They unfortunately forgot the second step and went straight the extinguish.

I almost didn’t make it through the intro for RDR2, 20 mins of trudging through snow.

IDGAF.

This is wild if true.

I loved RDR, and played the fuck out of that. RDR2 spend so much time trying to distract me from actually playing that I got bored.

I was down voted a lot for preferring the original. Thats neat that others found the first better.

That’s half my sentence, dont add a full stop where there wasn’t one in quotes. It makes you a liar.

No one is competing on PC because

And then I list reasons why i don’t see the alternatives as credible competition.

I could basically buy anything that I get on Steam, on either Epic or GOG. Their market share is not why I buy games on Steam, I gave you those reasons already.

I do not run Windows because its a shitty hostile environment that contractually prevents distributors from providing an optimised interface for gaming. It inserts adverts into every section, and even Windows users unironically complain that Windows Update is malware.

Thats not what was said at all.

No competition is not good. But Epic is worse competition, and GOG is halfhearted competition that is an ultimately worse experience for most people.

You said

more efficient competitors

But now you are saying that they didn’t challenge the monopoly? If they dont even challenge then how are they competition?

Steam let’s me buy games and play them. The interface with Big Picture Mode let’s me interact with the store.

The issue I see is that no one is competing on PC with Steam because they keep trying to tie themselves with the fucking trainwreck that’s Windows.

They keep trying to tie themselves with shitty desktop launchers.

They keep trying to tie themselves with toxic customer service.

There is competition, but it’s with Sony, Microsoft and their consoles.

Disproven many times over.

You can’t sell the free generated Steam keys on other platforms lower than on Steam. You are perfectly free to sell the game on other platforms for less than Steam.

None of that stuff sounds like Valve interfering.

Thats not what they said, “More efficient” didn’t happen.

Just either a wildly more toxic environment with Epic, or a cheaper but much less user friendly one with GOG.

Steam didn’t need to change because neither of the competition understand the market.

So the problem is crappy guides?

I was of the opinion that anything that suggested the terminal was purely for speed reasons.

Average Windows guide. Click here, dismiss the warning, click here, click here, close the advert, click next, type in 1, accept, reboot.

Average Linux guide, go to Gnome Tweaks, third option, type in 1, no reboot required. Or open a terminal and paste the following command.

It’s precise, it’s concise, and it’s fast but it’s not required.

the are so many desktop environments

I completely disagree. There is Gnome with 70% of the market, KDE with 30%, and then various hacked together desktops with <1%. Guides should be set up for Gnome because you stick with defaults if you are that scared, maybe a reference for KDE, and if you chose something else then your already in copy/paste commands territory.

There was no part of me setting up SteamOS on my couch PC that required a terminal, which is what we are talking about here.

Zero.

Steam doesn’t require any terminal opening, the hard part are shitty Windows games that pop up boxes to install extra stuff because for some reason they can’t install it when you install the game.

I haven’t been required to use the terminal for anything in years.

Honestly. I’ve been using Linux as my daily driver since the mid-2000’s (Warty Warthog?), and the only times the terminal gets opened these days is through pure choice. Maybe 10 years ago I would agree with you.

I’m running Linux for my couch based gaming and the experience is awesome. Much better than Windows ever was.

What makes you think that Linux is holding Linux back? The UI can be completely customised which makes Steam OS wonderful to use while Microsoft completely ban any customised interface out of the box.

Windows is only popular through inertia.

This is factually incorrect.

They can sell it for whatever price they want on other platforms.

What they can’t do is sell the freely generated Steam keys on other stores for less than the cost of selling them on Steam.

So they cannot put a game on Steam, then generate 100 free keys and put them on Greenman Games for 30% less than Steam. They can definitely put it on Epic for 30% less and let Epic pay the hosting and distribution.

What on earth games are you trying to play that are less resource intensive than the Steam Client?

I have old laptops that can run it without seeing any impact.

I didn’t say it was the case here. I quoted the point I responded to.

I wasn’t referring to World of Goo, I was talking about Epic paying studios to pull their games from other stores.

The conversation was about why people are fine with Steam exclusives, and why the general hate on Epic. The answer is obvious.

I guarantee those people never complain about a Steam-exclusive game not being on GoG or EGS.

Do you have any examples of Valve buying up studios and pulling them from other online stores?

It is also the OS.

Windows doesn’t let you have a Steam Deck experience because its against the ToS. Once you don’t care about the user experience, why would you care about the HID?