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mlg ,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

Aside from valve probably having a hit by bus plan, I’m pretty sure ownership of valve is actually split pretty evenly so it will likely fall to another senior dev who understands what to do.

FreddyDunningKruger ,

I’ve heard they’ve hidden three immeasurably invaluable CS:Go Knife skins throughout the platform, and the first person to find all three will unlock Half-Life 3 and annoint the winner as Gaben 2, God Emperor of Valve and owner of Steam. Also, they get a chocolate factory.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Oompa loompa, doompadee doo, We’ve got a perfect riddle for you, Oompa loompa, doompadee dee, If you are wise, you’ll listen to me.

Three precious knives, in Counter-Strike they hide, Find them all to claim your prize worldwide, The first to collect, in triumph shall stand, To unlock Half-Life 3, the game so grand.

Oompa loompa, doompadee doo, Follow the clues and you’ll be through, Oompa loompa, doompadee dee, Just one more knife, and then you’ll see.

A crown awaits, a throne so high, Steam’s vast empire, you’ll rule the sky, With Half-Life 3, your reign begins, All hail the gamer who truly wins.

Oompa loompa, doompadee doo, The ultimate prize belongs to you, Oompa loompa, doompadee dee, Gaben 2, you shall always be.

aalvare2 ,

I hope it pleases you to know I sang this entire song to myself

KillingTimeItself ,

gaben is a smart man, i doubt that he isn’t aware of his own mortality, and presumably has someone who he trusts, that he will appoint the position.

nomous ,

It would be beautiful if he just handed the keys over to a true believer when it’s time. Just a quality, stand up person who already has a pocket full of cash and just wants to help gamers get games and indie devs distribute them without squeezing every drop of profit they can at every step.

edit: it’d be even beautifuler if he turned it over to a trust managed by a panel of elected employee representatives

KillingTimeItself ,

i feel like there have to be at least three, from his (family? Does he have one? I believe he does, but can’t be bothered to check)

to someone in the company, perhaps there are numerous positions that exist solely to prevent this kind of hostile takeover from happening? Who knows!

Etterra ,

Making the company employee owned would be ideal.

Nindelofocho ,

Why not customer led like a co-op?

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place avatar

So did Lenin, and look how that turned out.

KillingTimeItself ,

stalin lasted quite a bit, he was also insane, but it was really post stalin that shit kinda went fucky.

Honytawk ,

Many won’t like it, but this is the reason we need competition like Epic games and GOG.

The steam fanboys certainly aren’t going to make this problem any better.

FartsWithAnAccent ,
@FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io avatar

I like Steam and I think GOG is great too

Jarix ,

Humble bundle also has a store now fwiw

FartsWithAnAccent ,
@FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io avatar

Cool, I used to buy from them all the time!

Heavybell ,
@Heavybell@lemmy.world avatar

We need competition like GOG. EGS is shit, we need competition better than EGS.

Honytawk ,

Bad competition is still better than no competition, because of the aforementioned issue.

kungen ,

Yeah, but fair competition? EGS paying publishers to have exclusives doesn’t seem like fair competition to me.

sep ,

For sure! There is no real market with exclusives! EGS is the bad apple that may spoil the bunch. Now do steam services also create a pseudo exclusive, yes kinda. But developers do not have to use those, they are just making their life easier. And developers can still do their games on other platforms as well.

Spedwell ,

EGS can’t compete on features for sure (it really is quite a shit platform), but they would be very competitive if their 12% fee (vs. Steams 30% fee) could be passed to buyers as lower prices. As it stands, Valve’s policies essentially strongarms the market to prohibit this (publishers selling on Steam may not have a lower price on a different platform, or the game can be de-listed from Steam). The Wolfire v. Valve case is highly relevent here.

My plea is for you not to get mad at Epic for being shit. We should be accepting of crappy platforms if their fees reflect that (Epic charges 40% what Steam does). Focus your frustration at Valve for preventing the market from fairly allowing you select the quality of the platform you’d like to pay for.

drunkpostdisaster ,

Yeah, how dare we compare steam to poor little epic?

Heavybell ,
@Heavybell@lemmy.world avatar

I’d be a lot more willing to root for epic if they had spent any time at all making EGS preferable. I would prefer steam over their mess even if EGS was 20% cheaper all the time. Tho I go for GOG over either of them whenever possible.

bouh ,

Competition like gog, I’m all for it. But what is epic providing? I fail to see it.

trevor ,

Their own host of anti-competitive practices.

olafurp ,

Categorically wrong since Gaben lost weight.

trolololol ,

I came here to say this but I see my arch nemesis made it firrrrrst

Flies away

SpaceCowboy ,
@SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s inevitable.

But if steam becomes enshittified I’ll move onto something else and use torrent sites to download the older games I care about that I’ve bought on steam. It wouldn’t really be pirating them, since I’ve bought them already.

For now steam is fine, and I appreciate the work they’ve done on supporting Linux, so I’ll keep on using it to buy games.

aberrate_junior_beatnik ,

A billionaire who is 61 is very likely to outlive 75, even if they’re fat.

Blisterexe ,

He actually lost a bunch of weight recently

3volver ,

Gaben’s last dying wish is to make every game work on Linux and donates $1 billion to making it happen.

DmMacniel ,

So Gaben actually IS a dragon.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place avatar

dracarys 🔥🔥🔥

DmMacniel ,

I was thinking about Dunkelzahn and his testament.

thawed_caveman ,

The life expectancy of 75 is an average (of the US population i assume), billionaires are likely to live longer

theonyltruemupf ,

75 years of nation-wide life expectancy is also likely to include early deaths due to accidents, cancer and such. People who die of “old age” typically do later than 75.

driving_crooner ,
@driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br avatar

When people talks about life expectancy 99.99% of the time they mean life expectancy at birth, at every year the life expectancy change. Using this life table someone with 61 years, have a life expectancy of 19.7 years, that means he’s expected to live until he’s 80.

grue ,

Yep, and that was true even going all the way back through history. People weren’t routinely dying in their 30s or whatever before modern medicine; it’s just that a lot more of them were dying in infancy/early childhood and that brought down the average. (That’s the situation anti-vaxxers are trying to go back to, BTW.)

etchinghillside ,

I would say it’s appropriate to loop cancer deaths into the “old age” bucket – DNA getting old and making mistakes replicating seems relevant.

xantoxis ,

Fit billionaires do. What happens to gaben’s heart and arteries are anyone’s guess. He is getting healthier but you can’t undo damage completely.

Rolder ,

Plus Gaben has been doing some serious work on his health recently so the fat part no longer applies.

474D ,

Gaben is not exactly an inspiring portrait of health…

TopRamenBinLaden ,

The latest pictures of him look good, though. The man has definitely lost some weight.

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/c1f48695-91bd-447d-a5d2-1a3d6936f78e.jpeg

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Good news. Unreal Engine 4 is usable on Linux and works pretty well too.
Learn some C++, get some ppl and make good games.

Also, GoG means old games don’t die. (well at least the non DRM ones)

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

GoG does DRM free, and not just old games. Not many new AAA because convincing a big company to sell their game DRM free is hard, but Baldur’s Gate 3 is on there.

Kazumara ,

And of course the ones they (i.e. CD Projekt Red) make themselves. The Witcher series, including Gwent spinoffs, and Cyberpunk 2077

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

Yeah, and lots of new popular indie games. Some recent oneish I’ve got are DREDGE, Rimworld and Stardew Valley. OK not super recent but not all the games are 20 years old or more. Even Skyrim Anniversary is on there.

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Yeah, I recently bought X4, which is so badly implemented (at least on Linux) that it gives the same FPS (in the 30s) on Low settings as it does on Ultra.

I even went ahead and bought a new GPU just for that and hardly see a difference, even being suspicious of there being a miner in it.

Fun game nonetheless.

Lets_Eat_Grandma ,

x series has largely been cpu limited by single main thread as long as it’s existed fwiw

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Wait, so all I had to do was disable my underclock and I would have gotten the same marginal perf gains that I got by upgrading both my CPU and GPU?

Will Egosoft hire me if I offer to refactor their code into something multithread friendly?

Lets_Eat_Grandma ,

I mean if you’re german you could try working for them lol

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

I mean if you’re german you could try working for them lol

That seems to be the main barrier, yeah.

But I checked htop while running the game and it doesn’t seem to be doing all single core stuff as you said. Unless it is that the bottlenecking thread is not even using the available core to the full extent.
I checked it out with both linux and linux-zen kernels.

Usually, when a program is loading on a single thread, you tend to see a single core go to 100% for a few seconds, which then jumps around as the OS switches the core provided to the thread. That was not happening here.
Also, the new GPU is sometimes at ~60-70% while the FPS is dropping to 30. This part was weird.

Lets_Eat_Grandma ,

All I know is what many have said time and time again. There is one main thread that everything else depends on, so no matter how much horsepower you throw at it you are constrained by whatever logic or calculation that one thread is doing.

For all I know it’s a memory bandwidth thing or even a disk access thing pertaining to that one thread which makes everything else wait. They use their own homegrown engine and there’s a bottleneck in the code somewhere, obviously.

I’m kind of surprised they don’t have something that’s more scalable because they built a new engine for X:Rebirth which came out in 2013. Maybe they started the engine rebuild before dual core and quad core cpus were mainstream in the late 2000s.

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Well, when you make a multithreaded application, usually there is one main thread, which controls everything else, timings and all.

The alternativeis to have all threads know how to sync with whichever other thread they need to sync with, whenever they need to. This way tends to be more difficult (and I am yet to think of a use case and application methodology for this method).

Now usually you make sure not to have any blocking function (large calculation or file R/W requiring HDD fetching) on the main thread. Maybe they made some mistakes in this regard in their previous games and did better this time.

From what I see, it seems like they didn’t use the graphics API (seems to be Vulkan) properly enough, for which I can’t do anything, given my lack of exp with it. Perhaps a god time for me to delve into Vulkan.

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

I’m waiting for BG3 to make a Linux thingy. Until then, it’'s on the “maybe” list.

If it’s not native on Linux, it needs to be exceptionally good for me to buy it, considering GoG doesn’t have regional pricing.

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

I’m playing BG3 on Linux on a laptop with integrated graphics, and I haven’t had any issues other than not being able to run it with graphics set to ultra (expected since there’s not graphics card).

ulterno , (edited )
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

How about “Customers in low income countries will pay the same full price for your game.” as a pitch.

Anti Commercial-AI license

TachyonTele ,

Having a hard time understanding what low income, sales price, and AI have to do with Valve.

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar
  1. The license is for the content of the post. Here, I put a separator.
  2. Valve has regional pricing, making some games cost a tenth of the price in some regions. GoG does not, so you pay the US price.
  • e.g. I bought X4 for ~4x the price of Average AAA console games.
  • Though, in case of X4, it seems to have a similar price on Steam, most games tend to be cheaper with regional pricing.

And now I forgot to put a license on this one.

TachyonTele ,

Don’t use the dumb footer link. It doesn’t do anything other than make sure everyone else points and laughs. You’re better than that.

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

What’s the problem with some laughter.

If there’s nothing to laugh at, people usually pick a loner, harass them until they are angry/miserable and then laugh at them.

I’d rather, they laugh at this, which might also throw a wrench in the works of companies trying to get data without sifting through it properly.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Wouldn’t it be even more fun if the AI chatbot got trained on this and started spewing out Anti Commercial-AI license in their results?

TachyonTele ,

which might also throw a wrench in the works of companies trying to get data without sifting through it properly.

Narrator: It has no effect at all.

Danterious ,

Its nice seeing more people using the license.

As a tip when I started doing this I started using a text expander so I didn’t have to copy and paste all the time.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Well, KDE Clipboard seems to make it easy enough for me for now, but perhaps I will set a compose key for it if required.

My main problem tends to be forgetting to add it because I got too emersed in typing the comment.

And it’s kinda useless to add it after the fact, so most of the time, it works because I copy the license first.

CC BY-NC-SA

ILikeBoobies ,

Ue5 as well, not sure why you went back a version

joe_cool ,

Every game that I have seen that runs on UE5 either looks like a vaseline smeared blur or runs like crap.

Do you know one that runs great AND looks great? And I don’t mean in the trailer.

ILikeBoobies ,

I am not sure of the relevance, we are talking about the engine having a linux native version

joe_cool ,

Most engines can build on Linux. Even CryEngine. Maybe OP mentioned UE4 because it runs better than UE5.

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Do you know one that runs great AND looks great

If you make one, then I’ll know one. ;)

verdigris ,

This is wildly not my experience. You can turn off motion blur in the vast majority of games… What’s your hardware?

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

I haven’t tried UE5

Also, they changed their licence midway, so a little unsure about it rn.

ILikeBoobies ,

The change doesn’t apply to games

The film industry previously was completely free, in versions 5.4 and above. It is now $1850 per seat for companies making over a million per year

Templa ,

The fact that people non ironically visit 4chan in 2024 kind of worries me

koavf ,

I have heard for years and years that “the other parts of 4chan” than /b are good, but I’ve never seen it myself.

RabbitMix ,

I used to go on 4chan, on a variety of boards, every day for 10 years (06-16) some boards are better than others, and /b/ is definitely the worst by a lot, but they’re all terrible.

paddirn ,

Well, at least we’ve got global climate change and multiple other threats to the survival of humanity, we won’t have to worry for long.

gibmiser ,

He is a gazzillionare. We better hope he is working on a foundation or something that is legally bulletproof.

Lets_Eat_Grandma ,

Anyone who thinks their steam libraries will be safe forever is delusional.

Eventually a for-profit motivated individual will gain control and they will use all their MBA learnings to maximize subscriptions, per play revenue, per download revenue and overall provide a cheaper platform.

There isn’t an mba on the planet that doesn’t recognize that advertising is highly lucrative and being the company that sells the most pc games means you have metrics no one else has. They’ll instantly monetize advertising and the popups we get when we log in today will turn into mandatory non-skippable ads on the free tier to start a game, and they’ll add their wrapper on top of games in their store, especially games that do not currently need steam to play today.

It’ll only get way worse. Expect everything to be pay to play… once gaben is gone. They have a monopoly and any leader would think they are too big to fail. No one can just take their games elsewhere… we’re locked in. We’re committed. We can’t escape. They’ve got us by the balls.

derpgon ,

Steam with Gabe at the helm cannot ever fail. Steam without Gabe, that’s a while different story.

Schadrach ,

It’ll only get way worse. Expect everything to be pay to play… once gaben is gone. They have a monopoly and any leader would think they are too big to fail. No one can just take their games elsewhere… we’re locked in. We’re committed. We can’t escape. They’ve got us by the balls.

Sure you can escape, at least for any future purchases. There are other stores and you can take your business there, and the moment Steam does any serious enshittification under new management post-Gaben those other stores are going to be trying to pull customers from them hard. Likely to EGS or GOG (probably EGS unless GOG makes a big move at that point, like bringing back and expanding GOG Connect).

A couple of years down the road from there and Steam is known as that thing you only use to play older games and exclusives.

lightnsfw ,

We can switch to piracy. I don’t only because of the benefits steam offers. If that ever changes in a way that tips the scale I’ll never buy a game from them again and I’d never need to. Even if they start making all new games online only in a way that can’t be circumvented there’s a big enough backlog of games to keep me going the rest of my life.

Koordinator_O ,
@Koordinator_O@lemmy.world avatar

This so much. The thing for me is, pirated I get everything from my library back FOR FREE. So there is no loss money wise for changing things up for me. Without the convenience and fairness there is nothing holding me there. at all.

cordlesslamp ,

And that one “old fat guy” is constantly under attack from degenerates because “sTeAm mOnoPoLy”.

AceFuzzLord ,

Steam/Valve is pretty much one of the only companies I actually am perfectly willing to let be a monopoly as they currently stand. Especially since they have come a long ways towards making gaming so much more accessible to Linux users, like me, who don’t know how to take full advantage of wine.

Spedwell ,

I don’t understand this mentality. If we oppose monopolistic sales platforms when it’s Amazon, Google Play, or the Apple store why should we turn a blind eye when suddenly we like a particular company.

I’m not contesting that Steam offers the best user experience by a mile (it truly beats Epic and Gog by miles), but that doesn’t erase the downsides of having a single entity with a grip on the entire market.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Because it isn’t a monopoly, shut up already.

Grofit ,

I don’t think it’s quite as simple as “let’s crack down on steam like other monopolies” as what do you crack down on?

They do little to no anti competitive behaviour, clutching at straws would be that they require you to keep price parity on steam keys (except on sales).

All these other monopolies do lots of shady stuff to get and maintain their monopoly, so you generally want to stop them doing those things. Steam doesn’t do anything shady to maintain it’s monopoly it just carries on improving it’s platform and ironically improving the users experience and other platforms outside of their own.

Like what do you do to stop steam being so popular outside of just arbitrarily making them shitter to make the other store fronts seem ok by comparison?

The 30% cut is often something cited and maybe that could be dropped slightly, but I’m happy for them to keep taking that cut if they continue to invest some of it back into the eco system.

Look at other platforms like Sony, MS who take 30% to sell on their stores, THEN charge you like £5 a month if you want multiplayer and cloud saves etc. Steam just gives you all this as part of the same 30%.

Epic literally does anti competitive things like exclusivity and taking games they have some stake in off other store fronts or crippling their functionality.

Steam has improved how I play games, it has cloud saves, virtual controllers, streaming, game sharing, remote play together, VR support, Mod support and this is all part of their 30%, the other platforms take same and do less, or take less but barely function as a platform.

Anti monopoly is great when a company is abusing it’s position, but I don’t feel Valve is, they are just genuinely good for pc gaming and have single handily made PC gaming a mainstream platform.

Spedwell ,

They do little to no anti competitive behaviour, clutching at straws would be that they require you to keep price parity on steam keys (except on sales).

It is very much not clutching at straws to claim that. That policy is a major element of the Wolfire v. Valve case. You can also look at how despite charging a 12% platform fee, Epic Games Store does not sell games 18% cheaper.

It’s an abuse of Steam’s established market share and consumer habits to coerce publishers into not offering consumers a fair price on other platforms. It very literally stops EGS from competing on price, which is pretty much the only area where Epic can beat out Steam, since Steam otherwise is much more convenient, provides more functionality, and has more community-generated content (i.e. workshop material).

It’s hard to say that isn’t anti-competitive, especially because such a policy is only effective due to Steam’s existing market share.

Epic literally does anti competitive things like exclusivity and taking games they have some stake in off other store fronts or crippling their functionality.

This is a fair complaint against Epic, I agree.

Grofit ,

Wolfire v valve was thrown out right? So they didn’t successfully prove valve were doing anything anti competition.

To my knowledge the price parity is only on steam keys sold elsewhere not for you selling a game on another storefront, happy to be shown evidence that isn’t the case.

In terms of what is a “fair deal” we could quibble about the 30% but that’s literally the only thing up for discussion right? And at the moment that’s an “industry standard” so by all means lower it if they can, I’m all for savings as a consumer, but not at the expense of the service they provide.

For example if Valve personally came to me and said “you can either have games 10% cheaper but we would have to retire X features” I would happily keep the features and forgo the discount.

Also being realistic if Valve were to drop their cut to 20% game prices wouldn’t change, the publishers would just pocket the difference, as we have seen with Epic.

Again most other mainstream platforms take 30% and while I do think they could ALL trim that down a bit, I don’t see why Valve should be the first one to cut back when they offer the most bang for buck, get Sony and MS to reduce their cut and start offering more basic features, then once the competition is ACTUALLY competing we can turn our eyes to Valve.

I think that sums up my perspective here, most storefronts are not trying to compete, they are just offering the bare minimum for same cut and then wondering why everyone wants to use the more feature rich store front… Why wouldnt you?

Spedwell , (edited )

Oh wow, lots to unpack here. Bear with me.

Wolfire v valve was thrown out right? So they didn’t successfully prove valve were doing anything anti competition.

AFAIK still ongoing, looks like most recent filings were on 06/12.

To my knowledge the price parity is only on steam keys sold elsewhere not for you selling a game on another storefront, happy to be shown evidence that isn’t the case.

The actual terms of the Steam Distribution Agreement are behind an NDA so we can’t publicly know for sure, but Wolfire alleges that it applies to non-key sales (see points 204, 205, 207 of the https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Washington_Western_District_Court/2--21-cv-00563/Wolfire_Games_LLC_et_al_v._Valve_Corporation/docs/127.pdf)

In terms of what is a “fair deal” we could quibble about the 30% but that’s literally the only thing up for discussion right? And at the moment that’s an “industry standard” …

Bit of a chicken and egg situation. Is Steam charging 30% because that’s standard, or is the 30% standard because Steam charges it? Epic’s attempt at 12% at the very least indicates the “industry standard” is much higher than it has to be, which is a good indicator of non-competitive behavior.

There is some slop in this argument because obviously the quality of platforms could influence this; but that is a bit moot due to the price policy preventing competitive pricing (see below).

… so by all means lower it if they can, I’m all for savings as a consumer, but not at the expense of the service they provide.

For example if Valve personally came to me and said “you can either have games 10% cheaper but we would have to retire X features” I would happily keep the features and forgo the discount.

That’s great for you, but I’m sure we could find plenty of consumers who would make that trade. The choice should be available to them.

Also being realistic if Valve were to drop their cut to 20% game prices wouldn’t change, the publishers would just pocket the difference, as we have seen with Epic.

You can’t point to current publisher behavior on EGS, because their behavior at present is influenced by Valve’s price policy (called the “Platform Most Favored Nation” or “PMFN” clause in the court filing) which is the foundation of the anti-competitive case against Valve.

Re: concerns about publishers eating the difference. An ideal greedy publisher would drop the price on Epic by some amount in the middle—cheap enough to convince consumers to buy on Epic instead of Steam (since it yields more revenue to them) without making it too cheap that the difference in profit between a sale on Epic and a sale on Steam goes to 0.

This is how competition between platforms should work. It drives down the cost by some amount, but the publisher isn’t going to pass up the chance to profit where they can.

Again most other mainstream platforms take 30% and while I do think they could ALL trim that down a bit, I don’t see why Valve should be the first one to cut back when they offer the most bang for buck, get Sony and MS to reduce their cut and start offering more basic features, then once the competition is ACTUALLY competing we can turn our eyes to Valve.

I think that sums up my perspective here, most storefronts are not trying to compete, they are just offering the bare minimum for same cut and then wondering why everyone wants to use the more feature rich store front… Why wouldnt you?

I’m confused by your response here since this is addressed in my prior comment. Is there something not quite clear enough?

Steam clearly wins on features, the only metric to beat them on is price. Epic is trying to do so, but publishers are not actually lowering the cost on their platform because of Valve’s policies—policies which are only effective because a publisher cannot afford to be delisted from Steam due its large market share.

Grofit ,

There is too much to respond to all, will be interesting to see how the wolfire case continues then.

I just wanted to chime in on the last bit.

So as you say steam wins on features, and Epic and MS have both chosen not to compete on features. It’s not that they can’t, they both have the means and money to do so, they just don’t want to invest the money on the infrastructure incase it’s a big flop I guess.

Either way you are making out like the only valid perspective here is focusing on the game price, but as I said to me the feature set is VERY important. Literally the only reason I use steam over other platforms is the features, being able to use any controller and remap it to however I want. Knowing my saves can be transfered to any computer, streaming to the TV so the kids can play games on it etc.

I appreciate not everyone else uses these features, but some of us do, and this is why steam is the better platform. If MS let me stream games to my TV and use controllers properly etc I would happily get game pass, but their platform is rubbish, same for EGS.

This whole thing is just crap platforms complaining they can’t compete when they havent even tried, they just want the free publicity in the hope they can get more users “in the door”.

ltxrtquq ,

Sure, let’s look at that lawsuit.

Steam Key Price Parity Provision. Valve nominally allows game publishers to make some limited third-party sales of Steam-enabled games through its “Steam Keys” program. Steam Keys are alphanumeric codes that can be submitted to the Steam Gaming Platform by gamers to access a digital copy of the purchased game within the Steam Gaming Platform, even when the game is not purchased through the Steam Store. Steam Keys can be sold by rival distributors including the Humble Store, Amazon, GameStop, and Green Man Gaming.

But Valve has rigged the Steam Keys program so that it serves as a tool to maintain Valve’s dominance. Among other things, Valve imposes a price parity rule (the “Steam Key PriceParity Provision”) on anyone wanting to sell Steam Keys through an alternative distributor. Put explicitly by Valve, “We want to avoid a situation where customers get a worse offer on the Steam store.” But that is equivalent to preventing gamers from obtaining a better offer from a competing distributor. The effect of this rule is to stifle price competition.

Because of this rule, Valve can stop competing game stores from offering consumers a lower price on Steam-enabled games in order to shift volume from the Steam Store to their storefronts. Even if a rival game store were to charge game publishers a lower commission than Valve’s high 30% fee, the distributor would not gain more sales because the game publishers could not charge a lower price in its store. Game publishers and consumers suffer because this rule keeps Valve’s high 30% commission from being subject to competitive pressure.

This Price Parity Provision is one of the reasons why Valve has been able to continue to charge an inflated 30% commission for many years, even as that commission is plainly above the levels that would prevail in a competitive market. Competition would normally force such an inflated commission to come down to competitive levels—but Valve’s restraints prevent those competitive forces from operating as they would in a free market.

Because of Valve’s restraint, publishers cannot utilize alternative distributors to avoid the 30% tax that Valve has set for the market. Thus, they reluctantly market their games primarily through the dominant Steam Store where Valve takes its 30% fee. While several distributors have tried to compete with Valve by charging lower commissions on Steam Keys, those efforts have largely failed to make a dent in the Steam Store’s market share because publishers using those distributors had to charge the same inflated prices they set on the Steam Store.

Moreover, even if a game publisher wanted to scale up its use of Steam Keys to promote competition, Valve has made it clear that it would shut down such efforts. When Valve recognizes that a game publisher is selling a significant volume of Steam Keys relative to its Steam Store sales, Valve can, at its own discretion, threaten the game publisher and refuse to provide more Steam Keys. Thus, Valve uses the Steam Key program as another tool to ensure that the vast majority of sales take place on the Steam Store, where Valve gets its 30% commission on nearly every sale.

So if you want to sell steam keys, you need to offer a similar deal on steam as you would wherever you’re selling those steam keys. This doesn’t apply to other storefronts like GOG, Epic, the Ubisoft store, the EA store or the Windows store, this is only about selling steam keys. So if you want to avoid giving Valve a cut of the sale while still using their platform to distribute your game, Valve is going to get upset and take action to prevent you from doing that.

There is also a section about

Price Veto Provision. Valve also requires game publishers to agree to give Valve veto power over their pricing in the Steam Store and across the market generally (the “Price Veto Provision”). Valve selectively enforces this provision to review pricing by game publishers on PC Desktop Games that have nothing to do with the Steam Gaming Platform at all. Through this conduct, prices set in the Steam Store serve as a benchmark that leads to inflated prices for virtually all PC Desktop Games.

which I think was the focus of a different lawsuit that mostly talked about a Most Favored Nation clause. This one is a little more complicated, but this lawsuit ended up getting dismissed. I’m not even close to being a lawyer so I don’t know why exactly, but this video seems to make a pretty good argument for why this isn’t a good legal argument. To summarize: there isn’t actually any proof that this kind of clause is actually anti-competitive and violates anti-trust laws. There’s also no telling whether or not other storefronts have similar conditions in place, because apparently these kind of Most Favored Nation clauses are fairly standard in some industries.

Also being realistic if Valve were to drop their cut to 20% game prices wouldn’t change, the publishers would just pocket the difference, as we have seen with Epic.

You can’t point to current publisher behavior on EGS, because their behavior at present is influenced by Valve’s price policy (called the “Platform Most Favored Nation” or “PMFN” clause in the court filing) which is the foundation of the anti-competitive case against Valve.

Looking at your other comment, I can say that Ubisoft tried ditching steam, but their prices didn’t really change even though they were paying a lower commission to epic than they would have to valve. So they would have had the ability change their prices to whatever they wanted on the epic store without fear of valve vetoing the price, because those games weren’t being sold on steam.

Steam clearly wins on features, the only metric to beat them on is price. Epic is trying to do so, but publishers are not actually lowering the cost on their platform because of Valve’s policies—policies which are only effective because a publisher cannot afford to be delisted from Steam due its large market share.

Is there any actual proof of this? Epic is well known for giving games away for free, the best price customers can hope for. Yet they still can’t seem to retain a loyal customer base. Maybe the price isn’t the most important factor for a digital distribution platform.

Spedwell , (edited )

So if you want to sell steam keys…

Yeah, to be honest that portion of the Wolfire case is pretty weak in my opinion. The Wolfire case isn’t only about steam keys, though, it also alleges that the PMFN clause applies to all game listings outside of Steam.

I’m not even close to being a lawyer so I don’t know why exactly, but this video seems to make a pretty good argument for why this isn’t a good legal argument.

I watch the timestamp provided. The video appears to me to suggest that it is a well-founded legal complaint given you can establish the MFN is the cause of the lack of differentiated pricing. The commentator seems to dismiss the idea that such an effect is evident in the information provided, and seems wishy-washy on a lot of his claims about economic principles. I’ll take his word on the legal front, but for the economic side I will turn to the plethora of academic and legal publications on the effects of MFN clauses (which support the anti-competitive effects alleged by the filing).

Also it looks like the Colvin wasn’t dismissed, it was consolidated into the .

There’s also no telling whether or not other storefronts have similar conditions in place, because apparently these kind of Most Favored Nation clauses are fairly standard in some industries.

Yep, and the MFN is also a point in the monopoly proceedings against Amazon.

Looking at your other comment, I can say that Ubisoft tried ditching steam, but their prices didn’t really change even though they were paying a lower commission to epic than they would have to valve. So they would have had the ability change their prices to whatever they wanted on the epic store without fear of valve vetoing the price, because those games weren’t being sold on steam.

This is interesting, I was unaware. I’ll have to look into it.

Not to be nitpicky (because this might be solid counter-evidence), but do we know that in a universe without the Steam MFN policy Ubisoft wouldn’t have listed the games concurrently on Steam for 18% higher?

Is there any actual proof of this? Epic is well known for giving games away for free, the best price customers can hope for. Yet they still can’t seem to retain a loyal customer base. Maybe the price isn’t the most important factor for a digital distribution platform.

Strikes me as a little beside the point. A randomly rolled free game once a week is almost nothing compared to the sea of purchases in the game industry. If I want to buy game XYZ, the free weekly does me no good—at most, it gets me to install Epic (which is what they want). But it isn’t going to change the fact that Steam gives more bang for the buck, all else equal.

The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic. So if price isn’t the most important factor, why does Steam feel the need to impose such a policy?

ltxrtquq , (edited )

Not to be nitpicky (because this might be solid counter-evidence), but do we know that in a universe without the Steam MFN policy Ubisoft wouldn’t have listed the games concurrently on Steam for 18% higher?

We can go back and look at the historical prices for The Division 2 and see that Ubisoft didn’t have a lower baseline price on their own store compared to the epic store. So either Epic has an MFN policy as well, or Ubisoft would most likely want to keep their prices consistent across platforms and stores.

Strikes me as a little beside the point. A randomly rolled free game once a week isn’t going to change anyone’s purchasing habits or change the landscape of the marketplace. If I want to buy game XYZ, the free weekly does me no good—at most, it gets me to install Epic (which is what they want). But it isn’t going to change the fact that Steam gives more bang for the buck, all else equal.

That’s the thing: you’re being given a random game every week and that’s still not enough to get people to stick around. The games they’re giving away are often pretty good too, and yet it’s not enough to convince people that the Epic Games Store is worth using. And looking at the store now, it seems they’re just giving back 5% of the money you spend, meaning if you opt into their ecosystem, all their games actually are cheaper. At some point you need to admit that people won’t abandon steam just because prices are lower somewhere else. Because the alternative would mean that piracy would be everyone’s preferred method of getting games.

The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic. So if price isn’t the most important factor, why does Steam feel the need to impose such a policy?

We also don’t really know that they do. The source saying that the MFN policy exists at all is the CEO of Epic Games saying so on twitter. And I’m pretty sure the lawsuit says that it’s “selectively enforced”, so there aren’t any actual examples of Valve vetoing a game’s price based on the price in another store.

Spedwell ,

We can go back and look at the historical prices for The Division 2 and see that Ubisoft didn’t have a lower baseline price on their own store compared to the epic store. So either Epic has an MFN policy as well, or Ubisoft would most likely want to keep their prices consistent across platforms and stores.

Thanks for digging that up, interesting to note. Epic might have an MFN, or maybe Ubisoft’s internal publishing overhead is roughly 12%.

That’s the thing: you’re being given a random game every week and that’s still not enough to get people to stick around

I don’t know what you envision when you say “stick around”. Do people uninstall Steam when they install Epic? No, they don’t. You just have both installed. The free game gimmic is for you to download the platform; that’s the first hurdle, but it does little to change your preference between platforms when it comes time to make a purchase.

And looking at the store now, it seems they’re just giving back 5% of the money you spend, meaning if you opt into their ecosystem, all their games actually are cheaper.

Interesting point on the 5%, I was unaware of that.

We also don’t really know that they do. The source saying that the MFN policy exists at all is the CEO of Epic Games saying so on twitter. And I’m pretty sure the lawsuit says that it’s “selectively enforced”, so there aren’t any actual examples of Valve vetoing a game’s price based on the price in another store.

What evidence would be needed to convince you?

Clearly, there is a business case for listing a game for less on Epic (or a publisher’s own site!). We can trust the MFN policy most likely exists. What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

“Selectively enforced” is the wording used by Valve’s own employee. That could mean anything from “only big, noteable games” to “only enforced when we noticed it” to “actually enforced consistently”. Regardless, it can have a chilling effect that causes everyone to step in line.

ltxrtquq ,

I don’t know what you envision when you say “stick around”.

I would expect people to start buying games from the epic games store. They’d be using it regularly and have a sense of ownership over the games they have in their libraries.

What evidence would be needed to convince you?

Honestly, I’m mostly just being pedantic. I’m perfectly willing to believe this kind of clause exists, but I want to acknowledge that at least for now there’s no actual evidence of it.

What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

For games being the same price on different store fronts? Whatever the justification for selling digital games at the same price as physical games was back when digital purchases were becoming mainstream, or for the same reason that Nintendo games will rarely go on sale: because there are still people willing to pay.

“Selectively enforced” is the wording used by Valve’s own employee.

Is it? Because I pulled the term from the complaint filed Apr 27, 2021 under the Price Veto Provision section. Where did you see a valve employee saying it?

Spedwell ,

… but I want to acknowledge that at least for now there’s no actual evidence of it.

I wouldn’t call a multi-year class action asserting that a clause exists “no evidence”.

(I mostly continue on this point because I will continue to go around saying Valve uses a PMFN clause, and it’s not unfounded for me to do so)

What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

For games being the same price on different store fronts? Whatever the justification for selling digital games at the same price as physical games was back when digital purchases were becoming mainstream, or for the same reason that Nintendo games will rarely go on sale: because there are still people willing to pay.

Alright, if you’re not convinced that there ought to naturally be differentiated pricing, and that the uniform pricing we see is artificial, I don’t know where else to go.

Is it? Because I pulled the term from the complaint filed Apr 27, 2021 under the Price Veto Provision section. Where did you see a valve employee saying it?

Ah, I was thinking of the “TomG” quotes here. I see what you’re referencing now, though that doesn’t really make the language as less ambiguous.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion but I’m going to call it here. Cheers.

ltxrtquq ,

Alright, if you’re not convinced that there ought to naturally be differentiated pricing, and that the uniform pricing we see is artificial, I don’t know where else to go.

I think my point was more that publishers aren’t going to do that. Back when digital wasn’t the default, it was acknowledged that selling a download was a fair bit cheaper and easier than manufacturing disks or carts that could easily be resold by the customer after they were done with it, but the pricing didn’t change to reflect that. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time, and not just with steam.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion but I’m going to call it here.

Fair enough, good night.

hedgehog ,

The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic.

For that fact to “remain,” it would need to have been established in the first place. At best it’s been alleged.

Fubarberry ,
@Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz avatar

Other people are making good counter arguments, so I’m just going to address one bit:

You can also look at how despite charging a 12% platform fee, Epic Games Store does not sell games 18% cheaper.

Epic hasn’t been running their game store for very long, and they’ve been operating it at a loss to secure market share. They lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year on their store. This is mostly due to them buying exclusive rights to games, but my point is that the EGS is not a successful, self sustaining business. Epic taking a 12% cut doesn’t mean that 12% is enough money, because their whole business model is about losing money to attract users.

You also have to remember that the storefront cut is an upfront cost with an unclear long-term cost. Valve is promising to always host the game and cover the bandwidth for every future download and update, no matter how many updates or how many times someone downloads it. Not to mention that they also will host mods, provide matchmaking, video streaming, and many other benefits.

Spedwell ,

It’s also not about whether 30% is the right number or not. It’s about how Valve has made it impossible to choose a different number at all.

The argument has little to nothing to do with Epic’s business strategy—it’s 12%, along with the 30% of Steam, is merely a feature of the landscape in which publishers operate. Whether 12% is sustainable for the platform long-term or not, Valve is coercing the market so that publishers cannot take advantage of it.

Makeitstop ,

Steam isn’t a monopoly, I can get my games elsewhere (epic, gog, humble store, origin etc). But Steam is dominating the market because it does it better. It offers value and features that others don’t, and it generally hasn’t abused its dominant market position to squeeze the consumer or crush their competitors. The closest thing to enshittification we’ve seen from Steam was them allowing third party DRM and launchers, which isn’t something they wanted, it’s them backing down from a stand-off.

I want competition, but there’s good competition and bad competition. Good competition is what we see from Steam and gog, where they stand out by being good at what they do and giving customers what they want.

For an example of bad competition, just look at streaming sites. We went from everything being on Netflix to everything being divided among dozens of shitty platforms, each of which costs more, and the prices keep going up, especially if you don’t want ads. Nothing was improved for the consumer when Netflix lost its defacto monopoly. Which isn’t to say that Netflix is great, only that the competition for marketshare has only made things worse for the consumer.

I think it’s easy to look at all the bullshit EA and Ubisoft and the like pull now, and imagine that same pattern from streaming playing out in gaming.

Spedwell ,

See my other comment

daltotron ,

For an example of bad competition, just look at streaming sites. We went from everything being on Netflix to everything being divided among dozens of shitty platforms, each of which costs more, and the prices keep going up, especially if you don’t want ads. Nothing was improved for the consumer when Netflix lost its defacto monopoly. Which isn’t to say that Netflix is great, only that the competition for marketshare has only made things worse for the consumer.

Not to sound like a ancap idiot or whatever, but I’d imagine that has to do with the fact that streaming services don’t actually compete with one another. Exclusivity deals mean they don’t actually compete in terms of user experience, features, ease of use, higher video or audio quality than their competition, improved bitrate, whatever. Instead, they just compete based on who can snap up what IPs for the cheapest, which is just a game of whoever has the most money, whoever can outbid their competitors. Then, you’re not going to netflix or hulu or disney+ because of the features of the platform, you’re going to them because they have some IP that the other platforms just straight up don’t, and if you want to watch both IPs you gotta pay for both. So, it’s not really competition, in the conventional sense.

AeonFelis ,

I think the whole “monopoly bad” notion is a bit off. You start opposing monopolies, but then people realized that duopolies are also bad, and next thing you know we talk about triopolies and centiopolies and whatnot.

So I think the actual number is not the thing that matters, and instead the thing we should be worrying about is cartels.

The defining feature of a cartel is the ruthless action it takes to kill competition. The monopolies everyone are so mad about are cartels of single companies, but the bad thing about them is their cartellic behavior - not the fact they are along in the market.

Steam is not a cartel.

Spedwell ,

See my other comment in this thread. Steam does exhibit what you call “cartellic behavior”.

AeonFelis ,

Attack from that angle then, not from something that strongly correlates with it.

Spedwell ,

I’m confused what you mean.

AeonFelis ,

Sorry. Terrible wording on my part.

My argument is that instead of attacking Valve for being big, you should attack them for doing bad things. Your “other comment in this thread” (I assume lemmy.world/comment/10668748 ?) describes an aggressive practice done by Valve. Why not lead with that? The problem is not the size of these companies per se, but the way they’ve reached that size and the way they weaponize it against competitors. Focusing on attacking the size and the monopoly status of the companies is just saying “it’s not okay to be successful”.

NikkiDimes ,

That’s like being okay with a dictator because they’re a benevolent dictator. Even if things are good in that moment, you’re bound for enshittification when that person is no longer in power, a la the fears of the OP.

calcopiritus ,

More like a democracy with no term limits and a leader with 90+% popularity rate.

Sure, steam looks powerful, as if they can do whatever they want. But you have to look at why steam is so powerful, it’s because people like steam. If steam uses that power for anticompetitive behavior, people will stop liking steam and it will lose a lot of power.

Just like if the leader does something that the people don’t like, suddenly the approval rating is no longer at 90+% and he loses the next election.

sanpedropeddler ,

Oh so its ok because they haven’t exercised their power in a way you don’t like yet. Makes perfect sense.

AeonFelis ,

Yes. The subtle distinction between having physically fit legs capable of kicking babies and actually kicking babies.

sanpedropeddler ,

This would be a good metaphor if there was a massive financial incentive to kick babies.

AeonFelis ,

Maybe not financial, but intrusive thoughts are a thing…

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

A nice word choice.
I’m going to use it this way next time.

sep ,

Everybody would love 2 or 3 more good healthy alternative to even the playing field. Because having the future of fun hang by the tread of a single not-corrupt-to-the-core company is fucking stressfull. But dunking on valve is not the way to a healthy gaming marketplace.

Spedwell ,

I will continue dunking on Valve as long as they remain the reason good, healthy alternatives can’t exist. I will not re-hash the whole arguments here, please see my other replies in this thread.

sep ,

I have read your arguments, I just fundamentaly disagree. I do not want to lower the ceiling until valve is as crappy as the rest. I want the floor to rise. Basically valve do not stop other companies from competing. Nothing is stopping EGS from including and contributing to proton. allowing and even helping developers to have their games on multiple marketplaces. Building awesome services to provide to developers.

Spedwell ,

Basically valve do not stop other companies from competing

So is there something you didn’t understand that I can clarify, or are we in agreement that Valve needs to discard the PMFN policy?

sep ,

Is it a shitty businiss practice? Absolutly. Should valve as the only company allow others to under cut them? No that would be insane. Should it be regulated as illegal businiss practices for everyone - yes absolutly.

Spedwell ,

Okay, fair enough.

sep ,

It is basically contractual price fixing. Staggering that the practice is allowed.

calcopiritus ,

Tbf monopolies are sometimes unavoidable. Like the water company or the energy company (at least the ones that actually own the cables). Usually natural monopolies are nationalized though.

Even if steam is not a natural Monopoly, competition is possible, we allow it to be a monopoly because we like it, not the other way around. There are plenty of digital stores, you can at any time buy almost any game from an alternative, I’m not aware of steam having any exclusivity agreement with any game (except the ones that valve made).

Valve also doesn’t use shopping platform monopoly methods such as artificially making process low by selling at a loss, which is the main problem with other monopolies like Amazon.

It also doesn’t bundle 100 unnecessary services to the subscription. It doesn’t even have a subscription.

Sure, you can’t move your steam games to another platform, but you can get new ones. It’s not much of a problem having games from different platforms anyway, GoG for example even let’s you launch steam games from the GoG launcher. And you can always go back to good old shortcuts on a folder.

The moment steam starts enshittifing, it will be very easy to switch to another platform. Compared with other platforms, like any social media or YouTube.

Spedwell , (edited )

Valve also doesn’t use shopping platform monopoly methods such as artificially making process low by selling at a loss, which is the main problem with other monopolies like Amazon.

That isn’t the only method. There is also the “[Platform] Most Favored Nation” clause, which eliminates the ability to undercut the platform elsewhere. This allows the platform to leverage it’s market share and benefits to maintain dominance, raising the price floor of the market so nobody can compete on cost. Being the dominant platform, with better economies of scale and consumer intertia, this gives them an advantage in that competing platforms have a difficult time being the better choice.

Valve uses a PMFN clause. See my other comments for links to relevant court cases.

The moment steam starts enshittifing, it will be very easy to switch to another platform. Compared with other platforms, like any social media or YouTube.

Being familiar with “enshitify”, you should go read more of Cory Doctorow’s (who coined the term) writing over on pluralistic.net. He writes frequently about monopolies (his writing on Amazon’s monopolistic practices (skip to the part about high fees and raising prices) are applicable to Valve’s PMFN clause). He also has explicitly given social media platforms as examples of platforms prone to enshitification because of the high network effects.

drunkpostdisaster ,

It’s not their fault epic sucks

mindbleach ,

Dehumanizing people who recognize the power of overwhelming market share is a lot worse than pointing out the power of overwhelming market share.

Folks will shit on Alan Wake II for only releasing on EGS, like that’s obviously the only reason it’s not selling well… and then refuse to consider the implications of that claim. I have led people by the nose through what it means when there’s only one store that really matters, and developers are generally screwed if they can’t or won’t sell through that one store.

Yerbouti , (edited )

Steam is just another profit business. I don’t get why people think they’re about anything else. They take a huge part of the sells and don’t even let you own the games. Owning means you can sell, give or do whatever you want with your games. Oh and “likely to die before 75”, lol, says fucking who, the 4chan doctor?

Ifera ,

There is regular, for-profit business, and then there is EA/Microsoft/Amazon level for-profit.

The complete disregard for their employees, massive firings for “AI powered optimization”, the use and abuse of dark pattern methods(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern), are some of the things that I haven’t yet head of from Steam.

Sure, ultimately Steam is a capitalist business, but it could be much, much worse.

Piemanding ,

Their entire platform is built on goodwill. After he passes, someone is gonna cash that goodwill in for profit. Seems to be happening to Nintendo. Disney has been doing it for many years.

hglman ,

That is the McKinsey formula, abuse consumer trust to have them over pay expecting the previous quality of goods while you slowly slash all your costs and bottom out the quality of your product. The lag time between your actions to destroy the product and the consumer realizing that your doing is all profit.

Yerbouti ,

I mean, there is your regular serial killers, and then there’s ___ Insert most dangerous killers here____ . Sure ultimately I’ve killed a few people, but it could be so much worse. See what I mean? Steam is an ok platform but in the end they only cares about profit. But since 90% of the gamers get wet when you mentioned the company name, there’s no need for them to change anything right now. Why in the world is it considered normal that a business that basically only provide server space gets to take 30% of sale price, while the devs who spent thousand of hours on a project only get 70%. Maybe it made sens 15 years ago, but not in 2024.

Theharpyeagle ,

On the one hand, yeah it’s absolutely important not to idolize any company, because they have no sense of loyalty or generosity. Telling yourself otherwise is a guaranteed path to disappointment.

On the other hand, of all the shit sandwiches we’ve been served, Steam is one of the fresher ones. Though they developed Proton for their own benefit, it’s pretty undeniable that it has made gaming on Linux way more viable than it has ever been, and it’s open source. I mean no shade to FOSS solutions like Lutris, but having paid developers work on a project full-time certainly has its advantages.

I do think that the concerns about Steam’s pricing rules are valid, as are gripes with its DRM for first party games. But, overall, they’ve brought a lot of convenience to PC gaming that is hard to find elsewhere in the gaming world.

Yerbouti ,

I get that steam is a pretty nice platform to browse, and being a linux user, Proton is amazing. But steam is business, they build Proton to sell the steam deck, not for Linux users. And aren’t they in trial right now for overcharging millions of dollars? We now have eveything in place to replace steam with a fair, user controlled alternative. I will gladly pay a 5% or 10% fee, on top of the game’s price, to finance a user controlled infrastructure and dev team for projects such has proton.

Theharpyeagle ,

I think we generally agree, but I worry that a new platform couldn’t do more than GoG+Lutris already do. Perhaps, though, it could be done with a reputable foundation.

And the lawsuit is more or less what I was radio referring to with Steam’s price rules. I would definitely be on board with striking the requirement for publishers to offer the same price on all platforms at the same time.

On that note, though, I wouldn’t take the whole case at face value, as I think parts of it are pretty frivolous (unless they prove that Steam is actually actively stifling competition and, you know, not just a decent platform that entered the space first.) I also think it’s silly to point out Epic’s lower commission rate since they’ve been giving out free games like candy and actually making third party games exclusive to their platform in a very clear attempt to compete with Stream. There’s absolutely no guarantee that they won’t raise their commission once they have a foothold in the market (though I do concede that their licensing terms for Unreal Engine have remained fairly reasonable).

BarbecueCowboy ,

I think they were just going off US averages. Our average lifespan has been declining past few years but it’s pretty close to 75 if you’re poor.

Gabe hasn’t always taken care of his body, but he’s rich, he’d be likely to hit around 88 in the US. The average lifespan in New Zealand is also a bit higher, so if he stays there then it may add a few years.

Yerbouti ,

Unless you’re a doctor, I think you shouldn’t get into medical diagnostic. My grandpa smoked 2 packs a day and lived up to 95., my other grandpa was walking 10 km a day and never smoked, he died at 72.

BarbecueCowboy ,

Yeah, anecdotes are a thing, one of my grandpas smoked a pack a day too and he beat yours and made it over 100. Our personal experiences don’t trump collected data though, we’re not the average experience and we can expect most to trend towards that.

Lets_Eat_Grandma ,

Extreme Obesity is defined as being 100 pounds or more over your ideal weight. It is known to decrease life expectancy up to 14 years.

It’s just one factor but it’s a big one. Living past your 80s is really tough… and working into your 70s is really hard as it is. The reins will go from his hands likely before we die.

Yerbouti ,

I think people should go easy on medical diagnostic. Do we have access to this guy’s personal medical records? Are we all doctors now cause we have access to wikipedia?

Lets_Eat_Grandma ,

Nobody thinks they know for sure the guy’s medical situation. Everybody dies eventually and when he’s gone his control goes with him though.

Smoogs ,

Fuckload better than ‘you need to pay a subscription just to play the game you already paid for’ cuz oh you launched it from their app.

Killer ,

What digital game platform lets you resell your games? That’s just a bad point to try and make.

Yerbouti , (edited )

It’s not because none of the current platform let you do it that it’s a bad point. People have traded games for decades before digital platforms, it wouldn’t even be innovation lol. You can suck on Steam all you want, it’s just your usual capitalist business, they dont care about you and will fuck you up the very second they evaluate they can make more money by doing so. But in the current state of things, they basically make tons of money by doing almost nothing (providing server space, wow) and “gamers” will rip their shirts off at the slightest criticism of that company.

JasonDJ ,

Dr Chan is a pretty cool doctor. Eh diagnosed one of my friends as a b-tard and doesn’t afraid of nothing.

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