The whole reason why SteamOS exists is because Microsoft introduced the Windows store with 8.

Ah yes. People panicked that Microsoft was going to somehow self-mutilate the ecosystem they have built, and Valve decided to opportunistically jump on the bandwagon and sell a “cure” to a non-existent problem, by porting their DRM to Linux, and wooed the world by… forking existing Linux distros with their DRM set to autoboot on big picture, and Wine? Damn, I’m impressed. /s

I really don’t think you understand why people like Valve.

Rather there’s nothing reasonable about liking them in the first place. American corporation paying taxes to the current regime, founded by an ex-Microsoft employee turned billionaire and owner of multiple yachts. Developed its own DRM, then found ways to monetize and enshittify it to make even more off PNGs and chat emojis. Singlehandedly killed used copies for PC games way before it crossed Sony’s mind. A loot box pioneer. Also popularized the toxic F2P model from mobile to the PC world with TF2. Attempted to make paid mods with a hefty cut going to themselves. Didn’t offer refunds for well over a decade until Australia forced them to legally - and yet their refund system remains subpar. I could go on…

gamers getting a real choice on running an operating system of their choosing.

Yes you keep shifting the topic. I’m talking about game ownership and physical copies, here you are talking about operating systems. I can run a fully libre system running GNU/Hurd and play GOG games all I want, it doesn’t change the fact Valve made it so I don’t own my digital PC games any more than Sony wants you to own them - they made it so GOG is unironically a store whose entire selling point is “we let you download offline installers for the few games we sell” which is IMHO dystopian - so why are we still rewarding them? Is it the shinies?

If you don’t remember the shit show that was windows 8

I’ve used windows 8.1 and 8 itself briefly. All applications from previous eras of windows worked. I’ve no idea what you’re on about now.

When Valve does shady shit, we’ll call them out for it

Oh really? You’re not calling them out for the shady shit that I’m literally dangling right in front of you. All I’ve seen you do is credit other people’s work to them and shift the topic away from the fact Sony is copying their homework from them. And you keep doing that.

The loss of physical isn’t the real fight here though, it’s open competition.

The loss of physical is the loss of another venue for ownership, including the ability to resell or give away your copies - something not even GOG lets you do. Oh, and also it’s something Sony themselves made an entire ad around…

I’ll still buy from Valve just to reward them

Then you don’t care about the Sony dropping physical media thing, since you’re willing to give Valve a free pass despite literally paving the road Sony is going down on.

I’d expect people boycotting Sony over their decision to be better informed than that, and stay clear of Valve’s dystopia, right? Right?

EDIT: also since you said consoles are locked down to 1 store yourself, I want you to make a guess how many PlayStation users are going to figure out that they can go buy their stuff from GOG on hardware literally branded after Steam, where as I established, its subscribers don’t give a shit about other stores, much less GOG.

Live services are all the rage because, well, you can see where I’m going now. One or two could flop, but maybe third time’s the charm and it generates all the profit. That’s the reason other companies - not just Sony - double down on live services despite these flops.

You’re expecting the average Sony fan to know about GOG? That’s kinda cute. Steam subscribers don’t care about GOG, if they even know about its existence.

But Valve’s hardware still have no physical media, and their digital model is still what’s inspiring Sony. How about being consistent and rewarding neither?

Which, again, they wouldn’t double down on said decisions if they didn’t know by heart that Gamers™ will be distracted by the next issue, or the new shiny as the commenter noted.

Ah yes the “”“platform”“” that Sony is copying from…

Sony wouldn’t even be doing this kind of war of attrition if it didn’t know that eventually, Gamers™ will forget and accept it.

I didn’t think I’d be reading an article talking about antinatalism on… Playboy of all places. The Playmates tab is right there, as if to make you forget the article you were just reading. It’s just really funny.

and my god the insults I received over the years about it.

Me too, me too. When I lost the internet for a mad long time and noticed my steamed games not working because the launcher was refusing to log in while offline (despite having a so-called offline mode) and questioning why a singleplayer game even requires all of this in the first place, I would then get told the problem was actually my internet provider and not the game’s or steam’s for creating this mess in the first place. Yeah, make it make sense. Incidentally I had to acquire a bunch of executables for those very same games like you did, and yep, they’d work offline as should be. Creator of service problem says piracy is a service problem, why is this not a headline already?

Then other DD platforms popped up, and people bought games there (myself included, fuck you direct2drive), and lost all the games and all the money when the platform died.

I’m getting Desura flashbacks. Lucky I downloaded everything I had when I felt the signs of it going down, but I know others weren’t as lucky. Silver lining is they’re still playable, DRM-free is nice, but like I established we’ve already moved on from that into bigger fish like “the credits reference a consulting company I don’t like.”

I’m so sick of this cyberpunk hellscape bullshit where you pay everything and own nothing.

And there’s not even any cyberware to show for it! But yeah at this point I’m focusing more on buying stuff other than games and playing my massive library of games from multiple decades. It’s just I really suck at that too.

Certainly if Gamers™ had half a spine, we wouldn’t get here. Instead it’s always been inch after inch being taken, Gamers™ either downplaying it or viciously complaining about it for a short while without anything tangible happening, and rinse and repeat. Miles have been taken, now Gamers™ argue about 30fps in a game that ships with super draconian DRM and no physical copies because we’re already cool with DRM now.

Also the bitter irony when I hear people upset by Sony’s steamification switching to PC, the most steamified platform of them all. I guess it beats waiting until 2028 when you can pull the trigger now?

I uninstalled all of flatpak and never looked back. I love wasting gigabytes on duplicate dependencies just to run the two flatpak apps.