Yes, the Steam Deck is great, and Steam is definitely one of the best games platforms there is. And Valve has done great work supporting Linux and open source development, and forcing more transparency for sellers on Steam.
But I feel like people sometimes just love valve for everything they do. GabeN is still a billionaire, buying super-yachts and stuff. Valve makes a ton of their money from gambling on loot crates in CS2 and TF2, and have not done enough (imo) to stop even more predatory third party item gambling sites. And whenever I bring stuff like that up people keep defending Valve.
We should be able to praise their great games and hardware, at the same time as criticising other parts of the company.
No that’s exactly it. “Same team.”
Especially the specific hostility to the “other team.”
I think human brains are just fundamentally tribal. We (in aggregate) simply cannot help ourselves.
Correct, we are wired for small group formation that anchors our individual and collective identities.
Our brains, broadly, are very not good at existing in a world with billions of people with smartphones.
So, we become parasocial, we become bigotted based on notions of different ‘kinds’ of people, we develop fandoms, etc.
We’re built for living in bands, tribes, of between 50 to 200 people.
We have not biologically caught up with the last couple few % points of time of our entire evolutionary history, civilization and technology exploded way faster than natural selection can rewire our brains.