Vietnam bans Valve's monopolistic game platform Steam
Vietnam bans Valve's monopolistic game platform Steam
Steam is now banned in Vietnam
However, as reported in Vietnam.net, it's possible Steam has been taken down in Vietnam after local game developers complained about the scope and size of Steam's vast portfolio of games, claiming Vietnamese devs cannot compete with Steam's releases given they are subject to government approval and thousands of international games on Steam are not.
Citing it as "an injustice to domestic publishers", Vietnamese studios reportedly say that local game development "will die" if Steam is able to keep releasing games without the same government scrutiny as domestic games.
Based Vietnam protecting its domestic games industry from American capitalists. :)
TLDR: the online game monopolies of Vietnam complains that they can't extort the market share our Lord and Savior Gabe Newell rightfully earned," said one unhappy Steam user.
Steam users are so fucking insufferable. They hate all capitalist game companies except this one which they will eagerly lick the boot of.
This article makes it seem like more of a protectionist move than an anti-monopoly move, which I'm in favor of when China does it so why wouldn't I support Vietnam doing it
It sucks for Vietnamese gamers who will now be forced to use a VPN and change their computer's locale to play foreign titles, but if in ten or twenty years there's Vietnamese game devs who wouldn't have been able to exist otherwise it'll be worth it.
Hopefully this will help prevent the good people of Vietnam from catching the gamer mind virus.
A common reason cited by g*mers for only using Steam is that they "want to have all their games in one place". They will literally never switch to anything else, no matter how good it is, if the majority of their "owned" games can only be accessed through Steam.
I really don't think that sentiment is all that common. People like to use Steam because it's a good service, and always innovating new ways to be a good service. There's no reason for family sharing to exist, or for it to have recently been overhauled in such a way that it's even smoother and more pleasant to use. They just did it because it makes a better consumer experience. There's no reason for Proton to exist, or for Valve to push into linux gaming at all. Linux was such an insignificant, tiny market. But Valve is making it a significant market single-handedly and that's fucking awesome.
Of course Valve, just like any other company in a capitalist society, only wants money. But Valve, unlike most companies in a capitalist society, is guided by the principle that people will fork over their money if the service is good. And they're goddamn right.
If Epic made a good service, or if Ubisoft made a good service, or if EA made a good service, or if Rockstar made a good service, or if Blizzard made a good service, or if anyone else made a good service, they'd have no problems getting people to use their service and Steam. The problem is that any time somebody other than Valve makes a game store, the only selling point for it is "you can't play this game if you don't download our store." Nobody ever tries actually making something good.
These companies don't want to just sell games to you. They want you to interact with their apps and live in their ecosystem and I have zero interest to learn to use a shittier Steam where I have no games
If they just sold you no-frills installers like GOG does (with an optional Steam-like ecosystem I never use) I wouldn't mind, but of course they don't want to do that
I know a lot of people who refuse to use Epic because something something Tencent bad!
I argue that is the case as well. Personally, I've been so dissatisfied with every alternative I have no desire to use a different service.
Steam also appears to be the only service that tends to do right by the customer so there is no push to seek an alternative.
Every indie game developer wishes gamers would use itch.io instead.