Really? I have very high hopes. Not next year or the year after but as we approach the end of the decade you will be able to ask for any experience you desire. Furthrr since it will get to know your taste, it will be tailored to you. I share this with both excitement as a consumer and sadness as a VR developer whose career will be replaced by AI one day.
Whenever a company wants to drop X workers, the first Y people of that have to be the C-suites, and they cannot get a parachute. They leave just on the last pay they received regularly, no bonuses or anything.
Oh course, and I’m half joking. But something has to be done about execs stuffing their own arse full with all the bank notes they get from mass layoffs, when that money could easily keep some of those workers employed.
Oh no, the buffoons who mismanaged the company so badly that scores of people are laid off have to be fired! Now who will fuck things up while making off with tons of cash?
I appreciate requiring everyone wearing a good mask while he’s in the courtroom, but I don’t understand how having him in the room to testify would be substantially different from an online appearance.
They’ll never release HL3. They are not a developer anymore. They are just a game store/directory. HL3 has been overhyped so much that anything released would be a disappointment. The gaming market has changed too much from when they made a game engine and released half life to showcase that game engine.
I can probably list a million more reasons why they’ll never release, but those are the big points.
Half-life Alyx was HL3, just it was better to name it not HL3, because fans would lose their minds.
On the one hand, yeah. On the other hand, HL:A ended with an obvious sequel hook, and that hook was the ending of HL2:E2. Spoilers, I guess, but the game’s been out for a while.
Of course, that doesn’t mean another game is coming, but it does mean that HL:A doesn’t mean another game isn’t coming, either.
So there is an anti-trust lawsuit against steam, but not apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft… Etc of those giant companies who literally destroy everything in their way? Please tell me they’re next?
There are anti trust lawsuits going on with most the companies you listed though? Microsoft had one in the early tech days that they won, but there’s probably going to be another one soon…
Outdoors with proximity to 1-3 other people, where he can move at will and distance himself vs indoors, courtroom full of people and he’s sitting while people move around. Probably not the same. If the guy has risk factors for developing complications with COVID, which we can see he has one which is being overweight, I don’t think it’s reasonable for the court to force him to attend when he could attend remotely.
He was mere feet away from total strangers who may or may not have been masked when he opened the door (taking the video at face value, and assuming he didn’t send the production team up there to tell the residents to mask up first). Much more dangerous than a courtoom of people with N95s on, none of whom he would need to get as close to as he did for those Deck deliveries.
Interacting with maybe a dozen people outside with a mask on for a few minutes at a time is almost certainly much lower risk than being in a courtroom with, likely, many more people and stale air for hours. It’s certainly helpful if everybody is masked up in the courtroom, but people are notoriously bad at wearing masks properly, they’re going to require Gabe Newell to unmask for questions, and there’s a lot more factors you don’t control in that scenario… outside delivering stuff you can always walk away if somebody isn’t giving you the space you’re comfortable with… Regardless, all risk is cumulative and you may want to limit the number of times you do higher risk things as much as possible. Even if you rarely do some riskier things, it doesn’t mean you’re okay with that level of risk all of the time. I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to want to manage and minimize your exposure if you’re high risk.
Going door to door in fresh air is something else than sitting in a room with lots of other people and “you’ll be fine” is an insane argument. You’ll be fine until you aren’t. Every person should be able to make that risk assessment for themselves and courts should not be able to force someone to risk exposure to anything.
It amazes me that covidiots still don't understand the difference between inside and outside spaces for that matter. If people breath and cough around the outside, shit will just be swept away by the wind. If people do that in enclosed spaces, then they'll just start to saturate the air with germs over its prolonged time. And then you even expect them to take off the mask when they're in the witness stand? Do you think that's like a germ free zone? lol
My family refers to vaxxed people as covidiots. So I tend to associate it with antivax people. I will accept my negative number either way. Apologies for the confusion.
I wouldn’t say I’m hurt. More embarrassed that I accepted a definition without further scrutiny.
My philosophy is to always be learning. Sometimes trauma impedes it and a wake up call is necessary. So I appreciate your time and thoughtful response and will take this lesson as an opportunity to do better for myself.
I wasn’t strictly talking about the definition of covidiot, I was referring to the virus’ transmissibility; indoors vs outdoors.
There has been a lot of misinformation during covid, from both sides, and virtually everyone needs to accept that they were wrong about certain things.
For example, I was forced to change my mind about the safety of the vaccine. I still personally believe most people should have been vaccinated, but we need to accept that it didn’t do what was expected.
At the end of the day, Covid is a respiratory virus, and the consensus of indoors vs outdoors transmissibility had been reached decades ago.
I appreciated the measured response, it’s rare to see people sincerely reflect on their beliefs so quickly without feeling condescended.
Others have explained to you why it’s different, and that that happened 2 years ago and a lot of things health related can change in that time. But even if he had done that yesterday, even if it was the same, he should be able to choose to attend remotely, he’s not asking to be excused, he’s not asking to change anything, all he’s asking is to be able to do it from his home, and I wouldn’t deny that to anyone unless there’s a reason to be physically there, which there isn’t.
Yeah, I don’t really think anybody should have to go to court in person, and I can definitely empathize with somebody wanting to avoid COVID (even if they’re not super high risk, you never know how it will affect you it seems). I kind of understand the bias towards in person things, but I really wish people would get over it. Sometimes it’s just a lot more practical to do things remotely, and while a video call isn’t quite the same as being there in person I think it’s something we can deal with. It certainly doesn’t seem like it would be that much worse for testifying tbh.
I mean, yeah, if you drop those two as the alternative, every time, fuck those guys every day and twice on sunday. But… Gaben’s got a very different record.
I’m of the opinion that he should have to testify like anyone else just to preclude Trump and their ilk from trying to get out of testifying in person.
Court is boring AF, he’s just using covid for an excuse to avoid having to go. I can’t really blame him for trying, but I’m not surprised it didn’t work.
Actually no, I’d let the science speak for itself. Being outdoors with a mask on significantly reduces your chances of contracting COVID-19. Being in a crowded room with lots of other people significantly increases your risk. Gabe is right, just like any other CEO would be right if they said the same thing.
Legit, I’ve never heard of anti-competetive practices from Valve. Anti-consumer? Sometimes, yeah, though they do a lot more right than most
The argument seems to be that “30% cut is too high” but it’s not like there aren’t other options if you think that’s too high. Epic loves to pay for games to be exclusive there, humble and gog exist, one could even go the retro route and set up their own website (though that’s prolly the dumb idea), itch.io comes to mind…
If Valve HAS done some shady shit to ensure their major market share I’d be down to hear it, but to me as a PC gamer since '10ish (and had PC gamer friends since 06) it seems they got there through being a not complete garbage heap of a company that actually improved over the years on user feedback, which is supposed to be the good example of capitalism innit?
Escape from Tarkov has been very successful with their own site and launcher. I don’t see it ever going to steam and it’s regularly in the top 10 of twitch
No, it’s saying if you make a good game and launcher then you don’t need to rely on one of the storefront that take 30% like epic or Valve. Idk what GoGs cut is but I’ve also never bought anything from there
Thousands fail every day on the platform as well, is that survivorship bias as well or just evidence that trash fails and quality succeeds regardless of location
Wolfire Games created the original Humble Indie Bundle, but they’ve been divested from it for a few years now. From Wikipedia:
The Humble Bundle concept was initially run by Wolfire Games in 2010, but by its second bundle, the Humble Bundle company was spun out to manage the promotion, payments, and distribution of the bundles. In October 2017, the company was acquired by Ziff Davis through its IGN Entertainment subsidiary.
The comment above that Humble’s the ones suing Valve here is inaccurate.
No, humble bundle isn’t run by them anymore. They haven’t been run by the wolfire guys since 2017. If I’m wrong and they are then I’m probably not buying anything from humble again.
Suing valve. Like, valve is the only company I’m okay with having the amount of marketshare they currently have. I’m legit worried that if they go too hard on the lawsuit, it could result in the monkey’s paw curling (“I wish valve didn’t have so much marketshare” “granted: steam has been spun off into its own company. Without steam, valve goes under and “steamcorp’s” new management goes public”)
I think there was some cross-pollination for a couple years beyond that. Sounds like they sold Humble off to be its own thing, but the Wolfire guys were still running it until 2019 (see Wikipedia quote below). Either way, they’ve got out of Humble well before they filed this suit.
Rosen and Graham, the founders of Humble Bundle [and the CEO and COO, respectively, of Wolfire Games], announced in March 2019 that they have stepped down as CEO and COO of the company, respectively, with Alan Patmore taking over the company operations.
…unless you have a policy that requires other marketplaces to sell at the same price as on Steam, undercutting the ability for “better deals” to exist at all.
Which is what the lawsuit is actually arguing is going on.
Hah if 30% is deemed too much the apple app store and pretty much any retail is going to be next. Steam is popular because they don’t pull this nonsense. At 70% growth p/a why bother too
I’m also curious what the allegations are. The only ones I ever heard were from Epic, which was basically making a big fuss to promote their own competitive platform (which was so shit it didn’t gain any traction apart from the free games).
I’ve tried all the online stores ever since the cloudification (remember Impulse?) but none have ever been able to compete with Steam in terms of features and value to the customer. Steam didn’t get to the top by being anti competitive, it got there by being competitive and offering a better product to all stakeholders, not just to shareholders.
And as you mentioned, there is plenty of competition for Steam. Don’t like the monoply? Get it on GOG or Itch instead.
Valve devotes only a small percentage of its revenue to maintaining and improving the Steam Store, and dedicates very few employees to that effort.
Okay yeah I was annoyed that it took Epic’s store to make Valve update their ancient UI, but Proton has gone a long way to improving my opinion of them (and it’s open source to boot).
Also is a shame that the court won’t have the background to know that invoking EA’s complaints about anti-competitiveness and price gouging is so completely laughable.
PMFN (Platform Most-Favored-Nations clause): Valve forces publishers to price games on other platforms at the same price or higher than Steam. This is an anticompetitive monopoly because publishers can’t sell the game at lower prices on platforms with a lower cut than 30%, which would improve competitiveness. Very valid point
Keys that publishers can sell on other storefronts are limited. This point is moot. The fact that Steam allows you to activate a product that was purchased elsewhere and then use their infrastructure to download the game is way more than they have to do. They can completely make the rules here as this is basically a free service that you get from Valve.
Some murky points about Valve policing review bombing that isn’t explained properly.
If 30% we’re too high, surely just by offering a competitor that takes a lot less if a cut (say, 12,%), developers would flock to thst competitor because it saves them so much money, right?
Not even just that. They approached games that has already promised not to be exclusives, including kickstarter games that had already been funded with that promise, as well as buying games and removing them from other stores.
They were paying to have the games removed from better stores so they wouldn’t have to compete. That is an example of anti-competitive practices, not just making a better product and charging more for it.
People don’t hate on Epic because their store has content. They hate on Epic because they tried to buy market share with exclusivity deals. Nobody wants PC gaming to turn into the streaming services.
yeah, i think the 30% is fair enough, given the amount of stuff you get as a user by using steam, like
good cross-platform support
a working friendlist and chat system
remote play together
the workshop and community features
profile customisation stuff for those that like it
whishlists and gifts
i honestly feel like while they’re a monopoly, they don’t do anything other companies can’t do, their cut goes to fund features others simply don’t provide, so it’s entierly fair for them to be more expensive than the competition
Valve hasn’t done anything shady, but monopolies are still bad and unhealthy. Both things are true. And there are no other options for less of a cut if you want to actually make sales, pc gamers won’t purchase from other platforms.
Monopolies are bad, but is it a monopoly if they naturally gained market share because their product was first and better?
Honestly I’d be fine with them removing the “PMFN” clause, but I’d rather it be a law that it can’t be enforced because you know Valve isn’t the only one to include it. But even if they did get rid of it, I don’t think they’d see a major shift away from their platform.
Yes, it’s unhealthy for the undustry even if you enjoy it today. Gabe newel is old. He’s going to retire soon and likely sell the company. You won’t like what happens after that, and the fact that so much of the industry is provided via their product means they have a lot of agency to tighten the screws.
“OH but then we’ll just use something else”. That’s not how the monopoly works, you might, most won’t. Most of what you want won’t be on the something else.
Yes. They sued Valve with allegation that they are too successful by providing good service. Sure 30% is too much for some developers, but solution is quite simple… don’t sell on Steam. Problem solved. Go to Epic, GoG, bunch of others. Hell every company now has its own launcher and store.
What’s saddest of all is the fact they are willing to throw millions on this litigation instead of spending that money on improving the service. They claim it’s for the good of all users, but their actions tell different story.
Or even just make it more expensive on steam, if you really want 100% of the revenue for every sale. Pass the cost of using steam on to the user and offer the game on other (worse) markets at a markdown.
There could be a clause in terms of use that Steam won’t allow developers to make their games most expensive on Steam, or at least cheaper than elsewhere.
Pretty much. Meanwhile other stores engage in actual behaviour that deserves an anti-trust lawsuit like buying up developer studio’s and making their games exclusive to their own platforms. Or paying devs to make games exclusive to their store temporarily. You know, things that actually screw the consumer over.
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