What grudges do you hold against tech/software companies and why?

[Anomnomnomaly]

10 minutes ago, Chrizl1990 said:

But can't the same be sound about Intel ... and I though they had a larger number of them tbf.

All excessive fanbois/goils are a bad thing and I tend to instantly dismiss anything they say as irrelevant because those types are incapable of being objective or rational about whatever particular product/brand they are gushing over.

[Curious Pineapple]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

That has nothing to do with the software being proprietary or not.

But you did say "software, hardware and DRM"

[Jet_ski]

On 1/8/2020 at 6:27 PM, Anomnomnomaly said:

Does anyone else have a grudge against a company related to tech/gaming that nothing could ever convince you to reconsider?  I'm not just talking about 'never buying an EA game because they're evil' kind of thing... But a company that has directly caused you a problem that you struggle to forget and/or forgive.

 

I've got a couple... the first is nVidia. I've been PC gaming for long enough to have witnessed the first wave of 3D graphics cards and my first card was a 3DFX Voodoo II... sadly I never got to SLI a pair of them... But boy were they great.  I then had an nVidia something or other from around 98 and as soon as 3DFX released the Voodoo 3 I grabbed one of them, and when they released the VooDoo 5 5500... I had one of them too.... sadly that was also the time of their demise and nVidia swooped in and bought up all of their IP... along with the promise of supporting Voodoo cards and customers... They lied... they hung everyone out to dry and never lifted a finger. All they wanted was the SLI patents.  So I never really forgave them and it's one of the reasons I kinda heavily lean towards AMD  GPU's... But I do own a couple of nVidia Shield TV boxes (2017 & 2019 models) and my tablet is the rather nice Shield K1... So I am being worn down a little... now if only they'd get of their high horse and actually price stuff competitively... I might consider a GPU at some point, but chances of that are slim.

 

The next one is more recent... 2019.. and it's Ubisoft this time.  I tried to buy the last Assassin's Creed game during a sale and for some unknown reason the version I bought wasn't the one I wanted (it was missing all the DLC)... I reached out to them and asked for them to adjust the sale and that I'd pay the difference. I even accepted that it's possibly my error and I clicked the wrong verion and wasn't paying enough attention at the checkout... We've all done it.  They ignored me for weeks... I'd never actually played the game, all I'd done was launch it for less than 2 mins as I immediately saw stuff was missing. It was uninstalled immediately.  When they eventually respond it's to basically say 'tough shit' you've played the game... I wasn't happy and told them so, pointed out that we have decent consumer laws in the UK and what they were doing wasn't acceptable... again they ignore it for weeks and then respond with the same canned statement telling me 'tough shit'.   This is why I pay via paypal... so I open a dispute and they ignore that too... paypal refunds me my money.  I update my complaint with them and ask them to remove the game from me because I have my refund. This is where they get a little shitty with me... the response is kinda pathetic and threatening with the suggestion that they will ban my entire account for daring to enforce my consumer rights. What ever drone I'm talking to hasn't a clue about those consumer rights/laws in the UK. They still don;t remove the game so a few weeks later, I update the compliant once more and say thank you for letting me keep the game after all... a few days later.. it's removed.

 

I think no more of it... and about 6 months later, the game is on sale once more... this time even cheaper and with all the DLC. So I buy it... except it's not added to my games list... So I raise a ticket for it and am basically ignored for weeks again. It gets passed around and each time they fail to understand the issue... I've paid for it, you've taken my money... you've failed to give me the game... As the days/weeks go on, I start to get annoyed as they're doing bugger all to resolve it... So I escalate it to a complaint... it's ignored... so I send a letter to the CEO of Ubisoft UK and get one back promising to look into it, but all they do is pass it some useless drone in CS who weeks later responds with the same crap they parroted before. So back to paypal, get my money back.. Ubisoft have failed to resolve anything yet again and are nothing short of obnoxious arseholes in my book... As a result I will never spend another penny with them again.

 

I have played the AC game though... and it's not actually worth it, so I count myself lucky I didn't waste my money... the levelling system is so stupid, you can't go back to an area you struggled with after levelling up a little more because all of the enemies auto level up to the same as you... making the act of increasing weapons/armour utterly pointless... It's like a grind that grinds for grindings sake. Even when the eventually reacted to the player backlash, they just added an option to set the auto levelling to be a couple lower than before... worthless still.

 

So if nVidia is anything to go buy... it's gonna be 15 or more years before I ever consider buying anything from them... legitimately... not that I'd ever suggest anyone actually do anything like that of course... it's wrong... so, very, very wrong. 

 

 

Also... f*ck EA... they are evil. 

Microsoft, Dell, and HP.

 

I hate Microsoft so much that I’d never use their products for anything if I can help it. They are the main reasons why I’m not buying any non-Apple laptop or PC. So so many issues.

• Until a few years back I had a OneDrive subscription and stored all of my files there. Then one day I noticed files are getting duplicated, missing, not syncing. I tried everything, literally everything anyone could think of, including their customer service and nothing fixed it. It was absolutely their fault with glitchy software.
• I used OneNote for note taking which I though was great. Again on a separate system, after a while syncing issues began and I lost data because it was uploaded but no other devices could see it.
• Windows 10 UI is offensive, it is very messy and ugly. You used to have the control panel to manage your computer, but now some options are in the metro interface and not in the control panel vice versa. It’s like running multiple operating systems that are completely not integrated. And I hate that they put bloatware on paid version of the Win 10. The UI is awful. I miss Win 7.
• The Metro design makes things inaccessible. When they were building it out, I noticed things kept getting more clicks away from me. For somethings I needed to navigate through a bunch of convoluted menus whereas before it was 2 clicks away. Metro has too much square shapes, for the love of anything just make thing look good instead of adhering to a square only shape!! Also why is the Windows logo in the start menu facing left?! The way they designed it, wouldn’t you want the logo to face towards the right of the screen?
• After they retired IE, they gave us Edge which removes 100s of features that you’d get on IE or any browser. Including the ability to interact with pdf files. I had never seen an upgrade that removed this many features.
• My paid outlook account was hacked even though I had 2-step verification. All they offered me was to delete the account for 30 days and reinstate it. WTF.
• I have an Xbox One, it frequently won’t turn on when I try to use it or won’t connect to the controller. Then randomly in the middle of the night it will turn itself on!!!!
• I’m an early windows Phone adopter. This one I agree was my stupidity and I deserved to suffer.
• In my opinion there is nothing Microsoft can do right. I see all these cool devices but I’d never buy one because they run Windows. I wish someone would make an OS that was on par with Windows and MacOS so people had an alternative. Linux isn’t consumer friendly.

HP makes the worst laptops and nobody should buy one from them. Batteries always die too fast and won’t hold enough charge. And plenty of other issues. Dell batteries are never as advertised either. I was very unhappy that Dell bought Alienware and HP bought Voodoo PC. They basically absorbed those awesome computer makers and totally ruined them.

[Sauron]

11 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

But you did say "software, hardware and DRM"

Still has nothing to do with the example you gave - just because I know how it works doesn't mean I can tamper with it without triggering the data wipe.

[Yogi_DaBear221]

LG because of the Boot Looping issue that hit my LG V10 (Rest in Peace).

[Midnitewolf]

I hate how Microsoft decides things for me all the time. This includes anything from updates to how my typing should look in word.  If I wanted the text to have an indent, I would have indented using the tab key damnit.

 

I also am holding a grudge against Nvidia at the moment. I realize they have a lock on the the high end GPU market but considering how small that segment of the market is and how little sales there effects their overall bottomline, I feel like they really bent us over the barrel with their $1200 2080 Ti's.  This makes me want to buy AMD products even if they aren't as good, at least as long as AMD products continue to offer decent performance at a reasonable price like they have traditionally done.

 

Finally I am not a big fan of the Epic Store due to their exclusivity agreements as it removes my right to decide where I want to spend my money and quite honestly sets the stage for potential abuse in the future.   I guess exclusivity agreements are nothing new to be honest but it puts a bad taste in my mouth that I have to wait a year from many new releases just because I would rather use Steam's platform.

 

 

[RonnieOP]

On 1/8/2020 at 6:27 PM, Anomnomnomaly said:

Does anyone else have a grudge against a company related to tech/gaming that nothing could ever convince you to reconsider?  I'm not just talking about 'never buying an EA game because they're evil' kind of thing... But a company that has directly caused you a problem that you struggle to forget and/or forgive.

 

I've got a couple... the first is nVidia. I've been PC gaming for long enough to have witnessed the first wave of 3D graphics cards and my first card was a 3DFX Voodoo II... sadly I never got to SLI a pair of them... But boy were they great.  I then had an nVidia something or other from around 98 and as soon as 3DFX released the Voodoo 3 I grabbed one of them, and when they released the VooDoo 5 5500... I had one of them too.... sadly that was also the time of their demise and nVidia swooped in and bought up all of their IP... along with the promise of supporting Voodoo cards and customers... They lied... they hung everyone out to dry and never lifted a finger. All they wanted was the SLI patents.  So I never really forgave them and it's one of the reasons I kinda heavily lean towards AMD  GPU's... But I do own a couple of nVidia Shield TV boxes (2017 & 2019 models) and my tablet is the rather nice Shield K1... So I am being worn down a little... now if only they'd get of their high horse and actually price stuff competitively... I might consider a GPU at some point, but chances of that are slim.

 

The next one is more recent... 2019.. and it's Ubisoft this time.  I tried to buy the last Assassin's Creed game during a sale and for some unknown reason the version I bought wasn't the one I wanted (it was missing all the DLC)... I reached out to them and asked for them to adjust the sale and that I'd pay the difference. I even accepted that it's possibly my error and I clicked the wrong verion and wasn't paying enough attention at the checkout... We've all done it.  They ignored me for weeks... I'd never actually played the game, all I'd done was launch it for less than 2 mins as I immediately saw stuff was missing. It was uninstalled immediately.  When they eventually respond it's to basically say 'tough shit' you've played the game... I wasn't happy and told them so, pointed out that we have decent consumer laws in the UK and what they were doing wasn't acceptable... again they ignore it for weeks and then respond with the same canned statement telling me 'tough shit'.   This is why I pay via paypal... so I open a dispute and they ignore that too... paypal refunds me my money.  I update my complaint with them and ask them to remove the game from me because I have my refund. This is where they get a little shitty with me... the response is kinda pathetic and threatening with the suggestion that they will ban my entire account for daring to enforce my consumer rights. What ever drone I'm talking to hasn't a clue about those consumer rights/laws in the UK. They still don;t remove the game so a few weeks later, I update the compliant once more and say thank you for letting me keep the game after all... a few days later.. it's removed.

 

I think no more of it... and about 6 months later, the game is on sale once more... this time even cheaper and with all the DLC. So I buy it... except it's not added to my games list... So I raise a ticket for it and am basically ignored for weeks again. It gets passed around and each time they fail to understand the issue... I've paid for it, you've taken my money... you've failed to give me the game... As the days/weeks go on, I start to get annoyed as they're doing bugger all to resolve it... So I escalate it to a complaint... it's ignored... so I send a letter to the CEO of Ubisoft UK and get one back promising to look into it, but all they do is pass it some useless drone in CS who weeks later responds with the same crap they parroted before. So back to paypal, get my money back.. Ubisoft have failed to resolve anything yet again and are nothing short of obnoxious arseholes in my book... As a result I will never spend another penny with them again.

 

I have played the AC game though... and it's not actually worth it, so I count myself lucky I didn't waste my money... the levelling system is so stupid, you can't go back to an area you struggled with after levelling up a little more because all of the enemies auto level up to the same as you... making the act of increasing weapons/armour utterly pointless... It's like a grind that grinds for grindings sake. Even when the eventually reacted to the player backlash, they just added an option to set the auto levelling to be a couple lower than before... worthless still.

 

So if nVidia is anything to go buy... it's gonna be 15 or more years before I ever consider buying anything from them... legitimately... not that I'd ever suggest anyone actually do anything like that of course... it's wrong... so, very, very wrong. 

 

 

Also... f*ck EA... they are evil. 

What UK law would be in play when you purchase the wrong version? Thats not really tbe companies fault so not sure why a law would be passed to demand the seller to fix a customers mistake. But im not in the UK.

 

For me the biggest is Newegg. Their customer service for the past 10+ years has just been horrible for me. They screwed me out of alot of money in btc, returning crap products is a nightmare, and when they say 3 day shipping and then they tell me "well processing takes 2-3 days on top of that" is just BS. I understand that not every company can be like amazon prime. But dont lie to me and say 3 days when its gonna take a week. If the price was much better id wait the extra time but usually the price is the same as amazon or higher.

 

Now ill gladly pay amazon extra for the same product over newegg. 

 

Hell i had better CS with tiger direct back in the day than newegg.

[RonnieOP]

On 1/9/2020 at 12:41 PM, Archer20 said:

The Epic Games Store. I refuse to download it, even if the spyware thing has been debunked. One reason: timed exclusives barred from other stores. If I wanted to play the "exclusives" game, I would have bought a console. Exclusives should not be a thing on PC. I should be able to use my game launcher of choice.

Im confused why this issue only gets held against Epic.

 

Steam has had exclusive games for decades now as has Blizzard. Yet its only Epic that gets shit on for it.

 

Makes no sense to me.

 

Ive put 60 hours into borderlands 3 on the epic launcher and tbh i cannot tell that im using the epic launcher instead of steam.

 

 

[mamamia88]

I don't really have any grudges per SE but, I am sick of new technology being pushed out while throwing out the baby with the bathwater of old tech like how apple removed the headphone jack and fingerprint reader and everyone followed suit. 

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, RonnieOP said:

Im confused why this issue only gets held against Epic.

Because 1) some people have an unwarranted attachment to Valve, 2) people don't like change and 3) people only care about systemic issues with distribution deals and copyright law when they directly inconvenience them. The only solution is to force publishers to offer the same exact distribution deal to anyone who will take it, as long as that is not the case then Epic will be doing nothing more egregious than Steam or Origin or whatever.

[Anomnomnomaly]

3 minutes ago, mamamia88 said:

I don't really have any grudges per SE but, I am sick of new technology being pushed out while throwing out the baby with the bathwater of old tech like how apple removed the headphone jack and fingerprint reader and everyone followed suit. 

Ah yes... upgrades for the sake of upgrades simply to push out a 'new' product that's the same as the old 2019 product... but this year we put 2020 on the box.

[mamamia88]

On 1/9/2020 at 1:57 PM, Anomnomnomaly said:

Jobs was a genius... at marketing... a liar and a thief for almost everything else an unbelieveable narcissict and one of the most unpleasant people to work for apparantly. Apple haven't 'invented' anything that they currently get lauded for... First mp3 player... the iPod... nope... 3yrs earlier... The smart phone... nope... iPad... nope... airbuds... nope... laptops.... nope.

 

if anyone can think of anything they have actually invented, and been the first to market with over the last 20yrs... Please let me know and don;t forget to provide source for the claim.  I do enjoy being proven wrong. 

Sounds about right. Even their current computing lineup is based off a unix based os they just bought and ported to their hardware. They didn't invent anything they put a shiny case on it and made it so even the stupidest person on the planet could figure it out.  Well maybe not stupidest 

[redbread123]

ubisoft: fix siege

ea: lootboxes nuff said

apple: stop making me have to have an apple account for every little stupid product you charge for and their overall essence

amd: fix your fucking drivers would of gotten a 5700 xt but nvidia drivers are better

intel: bruh moment what happened bro

amd: um i hate the color red?

spotify: let me not have to play shuffle if i dont pay

corsair: why are your rgb fans 30$... 

samsung: stop blowing up lol

discord: stop having outages

google/youtube: pay your creators stop sucking advertisers dicks

asus: get better support

dell: stop hiring indian tech support to help

alienware: stop putting 3 little dainty heat pipes for a laptop with an i7 and a high end gpu/cpu

asus again: stop having backlight bleed everywhere/ better qc

asrock: stop having shitty products like gpu and mobo

some of these are controversial reasons but imo and experience this is what i hate most

[Anomnomnomaly]

Just now, Sauron said:

Because 1) some people have an unwarranted attachment to Valve, 2) people don't like change and 3) people only care about systemic issues with distribution deals and copyright law when they directly inconvenience them. The only solution is to force publishers to offer the same exact distribution deal to anyone who will take it, as long as that is not the case then Epic will be doing nothing more egregious than Steam or Origin or whatever.

Actually, it's because I don't like walled gardens. If you want X you must have Y and only Y is allowed to supply it.

 

We used to have that problem in general retail here in the UK... Companies charging much higher prices for exactly the same product... and then trying to take legal action against other companies who dared to buy them cheaper and import them into this country, to sell them at a better price.

 

Levi's did this about 20yrs ago...tried to sue the supermarket Tesco for importing their products at a lower price and block the sale/import of them altogether... they lost.

 

Thankfully as online retailers grew bigger... this problem has all but gone away now... The downside is that the typical high street stores are dying as people do so much online now.

 

I was in a store a few weeks ago, I was looking to buy something. I knew what I wanted... couldn't get anyone to help me... so whilst I was looking at them I was on my phone and found the same item cheaper. When a store drone finally came over and showed me the product (it wasn't charged, so needed to be plugged in so I could check it out)... I asked about price matching another big name store 2 miles up the road and he informed me they don't price match online deals. Whilst he went into his sales pitch... I let him finish, looked up and said... oh, I've just ordered it from them and it'll be ready for collection by the time I get there.

 

That's one reason why stores are going out of business... because they refuse to adapt. if they'd have matched the price (only £20 difference) I'd have bought it.

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

Actually, it's because I don't like walled gardens. If you want X you must have Y and only Y is allowed to supply it.

Sounds exactly like the majority of Steam games, which are on Steam and only on Steam. Oh, and what about modern EA or Ubisoft games which are only available on their respective stores? Why do people suddenly and exclusively care when it's Epic doing it?

2 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

Levi's did this about 20yrs ago...tried to sue the supermarket Tesco for importing their products at a lower price and block the sale/import of them altogether... they lost.

Levi's didn't have a legal right nor the practical means to stop them, videogame publishers do because copyright law is just stupid like that. Again, if you think this is wrong then you must support a legal ban on DRM, otherwise your position is inconsistent.

[Anomnomnomaly]

9 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Sounds exactly like the majority of Steam games, which are on Steam and only on Steam. Oh, and what about modern EA or Ubisoft games which are only available on their respective stores? Why do people suddenly and exclusively care when it's Epic doing it?

Levi's didn't have a legal right nor the practical means to stop them, videogame publishers do because copyright law is just stupid like that. Again, if you think this is wrong then you must support a legal ban on DRM, otherwise your position is inconsistent.

You can quite happily buy Ubisoft games on other platforms... I own several that I bought through steam and others through Uplay... EA 'tried' to force everyone onto their origin platform only... But have since back peddaled and you can buy their stuff elsewhere once more. Granted you still 'need' uplay installed and so forth... But they're still for sale on other platforms.

 

I can buy games that are on steam... and also on say GOG... so where exactly is this 'walled' garden you say everything Steam/EA?Ubisoft has?    I'm not saying that they're innocent... far from it... and exclusives are bad in general... So let's all agree that Rockstar are c**ts for their exclusives with GTA or RDR and so forth...

 

I would actually support a ban on any DRM that makes life harder for the paying customer than it does those that download it DRM free... It's one of the reason I love GOG and if there's a choice of buying games there or anywhere else... GOG wins every time. Guess where I'll be buying Cyberpunk in a few months.    I'd personally like to see all DRM eradicated and the world move to more open and secure systems.

 

 

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

You can quite happily buy Ubisoft games on other platforms... I own several that I bought through steam and others through Uplay... EA 'tried' to force everyone onto their origin platform only... But have since back peddaled and you can buy their stuff elsewhere once more. Granted you still 'need' uplay installed and so forth... But they're still for sale on other platforms.

That makes literally no difference - you need X to have Y, exactly as you said. You need Uplay, you need Origin. You know Valve could just sell EGS keys on Steam if they wanted to, right? It's no different.

5 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

I can buy games that are on steam... and also on say GOG... so where exactly is this 'walled' garden you say everything Steam/EA?Ubisoft has?    I'm not saying that they're innocent... far from it... and exclusives are bad in general... So let's all agree that Rockstar are c**ts for their exclusives with GTA or RDR and so forth...

That argument would work if all or even just most Steam games were available on GOG or other platforms that aren't directly controlled by those games' publishers, which is not even close to being the case. Moreover most of Epic's exclusivity deals have a limited duration and even when Steam games are available elsewhere they often take some time to be released there - for instance I'm waiting for The Surge 2 to release on GOG even though it's been out for months on Steam.

10 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

I would actually support a ban on any DRM that makes life harder for the paying customer

That literally includes all DRM. No exception.

11 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

I'd personally like to see all DRM eradicated and the world move to more open and secure systems.

Then I'm glad we agree. But by this logic you should also be blasting every other store for implementing DRM, not just Epic.

[Anomnomnomaly]

11 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Then I'm glad we agree. But by this logic you should also be blasting every other store for implementing DRM, not just Epic.

 

Where exactly have I been 'blasting' epic?  i think I've mentioned them once regarding the fact I don't want it on my system... I don't want origin on my system either and I don't like exclusives on any platform... Hardly 'blasting' or singling out only one company.

 

In fact... I was 'blasting' ubisoft for selling me a game, taking my money and then never actually giving me the game and failing to resolve it so that I had to take action to get my money back. I've had to take issue with Steam in the past for selling games that won't run on more modern versions of windows... when the gog versions do and got a refund from Steam after far too long (this was before they implemented their refund policy).

 

Consumer laws vary greatly from country to country... so when a US company defaults to the shitty anti consumer laws they seem to have there on a global basis... I'll take issue with it, because we do actually have some pretty good ones here.

 

and on that note... off to bed, as I've got an early start tomorrow.

[Sauron]

6 minutes ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

 

Where exactly have I been 'blasting' epic?  i think I've mentioned them once regarding the fact I don't want it on my system... I don't want origin on my system either and I don't like exclusives on any platform... Hardly 'blasting' or singling out only one company.

Well then why did you answer my post where I was criticizing people for letting Steam and others get away with the same thing as Epic?

[Curious Pineapple]

1 hour ago, RonnieOP said:

What UK law would be in play when you purchase the wrong version? Thats not really tbe companies fault so not sure why a law would be passed to demand the seller to fix a customers mistake. But im not in the UK.

We have the right to return any product within 14 days for any reason, for the most part our laws tend to protect the public over corporations

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Monoprice.com has just moved up high on my Specialized High Intensity Training List. They sent me an email Tuesday saying they were going to ship that day and gave me a USPS tracking number. They ship from Rancho Cuamonga. USPS tracking never had an entry until early this morning In the town in AZ I live in (suggesting they used a secondary carrier but couldn't be bothered to tell me who and provide a tracking number for them. It was accepted (which means it was received in a large lot of other packages but no individually scanned yet) and it still hasn't been received (scanned). I've emailed Monoprice numerous times but, despite promises to respond within one business days, the lying bastards haven't responded yet. All this for two lousy, 6" USB cables. 

[solarflare]

Ubisoft - love hate there - i refused to buy their FPS games for ever because every time i did even if it was super popular , lack of support and lack of anti-cheat support would kill the game off quickly. (GRAW - Graw 2 for example). but then look at siege.

 

For me EA is more disappointing than hate. 

 

I hate activision for what they turned blizzard into. 

 

I sort of hate THQ for buying IP's like Novalogic and not doing anything with their lineup that's bitter for me its not just them though EA and Activision have also both done these things. . 

 

Hardware.. hmm not really you get duds and winners. 

[straight_stewie]

CastAR. Enough said.

[Kisai]

14 hours ago, Sauron said:

Because 1) some people have an unwarranted attachment to Valve, 2) people don't like change and 3) people only care about systemic issues with distribution deals and copyright law when they directly inconvenience them. The only solution is to force publishers to offer the same exact distribution deal to anyone who will take it, as long as that is not the case then Epic will be doing nothing more egregious than Steam or Origin or whatever.

It's the same problem with trying to compete with Netflix.

 

Netflix and Valve were not the first company to do what they did, but they were the first ones that were essentially open to anyone who wanted to follow some basic rules (as opposed to youtube where absolutely no vetting is done.) As we've learned with open source software, sometimes it's not the product that you need to sell, but the support.

 

So in Canada, we had Shomi and Crave that popped out of the either to offer the exact same stuff that was on Hulu in the US, and Shomi quickly vanished. Crave is still stumbling about since Hulu still isn't available in Canada. But what you're not realizing is that these apps actually resulted in the gutting of your existing VOD service, which in Canada, resulted in both Telus and Shaw stripping their VOD service down to nothing, since both Telus and Shaw do not own content. If you want it, you have to go to Crave. Or do without. 

 

So Netflix is basically better than Crave for the primary reason of it not being owned by Bell (which owns Crave.)

 

Valve does not compete with GoG, Valve competes with Origin and Ubisoft's in-house stores that nobody else gave a a care about. The only company that wasn't foolish enough to make their own app for this nonsense was SquareEnix. If you buy a game from their store, you download it from the store. With that said, it's also a huge pain in the ass to buy directly from SquareEnix.

 

That is why Steam has been successful, because dealing with every companies store is a pain in the ass. Sure competition is great, but it's only great when there are no exclusives and everyone is selling the EXACT same product. When the products are different and there are exclusives on one service that the other doesn't have, then you're just being forced to buy-in to multiple services, and for some people installing one bloated always-on sloppy app is enough, why would they want to install another?

 

Like as much as I pooh-pooh Stadia, it does technically solve the "many storefront" problem, but it's not a problem that needed solving THAT way. Xbox and Playstation have their own stores that operate exactly the same way Valve does. Microsoft and Apple have their own stores, and Microsoft kinda realized that they built the barn to house the horses after the horses have already run off and won championships for Valve, at least on the PC. Apple on the other hand is in a slightly better position since they don't permit third party stores on the iOS platforms, so there is incentive to use Apple's store, and once you have dev's using their store, it's not as much of a leap to compile the game for MacOS X native. However geting a PC/Console game on Mac is still basically not a thing.

 

The market can tolerate two options, but no more. The end result of there being a half dozen different "app" stores on the PC is that people will just not want to deal with one, and no exclusive game is going to change their mind.

[Sauron]

12 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The market can tolerate two options, but no more. The end result of there being a half dozen different "app" stores on the PC is that people will just not want to deal with one, and no exclusive game is going to change their mind.

The solution is simple - ban DRM so every store can carry every product. All of these problems would just go away.