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this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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My only example ever is pretty much Costco. But I can't think of a single tech company that isn't a massive asshole. There must be some tho, right?
Valve? I think they are pretty good and pro consumer.
You didn’t used to be able to refund your stream purchases if you downloaded or installed them at all. The fact that they forced intrusive DRM with a single player game in HL2.
Valve was seen as a very unfriendly company until about 2010
how quickly people forget valves pro-consumer shit was forced by regulations and countries suing them into compliance.
Such as?
https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/valve-to-pay-3-million-fine-for-misleading-australian-gamers/
Losing that fight is the big reason why valve made all the changes its did to be better for consumers.. and I wager they did it cause they saw where the dominos would fall if more countries went after them, So they did it themselves to paint it like a big pro-consumer thing instead of a preventing-further-legal-costs thing.
Personally, I am okay with Valve not always being the company they are now. A government did its job and the company it affected became consumer friendly [and still dominated the market by believing in a market no other major publisher wanted to touch at the time]. This is what governments are created for: helping the citizens while letting these companies innovate.
Valve basically killed the second hand market of PC Games with their Steam keys tied forever to one account. CD Keys was a thing before Steam but only for online games and if you sold the game or lended it out to a buddy the next person could play with same key. Nope too pro consumer thought Valve, made it mandatory for singleplayer games like Half-Life 2. They forced people buying Half-Life 2 to install Steam & create Steam account which at the time was not ready and basically just an early DRM to tie license forever to one account.
Many people could not even play at release, they could not prove they owned what they had bought, cause servers were overloaded so they were locked out of playing an offline singleplayer game on their own computer. Unfortunately that is custom nowadays when big games launch with contrived shitty online service crap forced down gamers throats. Valve basically pioneered that shit among many other douchey moves. They are better than scum like EA & Ubisoft especially these days but far from perfect. So no they all suck to some degree.
For now.. Things can always change and it's usually for the worst.
I personally believe Costco does suck but somehow a large number of people are blind to it.