Enshittification spares no one.
Happens when you don't have competition. (Except to steam seemingly)
The difference is that Valve is privately owned. They don't have to please a board of shareholders who want to see the platform milked for the slightest increase in profit margins.
Bingo. Enshittification is mostly confined to companies that have gone public or whose sole aspiration is to do so quickly.
It shifts responsibility from satisfying customers/users to satisfying shareholders (who are never satisfied).
You can build the perfect product and ride a gravy train as a private company in relative perpetuity. As a corporation, you're just going to strive for perpetually increasing profits on a quarterly basis with no real care or focus past that
We need more companies like that, then.
For that you need passionate people who are wealthy and not primarily driven to acquire more wealth. That seems to be very rare in large scale businesses.
It isn't wealth that breaks or makes it. The system, and in this case the shareholding system makes it or breaks it. Valve owner Gabe is insanely rich (in the billions I assume) yet, because the system he put up, it is consumer friendly.
The system is the one, not the people.
Steam has some competition, its just that said competition never took off because Steam is so much better.
(Except to steam seemingly)
For now. I'm curious what'll happen when Gabe eventually retires.
We also can't ignore the fact that the Steam Marketplace is a hellhole and the origin of a lot of today's microtransaction hell.
If you buy all your games on one platform then you're thoroughly fucked if it turns heel.
A single row of ads would be ok, but having this many plus an ad showing up first, where the search results should be... Oof
Just leaving this here: Aurora Store
Aside of the lack of ads, I now depend on Aurora Store for batch app updates because the cocksuckers at Google Play have allowed devs to force app version updates even when you have disabled automatic updates for that specific app.
Thanks to Lemmy, my phone went full FOSS. Always go full FOSS.
It's great that you can't unlock the bootloader to install graphene on carrier bought devices 👍
In Canada, carriers are required to only sell unlocked phones for the past several years.
One word: F-Droid! I'm literally only searching there for Apps first, often I find it. Send them some love, if you can afford it! Wouldn't know how to watch YouTube anymore without New Pipe and stuff, listening to music via ViMusic, all ad-free. https://f-droid.org/en/
laughs in F-Droid
I am so glad F-Droid exists. For the apps I need that aren't there (Steam and Blizzard authenticator for 2FA) Aurora has been a godsend
Luckily I only have F-Droid on mine.
What, no love for the Ad Store?
This ad has features you may not like
it got worse and worse over the last 1-2 years. this days you can't even open an app description page on desktop anymore. you search for the name...and you can't click on the app listing. it just gives you the option to install on your phone but not to read the store page. you only get to it by searching on Google for it. and the mobile app is like you said shit too. often you can't even find an app and get random ads for other shitty apps.
I mean, it’s Google. What did you expect? Android is free because having it on a ton of cheap phones helps Google collect data and sell ads.
Side-rant:
Apple’s got plenty of problems and anti-consumer behavior, too, don’t get me wrong… but it’s incredible how far they’re able to enforce privacy, down to the hardware level, while still giving devs almost the same level of control over OS features as Android.
Like, look at how ARKit does point cloud sharing vs ARCore. iOS limits sharing scanned AR environments to peer-to-peer local connections, and it’s a totally opaque object. Android meanwhile uploads your scanned room to a Google server, and the privacy terms for that data are the same as the ones for Youtube, search, maps, etc.
It drives me crazy how many FOSS nerds will rail against Facebook’s data collection and chokepoint capitalism, but then go on to praise Android for standing up to that no-good Apple. They hear “I can sideload apps” and they drop all of their recent cynicism about why they’re getting nifty stuff at a hefty discount.
I mean, FOSS nerds run android de-googled (or more specifically never install google services on a custom ROM).
Wait, what? A shitty Google product? Plagued by ads and spyware? No way!
As others have pointed out here, use Aurora Store or F-Droid.
I've lost all of my faith in mobile gaming ecosystem ever since I saw that talk of the two guys that created a bot for generating and uploading as many slot machine games to the playstore as possible, just generic pull a lever, see an ad and that's it, based on a random keyword like "owl slot machine" or "bathtub sloth machine" with pictures pulled from google images, that let the bot run for a few months and then found out that they made literally thousands of dollars of ad money.
I like how like 10 years ago everyone went crazy about the apps. It seemed like you could have an app for everything, and everyone was enthusiastic about it. Nowadays I only open Play Store when I am in the need of specific utility, or to buy some classic RPG/other game ported to Android.
Most of the stuff in the store is just unusable shit.
And we need a store with actual quality apps (with no micro transactions, and being reviewed by people who care about usability), because certainly Google Play is not a good source for them.
Try out Aurora Store. Just started testing it. Looks and works similar to play store but without adds. You ~~can login with~~ should not use your main google account.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/
/edit/
I'm not exactly sure when it started, but Play Store now has "Limited time events" that further block what I'm actually looking for. I don't give a damn about some gacha/loot box promotion some soulless pay2win app is advertising, I just want to browse for apps I might like.
The Play Store peaked back when it was still called Android Market (which I still reckon is a better name). DAE remember 
?
Just be glad you're on Android and have alternatives to this. Poor Apple users are stuck with whatever Apple decided to do with the app store.
Poor Apple users kinda don’t have to deal with this shit
Can confirm on my own device. Only ad in sight is for two dots itself at the top ... I kept scrolling looking for one and didn't see any.
Ads Hey, I see tou took a screenshot, check out this screenshot tool you might like.
Ads I also noticed you are using Android, have you seen the latest Pixel device? Save $1.31 with this promo code DIARRHEA
Ads One last thing, since your battery is less that 50%, you might like this Ankor battery pack.
Anyway, what's the big deal?
I didn't appreciated the FDroid UX until Google app designers lost their damn minds. Now it makes me feel relief.
We've all seen how movies depicted the future. Full of advertisement, even in kids show like Walle
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