This. I didn’t even have a Steam account and I used to avoid it. Until they became the first to support Linux nativelly. Then I slowly started to become a supporter.

I personally think that what the gaming community worships too much is companies like Ubisoft, Bethesda, EA… those big companies are the players, the human brain is their game, they are exploiting the gaming comunity’s weaknesses and desires, some even tapping into casino-like psychological incentives to entice people to spend money on them.

Nowadays, except for a few exceptions, AAA games are pretty bad and I much prefer indies.

And Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo want to be the owners of the ecosystem so they can control it all. They actually artificially impose limitations as much as they can to make sure they can keep people buying into their platform.

Personally, I think Steam is the lesser of all those evils. Even though they have a huge marketshare on PC, they keep innovating with interesting features (it feels like many other game stores don’t even try) without looking for exclusivity deals or going out of their way to lock anyone in (yes, there’s DRM, but it’s the game publisher who decides to use it, and it’s not even hard to crack). It’s the only game store I know (other than itch.io) that has accepted games that are 100% Free and Open Source.