I’ve been a little down on Fandom Entertainment and their videos since they killed off Honest Trailers Commentary.  Yes, it was a pretty niche part of their lineup, but I enjoyed Spencer, Lon, and Danielle… and Dan and Joe back when they were on the team… going in depth on the video of the week.

But Fandom has always been a bit shaky and I don’t know where anybody who was on that show is now.

Likewise, Honest Game Trailers, a bit of a red headed stepchild in the grand scheme of things, also seemed in the midst of some disruption starting about the time commentaries were cancelled, going from a once a week venture to more of a once in whenever affair.

There was a time when you would get the Honest Game Trailer and the Zero Punctuation for the same game almost every week.  And while you still get Yahtzee weekly over at Second Wind, where the videos are now under the Fully Ramblomatic brand, Honest Game Trailers… not so much.

I still subscribe to their channel and still watch it when something comes up… but there are often long gaps between entries.  So I was pretty happy to see something pop up this past week, and on the ripe topic of Steam.

Honest Game Trailers – Steam

The video, below, dives right in and get to the essential story of Steam.

And that story is, basically, that digital distribution of video games sucked back when they wanted to do it with Half-Life 2 and the Orange Box so they rolled their own service.

Then, when other companies saw how Valve had succeeded with Steam, they attempted to jump on board and… pretty much sucked.  I have summed up the history of digital distribution for PC games in this borrowed meme.

The stages of PC digital distribution

There are a lot of things to annoy people around Steam, not the least of which is the fact that so many feel that one cannot seceed on the PC without being on Steam, leading to 21,237 title being released on the platform in 2025… and we’re on track to pass that for 2026.

The video also hits on some of the tropes of Steam, like sales and unplayed backlogs, as well as a quick dive into the various Valve hardware products.

Then it brings up the fact that Steam broke the seal and let loose early access on us, a divisive topic on its own.  There ought to be a whole Honest Game Trailers around early access.  It is something that can be done well, but which often feels like an attempt to fleece the marks with a title that will never be done.

Then it wraps up with the inevitable future, that all of this depends on the good graces of Gabe Newell and, when he eventually passes, there is a high probability that there will be a cash out by whoever the company passes to, which will likely involve taking the whole thing public and putting it on the enshittification, cash extraction, line-must-go-up treadmill that has made everything else suck here in 2026.

I might be too old to care about Steam at that point, but somebody is going to get screwed when that comes to pass.