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I wrote about this a few months ago: https://www.spacebar.news/steam-time-bomb/
Whether or not the exclusivity deal is between the publisher and the store or just the publisher doesn’t make a difference for the consumer. There’s no functional difference between Counter Strike 2 requiring Steam and Fortnite requiring the Epic launcher except that gamers are used to Steam.
No exclusivity for games
Valve doesn’t need to pay for exclusivity because it already dominates the market. There are many games that are effectively Steam exclusives because they are not available through other methods on PC. Half-Life 2 received a lot of criticism at launch for requiring Steam.
They purposefully made SteamOS open source so that other companies can easily release portable PC gaming products
SteamOS is open source, but you need a license to use the Steam brand, and Valve doesn’t allow that. One company tried to make a handheld console with SteamOS, but it can’t be legally bundled with the hardware: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/10/24033161/ayaneo-next-lite-steam-deck-competitor-steamos
That said, who knows what happens when he dies?
Yes, that’s the point of the article. If you need one specific person to stay alive for something to continue functioning well, you don’t have a business, you have the British monarchy.
Valve has avoided many of the same anti-consumer moves as other tech and gaming giants, likely due to its smaller size, status as a non-public company, and the long-time leadership of Gabe Newell and other executives. Valve won’t stay that way forever—the company is not immune to the pressures of capitalism, and there are already examples of anti-consumer behavior.
Valve is not immune to enshittification, and it has already happened on some level with minimal current Mac support, facilitating gambling through item trades, etc.
I mean, even those old iPhones have better software support than a lot of low-end/budget Android phones. The iPhone 11 still has iOS 17 and will probably get security patches for another year or two (assuming it gets dropped with iOS 18, maybe Apple will try pushing it another year).
I would like to see more collective action, but it’s also incredibly difficult to put your housing situation on the line when the US (and most states) does not give you a functional backup. As you said, it’s capitalism at work.
I mentioned in the article that 5G home internet is not a solution for everyone. The reliability varies significantly by location and network quality—some people have no issues, for others it’s unusable. It’s not a perfect solution that will fix the US’ infrastructure problems, but in the meantime it is making a difference for some people.
I haven’t run into that issue with Firefox on my M1 MacBook Air. Maybe try the Firefox reset feature, it’s possible some extension or other user data is breaking something and needs to be wiped.