That’s not fully true, a decent amount of Steam games have zero DRM. It’s not as convenient as the GOG installers, but you can make an archive of the installed game and run it again without Steam.

I say this as a long time user of GOG who tries to get games from them over Steam (when possible).

Yeah, that sounds about right. Although it does a bit funny. :)

There is no mention of asynchronous online gameplay on their page. Just single player or “classical” coop.

I clearly am a gamer, but I hate that term. I wish there was a more neutral, almost formal term.

I am not American, I have a completely different perspective on this topic than most North Americans (lived there for a decade, as well as Europe and Asia for many years).

I was using the term in a very broad sense. Think of it as more of an “off the cuff” remark.

I generally use Steam forums/news for relatively niche indie/AA games in the economic strategy/city-builder genres. Rarely do you encounter overly heated discussion with some exceptions around Denuvo use or a particularly intense debate about gameplay approaches.

But I have seen some sections of Steam that honestly look surreal due to the level of toxicity and the overall bad faith tone.

Valve should honestly police this stuff, they have more than enough resources to do so, but they won’t since it goes against the “scalability and automation” mantra of modern technology companies.

P.S. I don’t consider free speech issues to be relevant in this case. One can always start their own site/forum and spam it with whatever they like. If product owners finds this valuable, they can join the shitbox.

For what it’s worth, sales upon early access release (or even 1.0 release) is somewhat common in the indie scene.

I believe the goal is to try and convert as many wishlists into sales.