Irrefutable proof that Steam/Valve is a crappy company and that GOG is superior.

I have over 1000 hours in Team Fortress 2. What drew me to the game in the first place was the free to play aspect and low system requirements (meaning it could run in 60 FPS on my crappy laptop). I still like that game, i find it a very good idea for a multiplayer game, and a very well done at that. I think i may shed a tear when it eventually dies.

Recently, i reinstalled TF2. I found out that i couldn't use the text chat. I was not alarmed at first. I thought it was an automatic procedure for anyone who has recently installed the game, and that it would go away after 1-2 days. It didnt'. I started getting worried. Did i call someone a slur at some point and it got me permanently banned from text chat? Did i break the Steam Terms of Service in some way?

Turns out, Valve has imposed a regulation that players who have not spent at least 5 dollars in the market cannot use the voice chat. This is to limit spambots.

What kind of a solution is that? It's great they finally addressed the issue with spambots. but...

I have spent over 1000 hours in TF2. Additionally, my Steam account is from the first half of the 2010's. My library has way more than 100 games. Surely, i wouldn't be using an account like that to spam, would i?

Despite the fact i have spent over 40 real life days in the game, and my account more than half a decade old, they have locked me out of using the text chat. Just like that.

GOG is a much better company. They do not use crappy moves to cheat on customers. They are always fair and friendly.

Steam is done for me. I spent a lot of money in December to purchase Red Dead Redemption 2, and i think this is going to be my final big purchase. By "big" i mean that if i see an AAA title that i have wanted to play on a -90% sale, i will probbly buy it. But i am never spending big money on Steam again. What a crappy move.

I hope that one day GOG destroys Steam and overtakes it.

How has Steam cheated YOU?

I mean, CDPR don't really make multiplayer games so who knows what they would do in these cases.

Anyway, there should definitely be another way to get your chat authorized.

Whit a laud of auld gobshitery.

I am sure if you had paid for the game (or any others) and the shoe was on the other foot you would be cheering this on!

Oi, this again...
Don't you worry, GOG (or should I say CDPR) has its own road, with Gwent, Galaxy and all that, slowly embracing microtransactions, DRM and the online scheme. Galaxy in itself is a curious piece of software, a work in progress since immemorial times.
I try to stay as far away from Steam as possible, as I absolutely despise DRM, I'm also not particularly interested in online or multiplayer. I don't like their approach and what they stand for, their store is like a clusterfuck or something along those lines.
So basically you will boycott Steam? Interesting.
As for GOG overtaking Steam, not gonna happen, Valve has the experience, the money and the masses. They know who to cater to, when and how to do it.

As an extra, here's one of Kanye's older songs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ila-hAUXR5U

Oh no, they've made a game that obviously entertained you for more than 1000 hours for free. And now they want you to pay at least $5 for an additional feature.

That's certainly proof that they are not only a crappy company, but most probably even the worst company in history.

"I have over 1000 hours in Team Fortress 2."

Get a life, you should do something more productive.

You have more than 100 games on Steam and you like TF2. You should pay the $5 and be happy.

TF2 is not truly F2P, since it's one of the original - if not the original - gambling mechanic lootbox scam games. And it constantly pushes that crap in the players' faces, and makes clear you can't get most of the good stuff if in it if you don't pay them money to participate in their gambling mechanics scam, via assailing players with a never-ending in-game barrage of shady attempts to coerce consumers into indulging with that garbage.

By playing TF2, you are helping to endorse Steam/Valve's indulgence in that scummy practice, even if you don't buy those things yourself.

Playing it helps make the game popular, from which Steam/Valve take the message loud & clear that scamming consumers with predatory gambling mechanics lootboxes is A-OK!

As for your statement that Steam/Vale is a crappy company and therefore GOG is a good one: that assertion is illogical. The conclusion that GOG is good does not logically follow from the premise that Steam/Valve is bad.

As for your assertion that GOG has "never cheated their customers," that is factually incorrect. They frequently have cheated their customers over the years by not awarding any winners to some of their contests (i.e. the Sunless Skies story contest,) and by not even reading all of the eligible entries that were submitted for the Cyberpunk catchphrase contest, and by allowing DRM to be included in some of the singleplayer aspects of GOG games - including Cyberpunk - games which they flagrantly lie to the public about being 100% DRM-free, even though they are not. I'm sure there are many other examples too.

So really, both Steam/Valve and GOG engage in scummy, underhanded, deviant behaviors.

What about Gwent then? That's where their current market is. Aside from that, The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. Also, try to remember the No Man's Sky pre-order campaign.

I honestly can't believe how many people sank money into Gwent, but to each their own. For cosmetics and decks, not for outstanding storytelling or anything of the sort.

And as an extra, take a look at the e sports scene
https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/487-gwent You worded that perfectly +1

You live in a delusional fantasy world that goes against reality.

GOG has done, stupid, bone headed and and downright scummy things before and will do so in the future.
I want remind you of the whole dirty, scummy and most clear case of GOG lying to our faces with the devotion debacle.
The continuing pushing of Galaxy and Galaxy's own dangerous direction.
The continuing lower importance that offline installers seem to have.

GOG isn't doomed yet but these are troubling issues.

GOG isn't Superior.

GOG just tends to shower more often then Valve/Steam do.

Get real and rip those blinders off of your head holy shit.

I kinda forget Gwent exists, so yeah good call. I assume they allow chat and such without paying.

btw, are you by any chance the commenter GeraltofRivia_PL? Did you get your name changed? Doesn't really help if you keep writing the same kind of trollish posts.

Where did you get that limit (5 dollars)? I have used something like 50 cents (and given my phone number to Valve) in order to activate the expanded inventory in TF2 and be able to connect to Competitive game mode, and I can chat just fine with it.

It is the secondary free Steam account that I created for my son, that can't chat, nor start votes to kick anyone out.

The funny thing is that that hasn't stopped the bots at all. There are constantly lots of cheater bots that start votekicks and spam both text and audio. Not sure how the bots do that, have all those bot Steam accounts really been validated? And Valve just couldn't care less to ban those accounts? Maybe they are stolen accounts, but still... Unfortunately, they didn't. There are still lots and lots of spambots in the TF2 servers.

I think the real reason Valve disabled the chat from free-to-play accounts was not really to fight the cheaters, but the fact that many of those bots were sending racial slurs etc. to the chat. Valve was probably afraid they'd be sued by some WOKE organizations if they didn't try to stop such racial slurs from appearing in the game, and also concerned parents telling their kids not to play such games with racial slurs.

The only way Valve could stop the cheater bot invasion in TF2 was two-fold:

1. They would keep actively seeking and banning Steam accounts that run cheater bots in the game. (This is only a part of the solution because the cat-hook bots etc. automatically create new free Steam accounts if and when older accounts get banned).

2. Either require new Steam users to identify themselves with e.g. a valid phone number, or at least give TF2 players to play only on servers where all the gamers are validated (with e.g. a phone number).

In a way the "solution" is to play only Competitive game mode games in TF2, because that mode is available only for paid & identified users, so there are no cheater bots in that game mode. Too bad though the game mode itself is trash, e.g. you can't select which map(s) to play, it takes ages to join a game, and the team sizes are restricted to something like 6 players per team. I simply don't enjoy playing the competitive mode because it usually chooses maps I don't enjoy. That is actually a good point. Why doesn't TF2 take into account whether the Steam account has paid games already in it, which kinda validates that the account is not just generated automatically by some cat-hook script?

Anyway, it just seems Valve has lost interest to Team Fortress 2, maybe they feel it is not bringing enough money to them. Too many free-to-play players, just like you. Too bad, as it is currently the only online game that I am really interested to. I tried Fortnite and Counterstrike too, MEH! That is an invalid comparison as GOG Galaxy doesn't have similarly widely popular free-to-play online games. Well, maybe GWENT, I am unsure if cheaters are a big issue there and what GOG is doing about them... I am unsure where he got his "must use $5". At least I have chat enabled in TF2, after spending 50 cents (I think I bought the "Sandvich" item for the heavy in TF2) and giving Valve my phone number (to validate my account), which granted me an expanded inventory in TF2, and the access to the Competitive game mode in TF2.

Some Youtube video discussing about the cheater bot issue in TF2 suggested that Valve does have some improved VAC ban system in use in e.g. Counterstrike, but for some reason they are not using it in TF2. I presume Valve has just lost interest into TF2, and is merely letting it live for now... Too bad because it is kind of a special online shooter, for some reason I got hooked to it (and its predecessors, Quake TF and TF Classic), while pretty much all the other online shooters have left me cold. I especially like how many different ways there is to play those games, based on the class you choose.

There has been some interesting developments regarding those TF2 cheater bots though. For instance, a couple of people have made bots of their own who target only those cheater bots. The thing is that those cheater bots recognize each other, and don't shoot each other (only targetting human players).

So. those anti-cheater bots use the same recognition, telling the cheater bots not to target them... but then they themselves target only those cheater bots.

However, I guess it would be very easy for the cheater bots to overcome that too, like if another bot kills them anyway, then that bot (player) is added to the blacklist that it can be targeted too. But some cheater bot maker said he is not going to implement that as he doesn't want the servers becoming invaded with bots which just fight each other.

A couple of days ago I noticed I have 1337 hours in TF2. "1337", as in "leet", as in elite.

And that was the free account that I created for my son (I mainly play on it for now, so that I could get some extra items to him by playing). My main account has probably tens of thousands of hours for TF2, and I am a late-comer to the game (I played Team Fortress Classic instead as long as there were still active players in it, and only later moved to TF2).

It is a fun game, but in a different way than playing some deep single-player RPG or strategy game. Just hop in, shoot other people working in a team, and hop out. A bit like visiting a prostitute for instant gratification, instead of making sensual love with your SO.

I disagree.

As the OP's example shows (as he hasn't used a dime for the game), it is quite possible to enjoy the game without paying a dime (well, even if nowadays you can't chat in the game anymore, which does suck...). I think the main reason to use any money on the game, and to validate your account with a phone number, is that it grants you an expanded inventory in the game, and access to the competitive game mode.

However, as I am also playing on my son's free Steam account as well, you can enjoy the game even without paying anything. The smaller inventory is barely enough as long as you are not collecting cosmetics etc., and concentrate on keeping only weapons etc., and discard those items and weapons which are not really useful. When you play the game a bit, your learn e.g. which weapons are worth keeping and which are rather useless.

The game is not about using money to e.g. buy bigger weapons that give you an edge in the game, so it is not "pay-to-win".