[birracerveza]

>And the latter also lost importance, I guess?

It's still a very valid complaint, and will forever be as long as you're tied to Steam's server being up and willing to give you the content you paid for. That may not always be the case, for example if financial embargos prevent Valve from actually providing the service in your country. It's more like you're paying Steam to use their service rather than actually buying the game. Right now people are not worried about Steam exit scamming and thanking us for all the fish, because it's a very solid service that basically has a monopoly on PC digital game sales, plus the Steam Market being a money making machine on its own, plus the Steam Deck providing further leverage on game sales.

But there's a nonzero chance they can just ... close. Which was a very real possibility when they launched. Now, not so much, but the future has always new and exciting ways to fuck it all up at a moment's notice.

[Brybry]

My concern is mainly what will happen after Gabe Newell retires or dies.

[baq]

From the precious little that has been heard about what he’s doing nowadays he’s been quite checked out already for some time.

[NikolaNovak]

That's where GoG is still an important alternative... Even though for whatever reason, I don't enjoy its launcher as much. And steam deck has completely changed my weighing between GoG and steam :-(

[NamTaf]

Lutris really helps in that regard. For very minor additional janitoring, it can recreate much of the same plug-and-play, Windows-on-Linux seamlessness that you get with Steam.

[everdrive]

And there's no launcher for Linux :(