How is the company fucking me, if I enjoy playing the game and get my money’s worth?
If it doesn’t bother you, you do you.
To me, it’s fucking with me when they add software layers that adds no value and just makes my game harder to play, long term.
Note that I’m not as mad at anti-cheat stuff, since it does add value. It’s usually a shitty half-assed solution, but it has a reason to be there. And most of it works better on Linux anyway.
It’s the weird other extra stuff that makes feel like they’re just fucking with me. There’s no remaining technical reasons a new game can’t run on my SteamDeck better than on my Windows laptop. And most games do.
It could be a form of bundling, tacit veritcal integratation, magin squeeze , price discrimination, tie-ins etc.
Various tricks oligopolistic companies use to prevent competition from bidding prices down - trying to extract a bit of extra profit.
The harm is that people are paying more than they might - or for extra features they cant opt out of than they would in a free or open market. Likely the harm is very diffuse and no one person is all that bothered to be paying 10% more or whatever, but it all adds up.
Anti-trust regulators are so weak they don’t really have to try though. TBF it’s very hard to prove this stuff in court even if there was a political will to improve competition to benefit consumers.
If it doesn’t bother you, you do you.
To me, it’s fucking with me when they add software layers that adds no value and just makes my game harder to play, long term.
Note that I’m not as mad at anti-cheat stuff, since it does add value. It’s usually a shitty half-assed solution, but it has a reason to be there. And most of it works better on Linux anyway.
It’s the weird other extra stuff that makes feel like they’re just fucking with me. There’s no remaining technical reasons a new game can’t run on my SteamDeck better than on my Windows laptop. And most games do.
It could be a form of bundling, tacit veritcal integratation, magin squeeze , price discrimination, tie-ins etc.
Various tricks oligopolistic companies use to prevent competition from bidding prices down - trying to extract a bit of extra profit. The harm is that people are paying more than they might - or for extra features they cant opt out of than they would in a free or open market. Likely the harm is very diffuse and no one person is all that bothered to be paying 10% more or whatever, but it all adds up.
Anti-trust regulators are so weak they don’t really have to try though. TBF it’s very hard to prove this stuff in court even if there was a political will to improve competition to benefit consumers.