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Comment by 6cd6beb | Hacker News Reader

We could have a small handful of new great games from valve and an unknown number of crappy ones, or we could have steam.

Steam provides more value to me on an order of magnitude that makes the article laughable. Steam is like netflix before licensing fractured their content between 20 different streaming services. It's not perfect but I'm not crying over the loss of a few more valve games. Better to burn out than fade away anyway.

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Hmm, I don't understand why it's either or.

I don't see it as Steam vs quality Valve games, but rather CS:GO/Dota2/TF2 vs new Valve games. I don't think Steam itself has any impact of the games Valve release. If anything, it seems like the teams are fairly separate.

+1. Steam is pretty damned good, and as a business they are killing it. As an entrepreneur I applaud them for the pivot. This isn't just hats - they provide access to TONS of games we would otherwise never see.

Yea, I'm amazed at the criticisms of Steam. Do you all not remember buying computer games before it? Having friends on all different programs, no integrated chat, cds everywhere, this is defintely rose-tinted googles.

I suppose I'm in a minority, but for me, all I want is the games. And those existed, in non physical form, before (or at least alongside) Steam. There were several stores that would simply let you buy the ability to download an installer, install a game and play it. No "portal", no "platform", no - thank the Gods! - integrated chat or friends lists. I could chat with people (who were not even on Steam!) very well on ICQ or whatever, thank you very much. I don't want anybody to know what I'm currently playing, or how many hours I've played it.

I'm trying to imagine apt-get with an embedded, proprietary chat client and full name registration system - popcon mandatory. I wonder how many would see it as an improvement.

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