I will no longer make any purchases through Steam.

2025-05-09

Valve's recent shutting down of the Counter Strike: Classic Offensive fan mod has been the final nail in the coffin for me. I will still use steam to manage my game library, and I will continue to play Team Fortress 2, I may even purchase or trade for Team Fortress 2 items. However, I will not give Valve another penny. If a game is not available outside of steam, I will summon it via alternative means.

Counter Strike: Classic Offensive was a fan made mod for CS:GO, which aimed to blend the modern and old versions of counter strike, and had been in development for almost a decade. Valve is obviously scared that it will compete with their cash cow casino advert. In a revealing-of-true-colours, they decided that any derivative whatsoever of a Valve game constitutes a violation of their copyright, including mods. This came as a huge shock to the entire Source engine modding community, who haven't generally been treated this way. Of course, Valve is just selectively enforcing their copyright in order to stifle competition. They know for a fact that they are actively mismanaging the counter strike IP, in order primarily to redirect as many users as possible to their predatory casinos. This is not the first time valve has shut down a mod which competed with a product they are mismanaging. They previously shut down Open Fortress, a team fortress 2 mod which transformed the game into a more traditional arena shooter. In the end, after many years of no communication and ignoring the community, recently release the TF2 SDK, and allow TF2 modders to release their content on steam officially. This is a nice thing to do, however too little, too late it may come. It's likely this TF2 SDK release is Valve's half baked attempt to offload development onto the community, since they clearly aren't interested in working on TF2 any more (and honestly, I don't have that much of a problem with this, it's been 17 years after all). They will never do this with counter strike, given how big and profitable that game is. The message is clear, if you want to play modern counter strike without skins and gambling, no you don't. The hypocrisy, that counter strike was originally a mod for Half Life, is clear. In fact, most of Valve's games started life as mods. Most of Valve's games include more community made content than Valve made content. Maps, skins, etc. Valve is happy to take from the community, but never give back.

Just because other large gaming companies are worse, doesn't mean Valve is good. Valve has a reputation for being pro-consumer, but they really do the bare minimum. This is a "do nothing, win" situation. The competition just shoots themselves in the foot repeatedly, and Valve wins by being the least bad.

Steam takes a 30% cut of every sale. I'm not giving Valve 30% of my money. For what? To pay into a DOTA prize pool? To develop Deadlock, a game I don't give a shit about? To work on Gabe's delusional brain-computer-interface pet projects? Or so he can buy another super-yacht (he already owns six)?

Steam has been overrun with low quality porn game slop, but unknown to many, they have a strong bias against specifically Japanese games which contain sex scenes. There's no way I'm paying you 30% the price of a visual novel for you to cut out content.

If you take anything away from this post it should be the reminder that whatever games you have purchased through steam, you do not own. You have only obtained a license to the game.

I could go on to talk about how Valve has mismanaged Team Fortress 2, especially with the Meet Your Match update back in 2016, or complain about other decisions they have made which I may dislike, but I think those minor infractions take away from the broader point. The broader point is and always has been fuck AAA game devs indie 4 lyf. Itch.io rules, steam drools. I'm not giving them money any more.