unbelievably ignorant or dishonest.

Embrace, extend, extinguish. But I guess since Valve is doing it and not Microsoft, I’m the one called ignorant or dishonest for calling it what it is. For every minor contribution to Linux they made, they made multiples of regressions to the entirety of the PC platform and games sphere. Keep sweeping everything under the rug to convince yourself your favorite American corpo is the savior - not all the volunteers that made the hard work Valve latched on for free.

The whole reason why SteamOS exists is because Microsoft introduced the Windows store with 8.

Ah yes. People panicked that Microsoft was going to somehow self-mutilate the ecosystem they have built, and Valve decided to opportunistically jump on the bandwagon and sell a “cure” to a non-existent problem, by porting their DRM to Linux, and wooed the world by… forking existing Linux distros with their DRM set to autoboot on big picture, and Wine? Damn, I’m impressed. /s

I really don’t think you understand why people like Valve.

Rather there’s nothing reasonable about liking them in the first place. American corporation paying taxes to the current regime, founded by an ex-Microsoft employee turned billionaire and owner of multiple yachts. Developed its own DRM, then found ways to monetize and enshittify it to make even more off PNGs and chat emojis. Singlehandedly killed used copies for PC games way before it crossed Sony’s mind. A loot box pioneer. Also popularized the toxic F2P model from mobile to the PC world with TF2. Attempted to make paid mods with a hefty cut going to themselves. Didn’t offer refunds for well over a decade until Australia forced them to legally - and yet their refund system remains subpar. I could go on…

gamers getting a real choice on running an operating system of their choosing.

Yes you keep shifting the topic. I’m talking about game ownership and physical copies, here you are talking about operating systems. I can run a fully libre system running GNU/Hurd and play GOG games all I want, it doesn’t change the fact Valve made it so I don’t own my digital PC games any more than Sony wants you to own them - they made it so GOG is unironically a store whose entire selling point is “we let you download offline installers for the few games we sell” which is IMHO dystopian - so why are we still rewarding them? Is it the shinies?

If you don’t remember the shit show that was windows 8

I’ve used windows 8.1 and 8 itself briefly. All applications from previous eras of windows worked. I’ve no idea what you’re on about now.

When Valve does shady shit, we’ll call them out for it

Oh really? You’re not calling them out for the shady shit that I’m literally dangling right in front of you. All I’ve seen you do is credit other people’s work to them and shift the topic away from the fact Sony is copying their homework from them. And you keep doing that.

The loss of physical isn’t the real fight here though, it’s open competition.

The loss of physical is the loss of another venue for ownership, including the ability to resell or give away your copies - something not even GOG lets you do. Oh, and also it’s something Sony themselves made an entire ad around…

I’ll still buy from Valve just to reward them

Then you don’t care about the Sony dropping physical media thing, since you’re willing to give Valve a free pass despite literally paving the road Sony is going down on.

I’d expect people boycotting Sony over their decision to be better informed than that, and stay clear of Valve’s dystopia, right? Right?

EDIT: also since you said consoles are locked down to 1 store yourself, I want you to make a guess how many PlayStation users are going to figure out that they can go buy their stuff from GOG on hardware literally branded after Steam, where as I established, its subscribers don’t give a shit about other stores, much less GOG.

You’re expecting the average Sony fan to know about GOG? That’s kinda cute. Steam subscribers don’t care about GOG, if they even know about its existence.

But Valve’s hardware still have no physical media, and their digital model is still what’s inspiring Sony. How about being consistent and rewarding neither?

Ah yes the “”“platform”“” that Sony is copying from…