimes decreased after some years.

I have a PC and PS5, and bought game for PS5 just because they were on disk, despite that they would've ran and look much better on my pc.

Sony is releasing like 2 single-player games a year, I might get a PS6, but I'll be in not rush with so little offering, anything else I'll get on PC.

> steam games don't have discs either

Disc > Steam > Digital console

Steam games exist on physical media that players have some control over: I can copy my Steam data directory across PCs/Steam Deck, I would not be able to do that on a PlayStation.

Sure, I can't resell my Steam games, but the openness of the PC platform has advantages over closed consoles. Valve can't brick old games the way Sony can - a new computer in 2046 will be able to play single-player games backed-up from Steam, not so much for consoles.

Steam normalized the loss of resale rights on PC long before the consoles caught up. Younger people don't even realize it's a right that prior generations gave up.

Steam has existed for an eternity compared to any console specific game store. It's not great that you can't resell what you have on Steam, but at least you get to 'keep' it.

and yet, Steam is seen as the superior service that deserves to keep their monopoly.

The thing with Steam is that it's more convenient than piratebay, but for the collector in you, piratebay is still there for insurance.

Not to mention whatever's available on GoG where you don't even need a crack to make backups.

With Sony you have no insurance.

Yes, and it's a tragedy that people have given up so much for the shallow convenience of having a shiny launcher and not having to figure out clicking on setup.exe.

If Steam were that shallow you would see competing efforts like Origin, Uplay, Epic Games Store etc take off. In reality Steam is anything but shallow, it's the cumulation of two decades of adding customer focused features. Competing efforts not only can't be bothered to invest as much into features, but they always add features with the goal of benefiting the store owning company, not the customer. That's a key difference that makes them fail.

Steam isn't a monopoly, it's just a good service. Why would I use a shittier one created by, generally, extremely greedy and woke corporations?

What do you mean woke corporations? How does that affect you?

By politicizing games, ruining them with their agenda, and in a hundred other ways.

You have to be very dense to think AAA video game devs have some woke agenda and not just knee-jerk reaction to market changes. There are plenty of games for you to goon to.

What's the difference between calling it "woke agenda" or "market changes"? Seems to me you agree with the other poster, that AAA game devs now make games targeted towards different people.

Woke in nearly all contexts in 2026 can be substituted for a racial, xenophobic, and/or homophobic slur and mean exactly the point of the person who used it. The lack of actual examples when called out makes it very obvious.

Sure, but that's just arguing over the morality of terms. On the one side you have people worried that their culture is being destroyed, on the other side you have people worried that their culture isn't represented. Both sides seem to think the other side is the devil.

Having gamed for three decades now I'd say the shift has been very real. There's a much larger fraction of games that have representation of women, mental illness, disabilities, races, etc.

Is that progress or destruction? Depends on which side you fall on.

You're saying there are no examples, does that mean you think no shift has happened? That games are still made the same way? If so, are you claiming that games always had this sort of diversity of representation? Or that games nowadays still don't have it?

I have no respect for this argument.

It's similar to asking was the end of Jim Crow or slavery progress or the destruction of white spaces and to be sensitive to the people who wanted those to continue. I think a lot of the issues we have today are because people in both periods did not ostracize those people like Europe ostracized the Nazis.

Having a main character that isn't a straight white male is so minor in comparison. But giving that idea credence is a dangerous path backwards to those arguments of the past

My argument isn't that one side is right and the other one is wrong. I'm not asking for sensitivity towards any side either. I'm talking about there being change at all. I'm hoping for more honesty in these discussions.

So when people, who don't like this change, point out their dislike of it, the reasonable reaction would be to argue that the change is good. Not that there hasn't been any change.

"woke agenda" implies that agenda is...being woke. "Market changes" implies companies that chasing money as they designed to do. AAA publisher goal is to make as much money as possible, they achieve that by selling as many copies as possible. That is achieved by targeting wider audience. Teenage boys and man babies with brains of a teenage boy can only get you so far.

It's really not that deep.

Which games specifically were ruined? How were they ruined? Can you provide a single example and explain how it is woke and why it ruins the game?

Concord, the single largest failure by a game company (and really, most other companies too, except maybe movie studios lately). Wasn't that the backlash?

What exactly was so bad about it?

To solve what exactly? Sure you will punish Sony but that won't bring optical media back. We need to accept and move on with the times.

It is still possible to actually buy PC games, not rent them.