Your government is elected by your populace and accountable to that populace. If people get outraged by their behavior, they get voted out of power and depending on how much political immunity they have (which depends on the particular laws of your country), possibly go to jail too.

This is why most governments tend they have significantly more stringent rules about not spying domestically unless they have a very good reason to (ex: criminal activity).

But abroad, even among very close partners, it is more free for all. What are the consequences for the government of China if they spy on you and it becomes known? Not much I reckon. Maybe some very minor embarrassment, but they'll live.

And I'm getting tired of Epic Games Launcher Storefront.

Believe it or not, I've also been unironically thinking about that recently. People who go "MY DATA IS GOING TO CHINA OH NO" are likely not living in China itself. If you're Chinese or you live in China, obviously you have a lot of stakes in matters like these. If you're American or in the USA, wouldn't it make more sense that you'd be concerned more about Facebook and, yes, Steam, than if Tencent or Huawei or whatever had your data?

Obviously all of these cases are bad, giving up your data voluntarily to anyone unchecked is bad, whether it's the USA, UK, China, or the newly discovered Martian government. But people just see "China" and start going "China bad" instead of "data collection bad".

I think American companies getting their hands on data might be a tad worse than Chinese companies getting their hands on that same data, because as far as I know, Chinese firms don't seem to sell that data off to international buyers though I could be talking out of my butt here, but American firms gladly and unashamedly see it as a source of revenue, something to capitalize on. They could sell your data to your local repressive government in the name of profit and somewhere in a TOS you have signed, you have waived your right to object it, or maybe you just ended up on a website with some sort of FB tracking anyway.

So like, yeah, what if Epic gets a bit of that data and sends it to China? I mean, it's good that you're having some sort of self-awareness about what happens to what you do on the internet, I just hope that you're worried about it universally rather it being a case of "China bad", sadly those who complain about Epic data collection probably have Steam running 24/7 unchecked and unchallenged. Best launcher amirite? It was made to save PC games from becoming """niche""", not to be DRM for half-life 2. Who cares if they collect data?

Looks like i was right about how this troll thread is bait :)

Your data is always interesting as part of an aggregate to determine trends and characteristics found in larger groups of people.

And your data is more valuable in its personal detailed form than as an anonymized aggregate, because then it can be combined with future data obtained from you or otherwise re-analyzed with more flexibility to obtain further useful information that previous analysises might have missed.

But otherwise, you are right that the data is unlikely to be used against you personally unless you become important, though it is a somewhat scary prospect that anyone who could become important (and some people do, starting with our heads of state who start their lives as 'nobodies' like the rest of us) have a well stocked body of data that can be weaponized against them.

And yes, PookaMustard is most likely right that US corporations (not sure about the US government, but definitely US corporations and they are kind of large and everywhere nowadays) having your data is worse that the Chinese government, because they have no privacy laws to speak of and are liable to just sell your data to the highest bidder.

It's interesting how the dude was provided example after example of being wrong about everything, but he always chose to cherry pick one point and attack it with a flimsy reasoning that's then easily counterattacked and then he put ear plugs for the rest.

I'd think the point about valve's lovely launcher having nothing but 7 or 8 games up to 2007 or so would've changed the idea that Valve made it to save PC games from, I don't fucking know, the Boiled One for all I care. AB2012 made that point, BrianSim did it later more succinctly, yet he still insists Valve was different than Epic in their intentions. Is this how the argument goes every fucking time with other people? So much time wasted screaming at a brick wall.

Bro what?!?! It's a MONOPOLY on the market. They're not chosen to lead the industry. Their policies suck.

How are they not chosen? Everyone can make their own digital store. There's GOG and Epic, so how is it a monopoly? Nothing about what you said makes sense.
I'm obviously not talking about the fact that you should play every game you are interested in 24/7. You just move the goal post, because you don't want to admit that I made valid points that you might agree with. So you say that there are no 10-20 games on Steam that you would buy and play immediately if they would release on GOG? What other DRM free places are there that are legal, and are not overpriced almost impossible to find physical copies? I'm really curious about that.

I'm honestly not sure if you just didn't understand what I said at all, or you're just trolling.

But no, I don't think there's anything on Steam I'd feel compelled to buy and play immediately. There's probably plenty of stuff I'd add to my wishlist where they would sit for a long time with all the stuff already there, waiting their turn.

Itch.io, Humble Bundle (some games), Fireflower Games, Adventure Game Studios (ok, that's super niche, but point & clicks happen to be my niche so I'm golden). I'm not sure how are things DRM-wise on Game Jolt, but I think they sell DRM-free.

Isn't Humble Bundle just a key site? How are you playing games there?

Humble used to offer installers for some games, not sure how they operate since they got bought by IGN.
Another place that offers installers is Indiegala.

They have unfortunately shifted in that direction a long while ago now, yes, but they still offer some games as DRM-free downloads. Or at least I think they do, I haven't bought anything there in a long time, but you can still filter the store for DRM-free so I assume it hasn't changed.

The dude has recently stated he wants to "save" video games because they are "too woke" now or something. He is also infamous for buying companies and then making him a "co-founder." Valve is suddenly co-founded by Elon Musk in 2025 lol.

But yeah, he pays people to game for him and seems to want to show off as a "L33T" gamer. Wouldnt be surprised if he bought Valve and makes a gamer profile with millions of achievements to show off his "gamer skills"

You repeatedly make false and uninformed claims to argue your points on why Steam is so good or the best and refuse to do any research which is why you come off as a troll.

Look up first mover advantage and the platformer business.

I know you were replying to someone else, but this point jumped out at me. For me, it's not about hating, although I admittedly DON'T appreciate it when companies force you to do something whether you like it or not - I prefer having a choice. My issue is that I CANNOT use Steam or play any game that requires it, and I will not purchase such games for several reasons.

1.) My gaming computer is ancient, and at the moment I cannot afford to replace it. Steam no longer supports Win7, whereas here on GOG, most games that my system is powerful enough to run will work.

2.) My gaming computer is not online. In fact I don't have internet at home, so I use the computers at my public library to download GOG's offline installers to a flash drive and take them home with me. The lack of an internet connection on my gaming computer keeps me from playing any game that requires one for any reason, even if it's just a one-time activation through Steam. Example: one of my favorite game series is Civilization, and while my computer is powerful enough to run Civ V, I can't play it because it requires Steam to activate and has since day one. I would have bought Civ V new for $50 or whatever it was back when it released, but Firaxis missed out on a sale from me because of the Steam activation requirement. This is hardly the only example of this.

3.) This is not exclusive to Steam, or even to all games on Steam, but an always-online requirement for DRM is very anti-consumer. If playing a game means you have to be connected to the internet, then you're screwed if your internet is down for some reason, or if the company's servers ever have a problem for some reason, or the company decides to pull support for a game. I refuse to buy any game that could be taken away from me at the drop of some executive's hat simply because they decide not enough people play it to continue supporting it. I've never been a big multiplayer gamer, so most of what I have played my entire life are single-player games, and there is no reasonable reason to make a single-player game require an active internet connection.

4.) Having blind faith that Steam will always be around is just naive (and I'm not intending that word as an insult). Businesses fail all the time. Just looking at the video game industry alone, you can come up with big names that at one time or another people thought would be around forever; THQ, Midway, Atari just to name a few. Just because a company is doing well now, doesn't mean it always will be. A competitor could come along and disrupt the industry, causing others to adapt or go under. Isn't that basically Steam's story? They certainly disrupted the industry, but BEING a disrupter doesn't magically make you immune to future disruptions.

The gaming industry could shift in ways we can't even predict right now, and if companies like Steam don't adapt quick enough, they fail. Steam's the biggest, and history shows us over and over again that oftentimes the biggest companies are the ones that have the hardest time adjusting to new realities. A non-gaming example from a couple of decades ago would be the rise of Amazon. When Amazon first launched as an online bookstore, its main competitors in the US were Borders and Barnes and Noble. Amazon's disruption of the market led to hundreds of closed stores, Borders going out of business entirely, and Barnes and Noble struggling to survive for years before finally starting to recover. No one saw any of that coming back in the mid-90s, and since then Amazon's expansion into dozens of other fields has done the same with other industries. There are a lot of formerly big companies that didn't survive competition with Amazon. Now, I'm not saying Steam WILL go that way, I'm just saying it COULD happen in the future, because we don't know what will change down the road.

Steam/Valve may be privately held right now, but there's no guarantee that will always be the case, and if the company ever goes public, then they become beholden to investors, and Wall Street is notorious for ruining perfectly good companies by pushing them to squeeze every last cent of profit out of them. Push a company hard enough to increase profits and you can make them go belly-up by stifling innovation and wrecking their ability to react to changes in the market such as the ones I discussed above.

Okay, I'm getting way more long-winded than I intended, so I'll finish this up by saying that the real world is a lot more complex and nuanced than some of the pronouncements I've been seeing you make all over the forums lately. The idea that everyone who disagrees with you is either stupid or a hater - which is what many of your comments suggest - is pretty juvenile.