PookaMustard: At this point I have even less of an idea than I did before, all I can say is "the Valve logo". There's no other reason why idiots see Steam as "God" but when Epic decides to make Epic Steam suddenly "Tencent has stakes in Epic" becomes a problem and all of a sudden they care about data collection/privacy.
Or funnier yet the complaints about "exclusivity", Darwinia was made into a Steam exclusive years back and even had its Linux version delisted because Steam did not support Linux. Now everyone wants me to praise Valve for making Linux a far easier platform for them to conquer by making a fork of Wine and porting their DRM. But yes, plenty of games exclusive to Steam, where were the "epic exclusives bad" guys back then? Does having a closed source, constantly updating black box software sending data home only matter to these people if a possible destination is "China" but not when the destination is the "United States of America"?
Yes to all of this unfortunately. Its not ok if China harvests private data but its ok if its America does it because reasons. Deepseek bad but Open AI good. Tik Tok bad but Facebook/Twitter good.
Valve also did a really good job creating the Good Guy Valve persona where many fans seem to think Valve and Steam are the only moral devs in the gaming industry despite their history of also doing bad things for gaming (see OP(. Honestly wish people read about the companies they are apparently fans of and recognize that while you can enjoy their products, no corporation is your "friend."
Shocker650: Valve as a company and Steam as a store/launcher will outlive all of us, so no, I'm not worried about my Steam games at all. Valve makes more money off of Steam than you can imagine. They won't go down, no matter what some of you haters think.
Bro, just go back to steam and play your supposedly hundreds of games you apparently have. Steam only survives if people keep playing on it and honestly, I do think Steam's dominance will come to an end. Epic is likely going to make a big dent given many younger gamers love Fortnite (Epic exclusive) and I wouldnt be surprised if more younger gamers are moving to Epic.
Also FYI, the average lifespan of a multinational Fortune 500 corporation is 40 to 50 years (which Valve is not). As another user mentioned, Valve's biggest weakness is Gabe Newell. Gabe is 62 and owns at least 25% of Valve. He is already becoming less involved with Valve as of 2024 and its very feasible he could retire early. He could keep the 25% but could also consider selling. Valve's valuation is $7.7 billion so 25% would be a little under $2 Billion. Im sure Tencent, EA, Microsoft, or eccentric billionaires like Elon Musk would love to buy up those shares for a premium. And what happens when a huge corporation buys up a smaller private company or there is a huge change in leadership and philosophy?