Monopolies do have objective advantages, which is why a publicly-owned enterprise monopoly on things like public transports would be amazing. A private monopoly is bad because it's private. I'm not even sure the classical law of market competition isn't a complete myth at this point so maybe monopolies aren't even bad idk
While I've never really had any issues running GOG games through Lutris, they also provide basically 0 Linux support and don't really care about that audience.
Which like, it's small so fair. But Valve up streams Linux stuff all the time and the Steamdeck opened things wide for people to give it a shot, even if their overall contributions get oversold.
So I'm split.
Valve only strongly supports Linux because Gabe has like a personal vendetta against Microsoft. Not complaining. I think it's great that Steam has broken the Windows lockdown on gaming. It's just funny.
As soon as Gabe dies or retires, Valve is going to be an EA-like company. Mark my words.
No for-profit company is immune to enshittification. It might happen before Gaben passes, it might happen after, but don't think it's not a very real possibility. Hopefully if it does, they're not so entrenched as the "default" that we end up with another Microsoft situation, simply because most of our games are on Steam and it's what most people use...
to be fair thats not only tied to gaben, but holds true for basically most free to play games, be it made in the U.S, Japan Korea, China or elsewhere.
its the main reason why for example mobile game companies are trying their hardest to avoid the 17+ rating on their respective playstores (target more kids) the same way hollywood tries to avoid getting the rated R rating.
Oh, i didn't mean lootboxes in general (in that everybody does them), i meant that you could resell cs2 skins and give them monetary form. Sure overwatch lootboxes are whatever, but you don't (didn't? haven't played in years)) have 0.1 % drop which you can sell for 200 bucks.
i mean the loot box is the gambling part, secondary market is just adding more gambling ontop of gambling, which I do agree is terrible (and honestly all items should have a single trade clause built into them but thats a seperate issue altogether) but the loot boxes at the ground level is whats causing the initial gambling addiction in the first place.
I am gonna be honest, I prefer a steam monopoly over having to have 3-4 separate apps to buy and play games.
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