This is exactly it. A company giving away a product for free to me doesn’t remind me of an honest actor, it reminds me of a casino with a “free spin” voucher, or a drug dealer giving samples. I’ve seen the “create a monopoly at a loss and then enshittify and raise prices” playbook over and over. Am I supposed to be so stupid and naive as to think Tim Sweeney is my friend? Every game he gives away just sort of proves how much of an idiot he thinks I am.
Steam has a track record of making their product better and better and the biggest scandal I can remember is when they introduced paid mods since that risked undermining the free mod market and GabeN did adjust the pricing afterwards and did personally get involved with the PR fallout. Otherwise the service has just gradually gotten better and better for the customer. Steam is privately owned instead of being owned by publicly traded companies and that helps with my confidence in the company.
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This is exactly it. A company giving away a product for free to me doesn’t remind me of an honest actor, it reminds me of a casino with a “free spin” voucher, or a drug dealer giving samples. I’ve seen the “create a monopoly at a loss and then enshittify and raise prices” playbook over and over. Am I supposed to be so stupid and naive as to think Tim Sweeney is my friend? Every game he gives away just sort of proves how much of an idiot he thinks I am.
Steam has a track record of making their product better and better and the biggest scandal I can remember is when they introduced paid mods since that risked undermining the free mod market and GabeN did adjust the pricing afterwards and did personally get involved with the PR fallout. Otherwise the service has just gradually gotten better and better for the customer. Steam is privately owned instead of being owned by publicly traded companies and that helps with my confidence in the company.