I have to imagine he has something planned (inb4 GabeN AI Overlord) for after he’s gone.
He’s a bit crazy about prepping for disaster iirc. He lives in New Zealand now and has since the Covid outbreak. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a very long document that lays out a lot of rules for if he’s gone and Steam is to continue
At that point I’ll probably too old and have lost interest in gaming anyway, so I’ll just let the next generation of gamers figure it out themselves. Kinda like boomers leaving us to deal with high property price problem because it’s no longer their concern anymore.
Yeah but just the amount of games I own on Steam already (not to mention the Steam Deck), if all that ended up getting enshittified by Microsoft it’d be like having to start over from scratch pretty much.
EGS is really the only thing remotely close to what Steam does, though.
GOG will always be an afterthought as long as they have their DRM-free policy in place. They’re super cool, but they’re a niche and will never grow beyond that without losing what makes them cool.
Origin (or whatever EA’s calling their store now) gave up pursuing third-party sales years ago. They still do it, but they clearly have no interest in actually making a go of becoming an actual competitor to Steam.
The Windows Store is terrible for a number of different reasons, even if it’s better than Microsoft’s previous attempts at getting into this space (coughGWFLcough). EGS is more likely to overtake Steam than Windows Store is to even rival EGS.
Uplay (or, again, whatever Ubisoft is calling their store these days) is like Origin - I don’t even know for sure if Ubi is doing third-party sales, but if so, it’s very much an afterthought for them.
And then everyone else just sells Steam keys. They’re not in the same market as the others, so don’t really fit into this conversation. If you’re 100% reliant on the store you’re “competing” with, you’re not competing with them.
A lot of games on Steam are DRM-free, but not (yet) on GOG. GOG isn’t an afterthought just because of their DRM-free policy, it’s also because they’re so small.
But they did allow it, unfortunately. And MS could simply argue that it already has dominance in the PC space as 96% of PC gamers are Windows users. So owning Steam is just buying 1 out of many stores (here they tout Epic, Amazon, etc).
I mean it's a bad argument but MS made a lot of bad arguments to get their way and they seemingly worked.
Activision-Blizzard-King isn’t a dominant company in any segment. You can’t say the same for steam. Regulators would have a much easier time blocking such an acquisition.
Plus, at least from my perspective, Activision-Blizzard was already bad enough that if MS made it worse, it wouldn’t affect me because they were already bad enough that I’d swore off their games. MS owning them was an improvement or at worst more of the same.
That’s absolutely not the case for Valve. They are one of the few large companies that I respect plus they are playing a big role in breaking the windows stranglehold over OSes when you like to play games.
The level of popular opposition to MS acquiring Valve would be on a whole other level than the opposition to the blizzard acquisition. It might even rival the opposition to Nvidia acquiring ARM.
The regulatory bodies hand waved actiblizzard through. Let’s not pretend anything else happened there. Microsoft can do whatever they want and no one is gonna stop them. Same as every other big company.
The only thing stopping Ms. is that valve is a privately owned company. But everyone has a price.
Yes, that is just how the American system works. The actual body here is the doj. The ftc tried to sue and was slapped back immediately. This was the ftc trying to show claws and the actual ruling body saying no, you have no power and Microsoft can do what they want.
It was a huge loss for the ftc that has been trying, and failing to fight big tech
What’s wild to me is that these games were all developed to run on Windows, not SteamOS or any other Linux distro. This is with the games requiring a compatibility layer to run. Imagine what they could do if the games were made to run on SteamOS.
MasterCard’s and Valve’s statements seems to point at Stripe and PayPal as the ones who folded to the pressure. These payment processors then cited MasterCard’s rules to back up their change in policy.
MasterCard now clarifying that the payment processors are over-interpreting the rules and anything legal is ok seems a very good thing here. Valve should be able to go back to Stripe and PayPal with this and say: “Hey, you’ve misunderstood the rules you are quoting; MasterCard themselves say anything legal is ok, and that is the exact policy we’ve been using!”
Yeah, now I’m concerned this might happen with Unreal Engine, even though they’ve given no indication that it will. Once Godot works out the kinks with level and texture streaming, and has a landscape editor I will be going back to Godot.
When did the term “open source” start including specifics about licensing terms? My understanding from the past few decades was that “open source” meant the source was available for people to look at and compile.
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. from Wikipedia
The same article also talks about the difference between open source and source available:
Although the OSI definition of “open-source software” is widely accepted, a small number of people and organizations use the term to refer to software where the source is available for viewing, but which may not legally be modified or redistributed. Such software is more often referred to as source-available, or as shared source, a term coined by Microsoft in 2001
Under that strict definition, software under the GNU GPL would not be “open source” because the license stays with the code, and is not truly “for any purpose,” which is the same deal with the Epic license: you may use, study, change, and distribute the Unreal source code, but it stays under Epic’s license.
If you are talking about the FREEDOM to fork and publish and share and whatever, then you mean Free software.
You are not allowed to distribute unreal source. From their FAQ:
Unreal Engine licensees are permitted to post engine code snippets (up to 30 lines) in a public forum, but only for the purpose of discussing the content of the snippet
But the code is easily visible and you can compile it yourself. If you say “I only run software I 100% knows what it does because I can read it’s source code” then Unreal Engine fits, it’s open source.
they want it to be open source so that they can’t do a unity
That has nothing to do with open source, that has to to with licensing, which I’m pretty sure isn’t an issue anyway since I think Unreal versions are tied to specific license versions, i.e. if you download the engine under one term, thats the only one you have to use
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code,[1] design documents,[2] or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design.
Unreal Engine is technically open source, because it’s source code is made available to the general public. But it is licensed under a restrictive EULA instead of any of the normal licenses you’d expect for an open source project (MIT, Apache, GPL3, etc).
This is definitely pedantic, but “open source” is a colloquial term, not a technical one. Most people mean FOSS when they say open source, but the terms aren’t exactly equivalent. The license that governs the code is really the only part that actually matters.
Long-term I think corporate tech as we know it is screwed. Their explosive growth from the pandemic making everyone terminally online is drying up as more and more people go back to touching grass, so now the bill’s coming due and it’s only a matter of time now before Unreal also does something stupid we can’t even imagine for a quick buck
People were terminally online well before 2019. It exacerbated the problem but we’re not going back. I don’t really think that’s a problem, technologically it pushed us further ahead which is always a good thing.
You’re right in that we are starting to rediscover what it means to be physically social again. I think that’s a good thing, too. People that got away with shit before aren’t getting away with it any more.
The problem is that interest rates have gone up after being extremely low ever since the 2008 crash, so investors lost their endless supply of debt-fuelled free money. They can’t pump money into companies operating at a loss anymore, so suddenly those companies have to find a way to turn a profit.
And some of them realistically can’t. Every other commercial game engine is developed for the studio first; Cry, Source, Unreal etc. These engines were made for, well, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament. The studio saw returns for engine development in the sales of games, then they said “We could probably further monetize the work we’ve already done if we license the engine and SDK out to third parties.”
Unity on the other hand is trying to have the Autodesk/Adobe business model of “We have a free student or hobbyist tier, and then a commercial license that’s $100,000 per minute per seat.” The thing is, Autodesk and Adobe really don’t have realistic competitors in their market sectors. Unity very much does. Unity competes directly with GameMaker Studio, Godot, Unreal, Source 2 among others, the development of which are either directly supported by the sales of first party titles (or are outright FOSS projects in the case of Godot). So Unity has to set their prices to compete in that market, without the support of first party game sales.
Oh it was initially classed as insanely intrusive malware when kernel level AC was introduced about a decade ago, by anyone with a modicum of actual technical knowledge about computers.
Unfortunately, a whole lot of corpo shills ran propaganda explaining how actually its fine, don’t worry, its actually the best way to stop cheaters!
Then the vast, vast majority of idiot gamers believed that, or threw their hands up and went oh well its the new norm, trying to fight it is futile and actually if you are against this that means you are some kind of paranoid privacy freak who hates other people having fun.
EAC installation process includes “registration” of a game, and the uninstall process “unregisters” the game. If all games using EAC are uninstalled, EAC itself also should be uninstalled.
any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, deprive access to information, or which unknowingly interferes with the user’s computer security and privacy
It does not do any of these things. Like any software, it may have vulnerabilities, and being a kernel module it can be high risk. But that’s no different from any kernel module, like your graphics driver.
It’s a much higher risk than average because games are often abandoned within one year of release and still run as long as 10-15 years later and connects to the internet and other randos on the internet. See the Call of Duty games that allow you to take over the computer of anyone who connects to your online match. It greatly degrades the security of its users.
Technically lots of things people call “malware” don’t actually do any of those things. For instance they may hijack your default search engine, pop up ads, or otherwise monetize your computer at your expense. The category that was invented by ass coverers is “possibly unwanted program” but outside of those who worry about being sued by scumbags people colloquially refer to both what you call malware AND PUPs as "malware the root of which is “bad” after all. Language being descriptive not prescriptive I think this broader definition of malware is fine.
It unknowingly interferes with my security or privacy, 100%. It has root access. What’s it doing in there? Nowadays you’re naive to think it’s just to prevent game cheating. I guarantee they’re collecting all kinds of information.
Do you remember when Sony released cds that when inserted into Windows computer auto ran an installer that installed a rootkit that made it impossible for Windows to see any processes or files that started with a certain sequence of characters instantly turning any malware that named its files or processes similarly powerful rootkit. Oh and it installed a cd driver that made it impossible to copy their music.
Suggested removal was a full reinstall of windows.
I kind of assumed it would be packaged with each game, a waste of space (but how big could it be?) but leaving a game with anti cheat a global dependency seems like a bad idea.
So Valve says the processors - such as Stripe and PayPal - pressed the issue based on pressure from MasterCard (and possibly Visa). MasterCard says they had nothing to do with it. Itch says that Stripe was directly responsible in their case with a blanket ban on anything generally sexy, but that Stripe blamed their banking partners.
So Stripe, at least, is directly responsible but insists they are under outside pressure. This means the pressure is coming from one or more actual banks. Since we don’t have names, we have to do some research to find out who Stripe works with. The possibilities I was able to dig up on a quick search include:
Citigroup
Wells Fargo
Barclays
Goldman Sachs
Evolve Bank & Trust
It seems clear that this has nothing to do with legality in any jurisdiction and that some powerful financial institution is forcing their twisted, puritanical morality on anyone they can at the behest of like-minded authoritarian terrorists. One or more of the above institutions are most likely at fault.
Sure. Let them whatabout. But to us, consumers, it shouldn’t matter.
We know the stores aren’t responsible, so we shouldn’t attack them.
The processors are. For Visa and MasterCard it’s pretty obvious. Itch, as you said, puts direct blame on Stripe, and I think we can trust that.
As much as processors need banks, banks also need processors. It’s a sort of symbiosis. Damage to one actually trickles onto the other. So pressing onto processors isn’t a mistake. It’d be foolish at best and malicious at worst to suggest that.
Now that we have leverage as users and consumers, having started a push which made way and caused a response (first the prepared phone statement and now a press release), the absolute wrong thing to do is bacl down and say “sorry, we were wrong, it was B after all and not you, A”.
And look at it this way: There’s less payment processors and they’re smaller than banks. If you suddenly turn to banks, you won’t accomplish anything because to them, a few consumers who aren’t their customers doesn’t cause them even an itch. But if payment processors come to them it might.
[he] is the guiltiest man who ever lived. just the sweatiest, most obvious rapist and child molester in the history of the world. he deserves an award for this; his first deserved award.
Haven’t seen a game that uses ads like this, but very good that it’s strictly prohibited now. That shit should never have taken off on mobile, but alas. At least we can prevent it on PC.
If you see Google launch a “free game only” store for PC, get worried.
I would be astonished if there was anything good on it though. If you are going to make a microtransaction game you probably don’t want to put a lot of effort into it because people won’t play it for more than about a week. This stuff’s only profitable if you can shovel new games out of the door on a regular basis.
Oh there wouldn’t need to be anything actually good on it.
You just need Superbowl advert money and suddenly you’ve got millions of users with no money.
I suspect the only reason this hasn’t happened already is that those millions of users are already on mobile, being flashed with garish noisy adverts every two minutes of gameplay, and moving them to PC some of the time wouldn’t really increase ad revenue…
I doubt that it has anything to do with social preferences of anyone internal to payment processors. They won’t care.
Putting pressure on payment processors is a useful way to put pressure on any commercial service. The commercial service may operate in another country, but it needs the payment processor, and the payment processors don’t want to be ejected from countries. The payment processor can be a lever for laws passed elsewhere.
Every payment processor on steam is a publicly traded company, not privately owned. So it wouldn’t really be up to any one individual’s moral preference about such things. Personal preference would only count in to it if one of the shareholders had enough shares to push the board around, but the only one where I could see that being the case would be PayPal from people like Theil and Andreessen. Like they’re both jack wads for other beliefs, but I wouldn’t exactly call them bible thumpers.
I don’t know how much truth there is to it, but one compelling reason I’ve heard is that adult content has a considerably higher chargeback rate than other content, making the risk much higher for payment processors. This makes sense - I could absolutely see some horny person buying some adult content, getting off to it, then doing a chargeback in their moment of introspection.
Playtron can keep their GameOS, anything associated with Cryptocurrency is a hard pass. I remember a lot of cryptobros were financing the fuck out of Playtron. Naturally, this is a product I consider dead to me. I will buy a Steam Deck from Valve, as they aren’t actively trying to scam their potential user base with Crypto nonsense.
I’m probably going to get the middle tier of Steam Deck as it does provide a decent value; as I play a lot of farming sims and cozy games, the Steam Deck fills this purpose well for me. Better than my Switch ever could. I was also considering the Lenovo Legion Go S, but waiting for hardware and software reviews for that device is a smart move. As it could be an amazing device, or it could be fucking shit on launch.
OLED made some minor improvements, but $150 more for the next step up is a huge ask. You act as if there are plenty of easily available cheaper handheld PCs out there. Not that I’ve found. Prices for old technology are going up, not down.
3.5 years old isn’t that old lol. My desktop CPU was almost 10 years old before I noticed any bottleneck in AAA games.
And speaking of AAA games from the last few years, all like, 2 of them, probably won’t be missed by most people.
The deck is a solid computer and it’s a good product that’s built well and is pleasant to handle and use and playing desktop games on that OLED with HDR support is a joy and on top of a decently polished UX (as polished as you can get in PC gaming really), the tinker potential is endless, you can do with it as you please because it’s yours and you own it - and it certainly feels like it. No adware, no enshittification etc.
I think there is a “graphical plateau” to gaming; a universal constant a bit like Moore’s Law. And while it’s not certain, it’s very possible the Steam Deck has mostly moved beyond it.
I definitely don’t think there’s an infinite bound to the detail games can add, especially within the resolution displayed on the Deck. Plus, many formats of games have not been well-served by that sort of extra detail. When a fringe hit like Liar’s Bar, REPO, or Lethal Company comes along, it never really needs the extra horsepower of top consoles. There’s a few rare PS5 exclusives that may struggle on it, but given Cyberpunk 2077 runs on it, I don’t even think we need be too worried.
I understand what you are trying to say, I feel like it’s not that old of a device in comparison to a Switch or Switch OLED. It’s still going to be a decent buy at the price point; I’m not overly worried about spending that much on a Steam Deck OLED. It wouldn’t take but a month of casual saving to afford a Steam Deck and given a lot of the games I buy are Deck Verified…It’s not a bad deal. This thing will likely be good enough for a few more years of play, particularly with indie games. Given that there is plenty of time for further consideration, I am leaning towards waiting for reviews of the Legion device I mentioned…On the off chance it is the better buy.
Just an anecdote, but I have a much smoother experience playing with the original steam deck than I did on my desktop. I mean the frames aren’t as high, the screen is small and resolution is low, but for whatever backwards reason, it just feels so smooth to look at and play with. I guess you see and feel the graphical artifacts better on a large screen with large resolution, and everything feels so uncanny somehow with high refresh rates and 100+ fps. Can’t really explain it though. Weird stuff.
Just finished the last of us 1 remake and 2 remaster with the deck. It just looks so gorgeous, I ran both with mixed medium-high settings, and it was an amazing experience. Before those I played cyberpunk with some crazy 500+ mods, and it was just excellent to play. Same with Witcher 3, though that’s getting old by now, so less surprising it runs so well.
In fact, I’m yet to play any lightweight games on this thing. Or even indie ones. These graphically intensive games have been such a joy to play, I haven’t even had the time or motivation to attempt anything else. I’m finally getting through my dusty, cobwebbed library, especially these more expensive games, and that’s been almost miraculous! A desktop requires sitting down, dedicated time and focus, but I can bring this thing with me pretty much anywhere and play a checkpoint or two or whatever while on a bus, a train, waiting for an appointment… anything. And it fucking runs all these games I’ve dreaded to play on the gaming rig because it just never felt good because I couldn’t hit ultra settings on everything, and the artifacts just were too noticeable and things weren’t as immersive as I’d have liked.
But this small little thing? So enjoyable, it’s so weird.
This is something I want to yell so loud every time I see anyone underestimating this thing talking about playing less demanding, smaller or older, indie, or otherwise more basic games. Thanks to some black magic I can’t make any sense of, the exact opposite is what you’ll want to do I bet!
They were sued in 2019 by a Native American tribe over that, I haven’t heard much about the issue since. It’s likely they are merely being neutral in the situation now, as no one is throwing up a fuss. Still, it’s not cool behavior on the part of Valve.
ANY gaming, or even tech, company looking at possible acquisitions is interested in Valve. In the same way that everyone would be down to clown with Ryan Reynolds if he knocked on their door but we know it won’t happen.
Sensationalist media will grab at anything, really.
I mean, the Nintendo thing started with an email Phil Spencer replied to titled “random thought,” and the email was basically a lot of “Yeah that sounds great, but here’s why it’s not going to happen. But sure, though, it would be nice to own Nintendo, and I know a guy who’s been trading some of their stock if you wanted to maybe buy some.”
I’d be more than happy to sacrifice a distro I don’t care about like Ubuntu to the mainstream if it means Microsoft’s market cap gets a sizeable chunk taken out of it.
I could swear it was higher earlier this year/last year but looking at the survey results, Linux climbed to 2% this survey. I think maybe that half remembered headline was something like “Linux is higher than MacOS at 1.5% market share” or something like that instead?
Steam is a massive worldwide market, and the Steam Deck isn’t offered everywhere. Chinese users for example have to import it, so not many are used there.
I got the hardware survey on my Windows PC, but not on my Steamdeck. So I wonder if there is only 1 survey per user, and most people don’t use a steamdeck exclusively?
It does include it. The article list it in detail: 36.79% of the Linux users use the steam deck. And the number is falling, which means there are more users also using Linux on desktop PC (or other gaming handhelds)
The steam deck is also amazing, such a nice piece of hardware. I’ve been gaming on Linux for years and I’m surprised how well it works. Feels like a console.
Me before the comma: Good luck to them, more options can’t be a bad thing.
Me after the comma: I intend to wipe the existence of your useless company from my memory entirely, so I’m just going to point and laugh at your failure in advance and immediately move on with my life.
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