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Comment by danuker | Hacker News Reader

There is no elsewhere, when you consider network effects. The largest platform has the most to gain, when it makes use of social interaction.

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> There is no elsewhere, when you consider network effects

There is an elsewhere. Playstation, XBoX, Nintendo, GoG, Epic, Apple Games, Android. Network effects aren't anything to do with a company being your friend. You aren't staying through friendship with the company; why is it non-silly to criticise them for not being your friend?

Most of the social interaction in the games space happens on discord these days though, and has since about 2016. The only social network effect steam currently has is with game invites, since it's slightly more annoying to join a party of friends via the xbox version of sea of thieves than the steam version, for example.

I’ve been using Xbox Game Pass on PC, and while for me it’s a good value. Their invite system is terrible compared to Valve. I just want to play games with my friends and Valve seems to have that part down. Hell even the whole “play with friends” thing has worked great. Like the good old days of friends coming over and playing a four player game only now we play on the internet (and we only need one person to own it).

Consider also that Steam is the only place to go for Valve games like CS:GO and Dota 2.

This is still nothing to do with a company not treating you as a friend. You're not their friend; they aren't yours, and that's normal.

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