From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
Also it depends what’s driving that attitude… if it’s an ethos from Gabe then great but he won’t be around forever… what happens when he dies/retires?
Many companies have started with great ethics that went out of the window when the founders moved on, and Steam is in a fantastic position to enshitify if it wanted to.
That’s a lot or what-ifs. If a lot of companies enshittify, that doesn’t mean all do. Especially when Valve is not publicly traded (sure, “for now”). It has a lot of credibility, especially compared to other launchers (EA, Ubi, Bethesda, Battle.net). And while there is GOG which is a great launcher aswell especially by selling games without DRM, it’s one in a million.
By your logic, we shouldn’t trust any company because they can all enshittify.
If you replaced “company” with “monopoly” in your last sentence, I agree.
Doesn’t even have to be a monopoly, I have zero loyalty to any business beyond the product they give me. Trust is for people, not for some nebulous corporate entity who wants my money.