Thread by @dsmart

I have to admit, when it comes to this industry's many shenanigans, I love that I am still around to see that I continue to be right about certain things. In 2009, I wrote an article on @gamasutra about where @steam_games was headed.

gamasutra.com/blogs/DerekSma…

@draginol (in the comments) and I go way - way - back (all the way to Usenet and my OS/2 days in fact). As peers & devs of sci-fi games, over the years we've argued & disagreed about so many things. And this was just one of many.

Steam went on to dominate the ESD landscape - just as I had predicted.

And everyone either fell in line, or fell by the wayside.

Today, except for Activition, EA, Ubisoft, most ESD portals sell games with Steam keys.

Even the once mighty GameStop which bought Impulse from Stardock, didn't know what to do with it in order to survive the Steam onslaught. That one crashed and burned in short order.

I remember two articles I did in CGW in which I said that ESD was going to be the wave of the future; and that the endcap marketing extortion by box stores like Walmart, Best Buy, CompUSA etc would ultimately die in the face of ESD.

Then it did. Then even consoles jumped in.