wayke: It's not really a price on steam it's a Rental fee you won't own the license to the game you will only have some rental time in steam for a very close price, I've been shifting away from there for a while avoiding bundles and other such things, Steam is a very toxic platform the employees and their friends alike have made it that way.
Midnightshade: It's not "toxic" at all. Only to people who can't stand critism. The great thing about steam is sales, refunds, great interface and mod workshop. I also love they accept freedom of expression and aren't censoring games to cancel culture mobs, or people that find everything "problematic" (cringe word).
Also its not a rental. It's no different than buying here. All games now are a license, especially on pc, as discs aren't a thing anymore. I have faith in steam as it has such a following you know it's not going to go away and your games will still be there. How is it a rental?
Steam and Gog are my two gaming platforms on pc, outside of uplay for games that require it (at least its better than orgin or microsoft store, shudder). I prefer gog and the galaxy launcher that integrates with everything (the less i have to see of that stupid epic store the better). I check both sites but try to buy here when i can first. Also some games work better on steam for mods or nintendo switch cross save.
I've been on Steam since it started as just a Launcher for Half-life with the puke coloured interface that introduced all kinds of crashing, Now it's all Forced updates which sometimes break content, moderators that ban you for posing questions about a title that could hurt sales if people see it in a certain light and they cast shade on you in private chat it’s super toxic unless you're bowing down and gobbling up everything and saying thanks master it's a very toxic place.
Or when Support calls you a Lying thief for requesting a refund on a broken game…..
The Community mods get toxic reporters who target people they have their groups and go about it in a way to avoid getting banned on the forums, with that flaming and false reporting sometimes a Valve mod catches on and the false reports get the ban mostly it’s the aggrieved getting banned for their threads going out of ‘[insert arbitrary rule violation]’.
Then the barely English speaking moderators who have no concept of colloquialism’s they ban or warn people with absurd reasoning then harass and follow these people around to every post giving some insane warning running on their little power trip.
There are many places you can view that show you don't own anything on steam it's simply put as you rent a space to play a game in their DRM locked room until they kick you out, As for refunds many titles break after the 2 hour mark it's a given and that timer counts up even when you launch a game and it crashes the process may be active in the background and you don't know this your 2 hour mark is gone in idle time.
Their SSA does not give you license to the products only subscription to the steam service and platform under the condition you keep spending money there, If you break forum rules there's a possibility of losing access to all your games as some people have already had this happen.
“Steam and your Subscription(s) require the download and installation of Content and Services onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet”
If you lose access to your account you lose access to the games by license and by DRM, There are others with way more knowledge on this but E-thugs and Mafia like attitude towards ownership I don’t want any part of that.
