They’re not now. Anyone thinks anything is too big to fail and is never at risk should look at the huge graveyard of giant companies that moved forward with that belief.
We live in different times right now @Nesrie. I think there are a great many things that are too big to fail these days.
I’m just saying no is about to take Steam’s place. No one is even close. But as soon as they enter into that mode, that I don’t care what my customers want, I don’t care about this, these guys are too little for me to bother with then Amazon arises.
When they create enough opportunities for someone to move in and fill that gap, they put themselves at risk. I don’t really shop Steam much anymore because it’s full of crap and early access and will never finish titles. I’m like a lot of people here. I know the game I am interested in. I have them on my list. I am looking at GOG more often because they made it easier for me to do that. We’ll see.
Steam isn’t going anywhere today though.
It was bound to happen eventually. This is the type of content that sneaks its way onto a store with no curation.
That is horrible. I guess there is another reason why we need multiple platforms, as much as that seems like a pain in the ass. I’m some ways, it’s just like Android. By giving the platform away for free, and allowing third parties to sell key, it was undermined any chance that a new platform can take it’s place and controls a majority of the PC gaming market, much as Android controls a majority of the Phone Market.
By the way, when I read this article, I initially thought that this was a good example of why Windows thought that UWP apps were necessary, but maybe not?
Not directly relevant to this thread, but I didn’t know where else to post it. If I’m browsing Steam and select “strategy,” then “turn-based” I get a crap ton of some software called “Fantasy Grounds”, which apparently are tools of some sort for different gaming systems. It goes on like this (see the screenshot below) for pages and pages (on page 12, they still take up half the list.) I tried clicking ‘not interested’ (which explains why the screen below is dimmed), and turning off “show software,” but I cannot get rid of it. Is there anyway that I might be missing to eliminate these?
To eliminate that you’ll have to filter out DLC basically.
I think UWP would impede things like an app scanning your hard disk for personal info or encrypting your files as ransomware. But it wouldn’t be able to block gpu mining, as that’s just a program loaded into memory with some http connections, both things are normal in any software.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Basically, steam and other platforms need to do a better job reviewing products before offering them. They can’t just automate everything and expect to make money off of it.
Out of curiosity, do sites that sell game keys, like fanatical, and humble bundle, do a better job reviewing what they sell compared to steam? Would I be safer buying games through them?
The most damning thing is that this wasn’t a sophisticated attack, it literally was a file included in the game folder called ‘steamserivce.exe’ which could be detected as a miner by antivirus/antimalware software.
Doesn’t Valve analyze files before they provide them to the end users?
Their review process is a one-time thing. As long as you submit a real game that matches your store page the first time, you can go back and put whatever horrible crap you want in it and they won’t find out until somebody complains.
Of course, that policy is also why legit developers can rapidly respond to users to release updates however major or minor, something that they can’t on any of the platforms with a per-build review process.
The one thing that would bring Steam down very quickly, is getting a reputation as unsafe. What Steam does, is inherently fairly simple, and doesn’t require many resources (given how much they make), which makes it vulnerable to being replaced with a better model.
I think Steam actually is pretty vulnerable. All it would take is a series of horror stories about security and privacy issues to tank them, given the world we live in, that’s pretty easy to orchestrate.
Yes, just like “Facebook is stealing all your data” sunk Facebook. Oh wait.
People don’t actually care. They cry on social media like they care, but they don’t. Convenience is all that matters and while finding games on Steam without off-Steam help has become increasingly difficult, most of the rest of Steam’s convenient features are still much better than the competition - years ahead. On top of that, account value generates momentum towards the status quo, which is why Valve occasionally introduces new toys to clutter up your inventory - each marketable collectible in there is one more reason not to abandon it.
Facebook took a bad hit recently, and so did Twitter.
Large popular things take a while to sink, but it does happen, especially if there are a few competitors around (mostly GoG). And then people will bitch about how much better it was in the old days when everything was on steam.
I mean, Facebook is trading at where they were in May. It was a hit for sure, but it only made headlines because of the absurdly high valuation of the company. Headlines like “They just lost ONE HUNDRED BEEEEEEELLION DOLLARS!” grabs the eye, but they’re doing fine at the moment.
This is actually true for everything, not just Steam.
They got a hit, but what lots of people don’t mention it’s why. It isn’t because they stole our data so people are closing down accounts, it’s because they were overvalued in the first place and the current outlook is that the market is almost saturated already so investors can’t expect more future extra growth.