zlacker

>>evolve+(OP)
Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact.

The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.

>>adverb+H53
Valve is one of the few companies regularly seen on HN where the headline is something like "[company] is secretly doing something really great" as opposed to "[company] is secretly doing something evil"

>>levoca+Yb3
I have plenty of complaints about them. The highly addictive gambling mechanics in their games, the extortionate cut afforded them by their dominant market position or the very rough UX in many parts of the Steam client (takes forever to startup, shows pop up ads on startup, is quite the resource hog, the store that is a pretty poorly optimized website and a lot of cruft in the less well trodden areas). But they do make some very nice open source contributions.

>>YmiYug+dL3
Ads can be disabled in the settings.

>>eggsom+BL3
Not an excuse.

It is not okay to abuse someone just because they can ask you to stop.

>>estima+RP3
Describing those 'ads' as "abusive" is quite a stretch. It's like going to the store page itself and complaining they're telling you about products they sell.

Particularly when you can easily disable them. No other game client I know of offers that.

>>squigz+Wd4
Advertising in general is absolutely abusive. I like to think of advertising as mind rape: it forcibly inserts brands and trademarks into your mind while you're trying to read or watch something.

On the other hand, I don't classify what Steam is doing as advertising. When I open the Steam store, it's because I want to see the games it has on sale. It's not advertising, it's the exact information I asked for. It would have been advertising had it kept spamming me with game deals while I'm watching a film or something.