Even if they managed to have a smooth store experience that was basically just buying games with a shopping cart and having a friends list… steam has a mind boggling amount of features that they would need to catch up on.
The steam community, big picture mode, controller support, family sharing, community market, the workshop, screenshot and video features, adding non steam games, I mean there are so many features it’s really hard to keep track of them.
The best crazy example I can give is that I can add dolphin emulator as a non steam game and run Mario kart double dash, then use steam to invite literally anyone with steam and a controller to my session and we can play double dash online coop that easy. Sure there are other ways to do that, but I can do this with any game ever using steam. Oh the game only supports a certain type of controller? I can remap everything using steam.
Absolutely true, play together is an amazing feature.
Proton and now Fex are also kind of incredible, I've just played through a AAA game on Linux and it kind of just worked, out of the box. wouldn't have thought it possible just a few years ago
You can invite anyone on steam to play any 2 player game (steam or non steam) that is running on your machine.
It’s just doing the networking for you and “plugging their controller” into your computer. Perfectly legal. Makes any couch coop game immediately online coop.
another feature that isnt mentioned enough is that you can literally use the ingame overlay to open a browser, i dont gotta alt tab or nothing i can just open the overlay and google stuff from inside the game, i can even make timers, write notes, look at the achivement list, and my friendslist, all from inside the game
To be honest, many of the features you listed are unnecessary or poorly implemented. I’m not sure that a large number of players need them. Steam forums are a nightmare, and controller support has both advantages and serious issues for some users.
Also, there is a Valve Pass. No one needs another nft market for example. And Steam would be better place if it didn’t have hundreds of thousands or even millions of bots that earn money farming games.
114
u/Dioroxic 9h ago
Even if they managed to have a smooth store experience that was basically just buying games with a shopping cart and having a friends list… steam has a mind boggling amount of features that they would need to catch up on.
The steam community, big picture mode, controller support, family sharing, community market, the workshop, screenshot and video features, adding non steam games, I mean there are so many features it’s really hard to keep track of them.
The best crazy example I can give is that I can add dolphin emulator as a non steam game and run Mario kart double dash, then use steam to invite literally anyone with steam and a controller to my session and we can play double dash online coop that easy. Sure there are other ways to do that, but I can do this with any game ever using steam. Oh the game only supports a certain type of controller? I can remap everything using steam.
It’s way more than just a store at this point.