ZERO excuse for geolocking to ever exist. we have technology beyond our wildest dreams to freely and instantly share content anywhere in the world and fucking corporate hogs can’t let a single good thing exist.
I haven’t read full document but I’m Polish and remember that back in the day when buying some games off Steam you’ve got some kind of eastern European version that was separate from global one.
Other than DLC being incompatible, the biggest pain in the ass was that the language selection was very limited, commonly just Polish, Lithuanian and Russian (which nobody speaks here). If you weren’t fan of localization or wanted to play game in the English or original language you were out of luck.
I guess. But that doesn’t matter, it’s against a prime EU principle - free trade inside the EU. They can offer their products cheaper in those countries but they can’t tell other EU members not to buy there.
I actually got in contact with zenimax about that issue 10 years ago and after some back and forth they just forwarded me to their legal team. And I sure made a complaint with the EU about it. I’m sure there were lots of complaints about that issue but I feel somewhat validated right now.
Yes, it is a w. As I mentioned, they are free to sell their products at a lower price in certain countries but they can’t tell someone from Italy that they can’t buy their product in Hungary. I honestly can’t understand someone who defends this practice.
So someone from California can’t buy products in Mississippi, that’s just fair - or it’s ok just because it’s via the internet?
I think the point he’s making is now poorer countries will not get the benefit of regional pricing, they’ll have to pay full price, because there’s no way to prevent Italians from purchasing at Hungary’s reduced regional price.
Long and short, everybody will get the same high price from here on out.
No that’s exactly the same thing. They can offer the game for a discounted price in some EU countries, nobody said they can’t. What they don’t can is tell other EU citizens that they are not able to buy the product in those EU countries. I don’t know why you can’t understand this simple fact.
No it’s not. Telling someone from California that they can’t buy products in Mississippi is WAY different than telling them they are offered a different price in the two states. They are not told that they can’t buy it. Your analogy does not translate to the situation.
What they don’t can [can’t do] is tell other EU citizens that they are not able to buy the product in those EU countries.
That’s not what they’re told though. They are told “yes, you can buy our product.”
I don’t know why you can’t understand this simple fact.
What you’re saying doesn’t make sense. You’re telling me you don’t have a problem with regional pricing (within the EU) on digital goods, but you’re stating that companies must offer that same ‘regional’ pricing to everyone (within the EU)… that’s no longer regional pricing, it’s all just one price then. These two lines of thought completely contradict each other. How can you have regional pricing if you want everyone from every region to be offered the same price?
Do you really think that companies who offer discounts on digital goods to buyers in poorer regions are being nefarious? If the companies are not able to regionally price the games, then they cannot offer a discount to the poorer regions, and all that happens is everyone in the poorer regions ends up paying more.
At this point I just lost hope to make you understand. One last chance: Italian man wants to buy Skyrim in Hungary and he is told he can’t. That, under EU law is not allowed. That is geoblocking. That is against free trade in the EU. This is exactly the same as if you would tell Californian man he can’t buy Skyrim in Mississippi.
You don’t want to understand, am I right? I don’t get you.
You don’t want to understand, am I right? I don’t get you.
No, I understand. You are fine with regional pricing as long as there’s absolutely no way to enforce regional pricing. Which, when talking about a purely digital storefront, means there will be no more regional pricing.
This has already started happening in some regard. Recently, many games on Steam have already had their regional pricing removed, to the ire of gamers in poorer regions.
Timed exclusives suck. Thank goodness Valve don’t attempt that nonsense. I’d love to see Epic sales figures on how popular TH1+2 actually was and whether the exclusivity was worth it.
Who’d have thought that they have eyes and can do basic math?
Valve is a money printing machine with a ludicrously devoted client base, it’s a no brainer to want to buy it, but it’s not publicly traded so good fucking luck LMAO.
Hey @DeeBeeDouble remember the Steam issue you helped me with some time ago? I just felt I’ll let you know 🙂
Here’s fun little update on this …
No relevant software was changed, but with the latest system update the Steam Flatpak runs all the udpates as it did before, but now this is logged (all the update and initial installation/setup stuff was done at this point):
<span style="color:#323232;">INFO:root:https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam/wiki
</span><span style="color:#323232;">INFO:root:Will set XDG dirs prefix to /home/dirk/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam
</span><span style="color:#323232;">DEBUG:root:Checking input devices permissions
</span><span style="color:#323232;">WARNING:root:Missing permissions for input devices
</span><span style="color:#323232;">INFO:root:Overriding TZ to Europe/Berlin
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steam.sh[2]: Running Steam on org.freedesktop.platform 23.08 64-bit
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steam.sh[2]: STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
</span><span style="color:#323232;">setup.sh[74]: Steam runtime environment up-to-date!
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steam.sh[2]: Steam client's requirements are satisfied
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:54:27] Startup - updater built Sep 11 2023 20:48:54
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:54:27] Startup - Steam Client launched with: '/home/dirk/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam' '-no-cef-sandbox'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">09/22 21:54:27 Init: Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1694466342)/tid(137)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:54:27] Loading cached metrics from disk (/home/dirk/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/package/steam_client_metrics.bin)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:54:27] Using the following download hosts for Public, Realm steamglobal
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:54:27] 1. https://client-update.akamai.steamstatic.com, /, Realm 'steamglobal', weight was 1000, source = 'update_hosts_cached.vdf'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:54:27] 2. https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com, /client/, Realm 'steamglobal', weight was 1, source = 'update_hosts_cached.vdf'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:54:27] 3. https://cdn.steamstatic.com, /client/, Realm 'steamglobal', weight was 1, source = 'baked in'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:54:27] Verifying installation...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:54:27] Verification complete
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam logging initialized: directory: /home/dirk/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/logs
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">XRRGetOutputInfo Workaround: initialized with override: 0 real: 0xf044a8f0
</span><span style="color:#323232;">XRRGetCrtcInfo Workaround: initialized with override: 0 real: 0xf04491c0
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steamwebhelper.sh[143]: Runtime for steamwebhelper: defaulting to /home/dirk/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steam-runtime-heavy
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steamwebhelper.sh[143]: Running under Flatpak, disabling sandbox
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steamwebhelper.sh[143]: CEF sandbox already disabled
</span><span style="color:#323232;">CAppInfoCacheReadFromDiskThread took 35 milliseconds to initialize
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: starting steam-runtime-launcher-service
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: steam-runtime-launcher-service is running pid 222
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steam-runtime-launcher-service[222]: E: Unable to acquire bus name "com.steampowered.PressureVessel.LaunchAlongsideSteam"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: steam-runtime-launcher-service pid 222 exited
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: starting steam-runtime-launcher-service
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: steam-runtime-launcher-service is running pid 250
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steam-runtime-launcher-service[250]: E: Unable to acquire bus name "com.steampowered.PressureVessel.LaunchAlongsideSteam"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: steam-runtime-launcher-service pid 250 exited
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: starting steam-runtime-launcher-service
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: steam-runtime-launcher-service is running pid 259
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steam-runtime-launcher-service[259]: E: Unable to acquire bus name "com.steampowered.PressureVessel.LaunchAlongsideSteam"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: steam-runtime-launcher-service pid 259 exited
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Steam Runtime Launch Service: steam-runtime-launcher-service keeps crashing on startup, disabling
</span><span style="color:#323232;">src/steamUI/steamuisharedjscontroller.cpp (543) : Failed creating offscreen shared JS context
</span><span style="color:#323232;">src/steamUI/steamuisharedjscontroller.cpp (543) : Failed creating offscreen shared JS context
</span><span style="color:#323232;">09/22 21:55:16 Init: Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1694466342)/tid(137)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">assert_20230922215516_28.dmp[266]: Uploading dump (out-of-process)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">/tmp/dumps/assert_20230922215516_28.dmp
</span><span style="color:#323232;">assert_20230922215516_28.dmp[266]: Finished uploading minidump (out-of-process): success = yes
</span><span style="color:#323232;">assert_20230922215516_28.dmp[266]: response: CrashID=bp-0f81ef33-d093-4fd1-b98c-8bd202230922
</span><span style="color:#323232;">assert_20230922215516_28.dmp[266]: file ''/tmp/dumps/assert_20230922215516_28.dmp'', upload yes: ''CrashID=bp-0f81ef33-d093-4fd1-b98c-8bd202230922''
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steamwebhelper.sh[278]: Runtime for steamwebhelper: defaulting to /home/dirk/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steam-runtime-heavy
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steamwebhelper.sh[278]: Running under Flatpak, disabling sandbox
</span><span style="color:#323232;">steamwebhelper.sh[278]: CEF sandbox already disabled
</span>
During this log output this message pops up at some point:
But no matter what I select except Restart steamwebhelper the Flatpak quits and nothing more happens. When Restart steamwebhelper is selected sometimes the steam UI shows up but I cannot select anything from any dropdowns and cannot change most of the settings sliders. But most of the time this is logged and nothing happens:
<span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:56:53] Background update loop checking for update. . .
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:56:53] Checking for available updates...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:56:53] Downloading manifest: https://client-update.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam_client_ubuntu12?t=3700310497
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:56:53] Manifest download: send request
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:56:53] Manifest download: waiting for download to finish
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:56:54] Manifest download: finished
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:56:54] Download skipped: /steam_client_ubuntu12?t=3700310497 version 1694466342, installed version 1694466342, existing pending version 0
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[2023-09-22 21:56:54] Nothing to do
</span>
So we’re a bit further with this now. I now get an error message most of the time and occasionally can see the steam UI with partial access 🤣
So, who knows … maybe 2-3 more months and I can use Steam again like before …
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