Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that’s how enshittification happens. It’s little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.
Ok, maybe my definition of enshittification is off then. I thought it was when some company offers some product/service for a certain price (or free), then gradually removes features from that product/service while increasing the price. Am I off?
If that definition is right, I don’t understand how the steam marketplace, a completely optional (borderline tangential) part of the steam platform, qualifies as enshittification.
And I’m not trying to defend the steam marketplace, I think it’s stupid and terrible and at minimum needs age restrictions. But like, you can absolutely just not use it and your experience using the steam platform is totally unaffected.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 5 weeks ago
That’s one way it happens, but on general the term appears to be about decline in quality for the purposes of profit-seeking, regardless of whether services were offered for free or not.
The wiki article starts with this:
Other articles I looked at seem to agree with this basic concept.
And like I said, spam from scammers and inbox spam are examples of shittiness that seep in regardless of if you engage or not. There is no “no marketplace plz” option, and even if there were scammers can still send you friend request spam.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Eh, maybe I’m being pedantic, but I still don’t really see how the addition of the steam marketplace is an example of the steam platform declining in quality. It was a feature that they added a long time ago, and it doesn’t interfere with or worsen the experience of buying, organizing, or playing my video games. Sure it’s a needless addition (in our opinions), but one that I can easily ignore because it’s so isolated from the main product. Plenty of other products and services out there have features that some don’t like or don’t use, but that isn’t the same thing as enshittification. And I feel like the spam would happen regardless of if the marketplace was there or not. That feels more like a moderation problem, not an enshittification problem.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 5 weeks ago
Sure, if you ignore the worst parts of it that I explicitly laid out and only focus on how it makes you feel personally, then I can see how you might feel that way.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I’m not ignoring anything, I just don’t agree that the steam marketplace, and all the stuff you’re talking about related to the steam marketplace, fits either of our definitions of enshittification.