Valve announced a replacement feature for both Family Sharing and Family View. Currently in beta.
Features:
- up to 5 members
- game sharing
- parental controls
- allow access to appropriate games
- restrict access to the Steam Store, Community or Friends Chat
- set playtime limits (hourly/daily)
- view playtime reports
- approve or deny requests from child accounts for additional playtime or feature access (temporary or permanent)
- recover a child’s account if they lost their password
- child purchase requests
A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly.
The vast majority of games you pay for on Steam can be taken from you in a couple of clicks from a Valve employee. The second there’s a chance in management everything can go out the window very quickly because their position is ripe for abuse.
This isn’t Steam specific; this applies to almost every digital marketplace. Yeah, it sucks, but there’s some things you just have to accept. When’s the last time you bought a physical copy of a PC game?
Yeah, it sucks, but there’s some things you just have to accept.
This reminds me of a certain CEO who said gamers need to “get comfortable not owning games” so that subscription models can grow. I can imagine so, so many gamers in a couple years saying this sentence about that and so many more new exploitative practices.
The truth is, we don’t need to accept it. They need us to accept it so they can get away with it.
Pushback is crucial.
1: Steam is NOT a monopoly, competition exists for it, its just that most of it is garbage, and the few that arent, GoG and Itch, Steam outcompetes
2: This is a problem of Steams competition being bad, not with Steam itself
A company can be considered a monopoly without having 100% of the market. Microsoft is considered a monopoly, so is Google.
As for the rest, I don’t know how their competitors being bad changes the fact that you don’t really own the games you purchase on Steam.
I’m sorry bud, but Monopoly doesnt mean “Really large company” Steam has competition, it doesnt do anything to hamper competition, and its easy enough for new competition to arise. It is not a monopoly in any sense of the word. It is the top player as a digital videogame marketplace because it is leaps and bounds better than all of its competition. You dont like the risks of digital ownership? Understandable, GoG exists to fill that niche.
