Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that's how enshittification happens. It's little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.

Ok, maybe my definition of enshittification is off then. I thought it was when some company offers some product/service for a certain price (or free), then gradually removes features from that product/service while increasing the price. Am I off?

If that definition is right, I don't understand how the steam marketplace, a completely optional (borderline tangential) part of the steam platform, qualifies as enshittification.

And I'm not trying to defend the steam marketplace, I think it's stupid and terrible and at minimum needs age restrictions. But like, you can absolutely just not use it and your experience using the steam platform is totally unaffected.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

That's one way it happens, but in general the term appears to be about decline in quality for the purposes of profit-seeking, regardless of whether services were offered for free or not.

The wiki article starts with this:

Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is the term used to describe the pattern in which online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.

Other articles I looked at seem to agree with this basic concept.

And like I said, spam from scammers and inbox spam are examples of shittiness that seep in regardless of if you engage or not. There is no "no marketplace plz" option, and even if there were scammers can still send you friend request spam.