I also don’t want to have a dozen different crappy launchers from different companies to deal with. There are a lot of benefits to the user to having everything centralized in one place.
I wonder if there’s a future where every game marketplace uses open standards/APIs that 3rd-party launchers (like Heroic) can consume for downloading games, checking DRM status, tracking achievements, friends, and so on. DRM is probably the hardest part of that, though maybe there could be closed-source blobs downloadable to enable a store’s DRM. It’s obviously not in the interest of companies solely focused on profit and dark patterns, but I wonder if Steam would ever consider using its weight to do it anyway.






It’s worth mentioning that this sort of thinking gets really close to “there are good ones and bad ones” in some people’s minds. IMO there’s a lot of representation for the “non-normal” queers because they are the most vulnerable and because it needs to be clear that it’s a package deal. People don’t get to draw the line in places like “gays are okay but trans people are icky”, and unofficially supporting mindsets like that would legitimize disgust-based morality.
People need to learn the lesson that others inherently deserve rights and respect regardless of their own personal feelings, otherwise we’re just going to be fighting this battle over and over again for each minority group.