I would rephrase this as they got there because they treat their customers with respect, they take feedback to improve their platform, they don't pack their launcher / store front with ads and trickery, and you can trust that your games will be there and not go away.

Yes, they are loot box whores but so is everyone else.

Steam is a community, social media, and a store. The community is what they built and that community is extremely loyal. That community is also what developers are paying for.

In Gaben, we trust. I have 20 years of experience saying Gabe won't fuck me over to increase EBIDA by .5%. Are they perfect? No, but they are lightyears better than most of their competitors except GOG in terms of putting consumers first.

> because they treat their customers with respect

They had to be sued to get them to offer refunds

They had to be sued to get them to remove forced arbitration clause

This is what I always say about Valve. They are not morally unimpeachable, but at the end of the day I've been a regular customer for over 20 years and they've never fucked me over. I don't think I can say the same about any other software company.

And most importantly, the moment they show any indication of doing otherwise, I will happily drop them.

I keep giving Valve my money because they keep giving me good value for that money and a trustworthy environment to spend that money in. I have no loyalty. I also buy games from Humble Bundle and GOG.

I'm not excited about the prospect of losing my 4000 games but the literal only options available for consumers right now are "Pay money and get a game that we can take away at any time, fuck you over, do all sorts of bad things, and we demonstrably hate you", or "Pay money to get a game and a refund period and a bunch of features and maybe when Gabe dies we will do that other thing"

There is no alternative. GOG is run by the same people who released CyberPunk2077 as a bug ridden mess to please upper management, so they even have evidence of already straddling that line right now.

I am not sure why GOG is bad. Then again i am not sure why Cyberpunk is bad - i played it recently for the first time and its pretty fine game.

I played 3 times finished twice.

1.0 was 5/10 (quit after a few days) 1.5 was 7/10 (finished) Phantom Liberty was a 9/10 (finished)

It took 2 full years of additional development for 2077 to be in the amazing state it is in now.

I have qualms with supporting "They purposely released it unfinished and broken to get significant revenue and only then fixed it" though.

It's a terrible incentive for the industry and why I still refuse to buy No Man's Sky.

It's essentially the concept of early access but lying about not being early access.

I was super salty about it for a few years, but I had already bought it so...

It’s an amazing game. They released buggy because of management pressure, but fixed it.

GOG is also amazing.

Going back further, the thing that enabled them to release their first game "when it's done" and set the ball rolling was being founded by two ex-Microsoft with piles of money, most studios don't have that luxury.