because I like pho

As a vietnamese American, my mom always told me stories about the shitty government. Most citizens in Vietnam know the laws are dumb too but can't protest because the government is too strong now. Just know that EVERYTHING is regulated over there.

The local devs were not trying to get steam banned. Hell they wanted steam but wanted to play by the same rules and pointed out how strict their own laws and requirements were.

Vietnam govt said you're right, it's not fair and banned steam to make sure everyone plays by their rules rather than admit the rules were stupid and draconic.

It's not immediately obvious to me that indie developers in Vietnam won't be able to find an international publisher. While I don't approve of the law, it does strike me as potentially having a positive effect on Vietnamese studios.

Valve has faced criticisms from former employees in the past for its toxic work culture. And Gabe Newell, being the CEO, has a lot of power over that.

Just because the places you frequent on the internet don't shove criticism of Valve down your throat the same way it would do so for, say, Epic Games, doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with Valve as a company. All the pro-Valve/Steam information you get and the general sentiment towards Gabe Newell from people on Lemmy and Reddit are pure, undiluted corporate propaganda. That it comes from Steam users rather than being something Steam directs and pays for doesn't change what it is.

you’re seeing different posts by different people and conflating the two

This ignores the reality that Lemmy is, at least in the part of it consisting of lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, and others, overwhelmingly leftist. This comment also attempts to dismiss the underlying criticism that Lemmy as a whole has a culture that, much like reddit, seeks to pick and choose its targets under capitalism and actively engages in corporate apologia, like in this post, while collectively professing a broad ethos that is outright hypocritical when viewed in the light of that other behavior. And if you think Lemmy is amenable to a diverse array of economic opinions, then maybe you should try posting a "Capitalism Appreciation Thread" on a major lemmy instance and see how that goes over.

I was furious that I had to download steam and install steam to play new vegas on pc at launch (as well as the box I bought from gamestop not having a the game inside but rather just a pamphlet with a cd key) I was later infuriated by New Vegas at launch and the utterly broken state of the game with each week a new but preventing progress or outright crashing game.

But now days I'm reasonable happy with (Steam) it, it's not a perfect a solution but at least tries to uphold the gamer/consumer experience, unlike shotboxes like origin or epic games which were nonstop ads and snooping through your files outside the directory.