'pretty decent api'
and then we remember steamspy.
steamspy was an amazing tool for players and developers alike. It hurt all the shovel ware, asset flips, and overall stuffty games. Some developers who have made some pretty successful games even claim that they were only able to get their game off the ground because of steamspy.
So what does Steam do? Stops doing any quality control and made every single profile have games private by default. The first thing is there to support all the stuffty games that inevitably get bought and this helps increase their personal cash flow. Then the second thing took away the very information steamspy needed to run. Because they don't care about how successful a good game can be, they just want games to sell at all, and why would they waste their own server resources making sure the quality ones are the ones bringing in money?
They don't even have a basic loving testing checklist for games. Executables can just not even exist and the game can ship without even being able to run. It can be loaded with viruses, mining bots, and even spyware. "Hey look a fun new popular meme game" whoops you got ratted, thanks steam.
Steam used to be great. But it's rolling downhill. These are not just surface issues. These are real legitimate issues that hurt the platform as a whole. And I will gladly jump ship even if it means using several different launchers.
