Well, if the worst does happen, then: https://youtu.be/DbYR_1LvSGQ?si=hpzOMJH0KWw2qewM

(Yes, that was an exaggeration)

I don't really care what happens to Steam. My games are all backed up at home and when GOG goes, I'll back it up in the cloud too. I'll always have a redundant copy.

Seriously though, getting acquired by Microsoft might be one of the best thing that could happen to Steam right now.

As I understand it, it has a single aging owner and his heir could very well run the company into the ground.

Personally, I think it would be somewhat hilarious if he did. It would make for a good story. Kind of like the heirs to the kings of old ruining the kingdom.

If it happened, I'd like to think it would make people smarter about trying to avoid situations like this, but look at human history... we're doing it to ourselves half the time. If there is one thing we don't know how to do as a specie, it is to make prosperity stable. I think maybe our brains are just too small. We lack the foresight.

No, I think if Steam went in shambles, I'd give people 10-20 years at best before they'd line to be beholden to their next daddy.

Quite sure that was exactly the point...

I've no idea what he thinks. Mike Harrington (co-founder of Valve) left in 2000 making Gabe Newell the sole owner. He divorced his wife Lisa Mennet Newell in 2019, so inherited ownership of Valve will go to his two sons who may or may not share Dad's enthusiasm vs simply selling to Microsoft for a few easy & safe billion then retiring to a life of luxury. Family run private corporations have many advantages in not being beholden to shareholders / board of directors. One of the downsides is unpredictability post-inheritance if the kids lose interest. Could they sell Valve (market cap approx $8bn) to Microsoft (who happily spent $68.7bn acquiring just Activision)? Absolutely. It's nowhere near as outlandish 'post-Gabe' as some want to believe.

Lol, Steve Ballmer in his sniffing and feeling he could do anything days. I don't think Nintendo were the only ones laughing back then. Forum rules do allow me to discuss my genius backup plan: amassing a DRM-free backlog of games like no other. Literally more than one could hope to go through in a lifetime :P.

True. I guess the justice system are the ones to blame for turning a blind eye to monopolistic practices. Monopolies and duopolies are never good for the consumer, especially when they are unregulated since as the only game in town, they can dictate the price and do whatever they want and we just have to take it or opt out.

Im no steam fan but Im for competition in general and against monopolies. Monopolies result in a worse product since the companies in charge dont need to compete and their customers cant go anywhere else. Cable companies provide terrible customer service because there are so few alternatives so even if they screw you, where are you going to go?

Yeah, Im not happy with Steam dominating the PC market and mainstreaming DRM and destroying the physical media market but having Valve around to compete with Microsoft is still better than having Microsoft just own the majority of the PC market.

Hearing about Microsoft wanting to buy Nintendo which would again remove another major competitor from the market is just stupid and shouldnt even be part of their plan. They should just try to make good games.

Steam is not the competition, Steam is almost a monopolistic player in the PC gaming distribution industry.

Denying access to their store would kill most games.

Otherwise, oligarchies are only marginally better than monopolies and that's what we have in the gaming industry (if you go beyond PC) now to a large extent. I see well established vendors mostly following the same formula and not a lot of signs of vigorous healthy competition from the perspective of the consumers... at least not from the platforms and distributors.

Microsoft swallowing Steam and Nintendo? Good. I care about neither to be honest. Swallow away. It won't make much of a difference in their operating procedures (in Steam's case, it would probably crystallize it actually).

Bon appetite ^

Then you don't care about good games. Because they make some of the very best. Nintendo has been credited with creating entire genres for decades and they revitalized video games in the 80s when it had basically crashed after the Atari Shock.

And Valve while not releasing many games releases really good ones when they do. And they have helped greatly in allowing Linux to be a viable platform for PC gaming & getting games that for decades were console exclusives ported to PC.

You are either really short sighted or just trolling.

Personally not interested in games developed by either Nintendo or Valve either. They definitely seem to be regarded as excellent by much of the public, but for my interests and preferences they're not even on the radar. (Well, watched a playthrough of Portal 2 at one point and played some of the original Super Mario Bros. way back on a SNES clone I had as a kid, but even then was more interested in other games it came with and once I had a PC I never looked back.)

I'm with Magnitus and Cavalary here.

I don't really care about those games, and I especially don't care about Valve's monopoly and deliberate platform lock-in, nor do I care for Nintendo's love for region locks and DRM. If those things don't change, then said companies may as well not exist as far as I'm concerned.

As for Linux: the Wine developers (plus DXVK and more) and the greater Linux community did *much* more for Linux gaming than Valve ever did. Valve is getting way too much credit, in a way I find very unfair. And the last thing I want is for is a situation where they deserve that credit, because that would imply gaming on Linux is largely in the hands of one monopolistic company -- a very dangerous situation.

So? Their importance in the industry is undeniable. Were they to not exist the landscape would be a shadow of what it is.
Yeah, I'm sure Capcom would be releasing Street Fighter 6 on PC because WINE exists. Get real.
Of course WINE is the foundation of the tech for Windows compatibility. It's not the reason games get made for PC though. Steam is the reason so many previously console only games now come to PC.

And I think Proton + Steam Deck have done a lot to bring people to Linux for gaming. It brought me over.

And I can argue the same about id software, bethesda, etcetra.

All acquired by Microsoft. So is the landscape now a shadow of what it is? You're not making any sense.

Street Fighter 4 was released for PC long before Proton existed. For PC, not SteamOS!

Street Fighter 5 was release for PC long before Proton existed.

I fail to see how either Proton or WIne is in any way relevant.

Likely it will be. It's too soon to know. Its not unusual for AAA games to take 6-7 years now. So the ramifications aren't known until you see the new games. But a downward trend is what tends to happen like with Bioware after EA swallowed them, BullFrog, or Westwood Studios.
Or when MS bought Rare. Or when Arkane Studios goes from Dishonored to Redfall. It takes a while before you see the results.

But Steam (made by Valve) existed and those ports were made for Steam. Without Valve making Steam those games would be console only.

Because it's not in that instance. Steam is.

Well, I couldn't care less. I think the AAA industry has been trash for almost two decades now and I don't think one pig corpo getting swallowed by another can be said to make it meaningfully worse, just a different shade of crap.

They aren't making anything I care about, with or without microsoft. And they won't, with or without microsoft. So in a twisted way you're saying Valve is good for Linux gaming because Windows games got made because Valve's proprietary platform supports Windows. Ugh, yeah, I'm not really insane enough to argue with that nonsense.