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.
EA (and to some extent Valve) is also well known for profiting very heavily off of getting people addicted to gambling in the form of loot boxes. Also EA’s former CEO said that they should capitalize on gamers in the heat of the moment to charge in-app transactions, like pay $1 to reload your magazine mid-combat in Battlefield. They’re also notable for charging tons for DLC. Overall just very money hungry and gross.
Valve is not very good at censoring profitable fascist games from their marketplace (which goes in line with Gaben and his
freedom takes). Valve also takes like 1/3 of the price of the game for themselves, which is pretty high, especially for indie game devs who don’t yet have many sales, and given that they have a de-facto monopoly. They also tried really hard to break EU and Australian law and not allow for refunds on games beyond very limited circumstances. Their work culture is also notoriously sexist and transphobic.
I think Valve is probably the lesser evil of game companies but I think that their reputation is much much better than it should be given all this shit. That being said, as a
enjoyer I’m happy they are trying to get gaming on Linux working better, even if it’s just for their own selfish interests.