[SOLAR_FIELDS]

The article is an emotionally charged hit piece and I think the language and delivery unfortunately diminishes some pretty valid criticisms of Valve. It’s also fair to acknowledge that Valve has done a lot for the gaming community as well - for example, the fact gaming on Linux is even remotely viable in the general sense is due to efforts from Valve.

The primary reason I don’t use Steam for almost anything is due to its DRM policies. But it’s pretty easy to concede that Steam still does a lot of things better than the competition. One example is mod management through Steam Workshop - I eventually switched from my DRM free copy of Rimworld into Steam because running and updating 30+ mods for a game is just hundreds of times easier in Workshop.

However, it’s mostly easy to enjoy PC gaming outside of Steam these days with a little effort. GOG is a favorite platform of mine due to its history of anti-DRM policies and is viable for most of the stuff that I play (single player games). I personally am not a huge gamer and am only launching 2-3 games from Steam - the mod heavy games mentioned above as well as exclusives like Tabletop Simulator. The situation is a lot better than 10 years ago when Steam was really the primary and only choice for a PC gaming library.