I don’t know whether valve has violated anti-trust law or not, and I certainly don’t think gaben deserves any more protection from covid than the general public but;
this is a stupid ruling. Why on earth can’t he appear remotely, as he requested? They can’t “adequately assess his credibility”? Are they gonna have an FBI body language expert on hand? Check his forehead for sweat droplets? There’s nothing they can ask him in person that they can’t ask him over a camera.
Feels like the plaintiffs are doing some kind of lowkey spite thing here, and I’m surprised the judge played along.
You’re going to need a lot more than just I’m afraid of covid to get out of being in person for a trial. People with actual fears of being killed for testimony, still appear in person. At this point with vaccines making any serious complications nearly impossible for covid, it’s a really desperate attempt to avoid attending.
I was a juror last year for a civil case, half the witnesses were cross examined over zoom before the days of the trial and played back for us. The judge made it explicitly clear that we were to take remote testimony the same as any others done in person
This isn’t a criminal trial with Gabe Newell as the defendant, it’s a civil trial against the company Valve.
Because you would expect the people in charge of the company to answer questions regarding the actions of the company.
If you were driving your truck and crashed into a traffic light, and it was caught on camera, you would be expected to answer questions about that. Even if you weren’t driving, as the registered owner you’re still going to be asked about it, or at the very least to identify who was driving.
Gabe isn’t just a tertiary witness, he has direct responsibility. Not that I think he’s done anything wrong here, I’m just saying it makes sense to have him answer questions live in court, rather than give a pre-recorded interview. Doing it live but remote invites other issues, such as poor connection quality, which would rather be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
Another thing with the trial I was a jury member on was the plaintiff themselves were not always present, most days it was just their lawyer and paralegal. The judge reminded us each day that we can’t hold their physical presence or lack thereof for or against them.
I’m no lawyer, but if neither the plaintiff nor the witnesses needed to be physically present I don’t see how they can justify forcing Gabe Newell to be. Despite being CEO he’s still not the defendant.
I mean he is pretty close to being the defendant, up to the limited liability of the company he owns and operates.
It’s also a fact that different courts, and even different judges, may treat things differently. I have no idea how Seattle handles things, but I reckon this is in line with other cases they’ve heard.
Having everyone in court wear masks absolutely does help protect him. However, what would protect everyone better is proper ventilation systems - but that would cost businesses money, rather than passing the cost and responsibility onto individuals.
Leaving the mask on the entire time is the only way it works. If everyone is taking it off to talk, they’re gonna be spreading shit around every time they talk. What state is this court in? Texas?
Everyone leaving their mask on the entire time is the most effective way it works. The judge is seeking a compromise, presumably with the intent of being able to clearly hear him speak and see his facial expressions. I don’t think anyone else will be taking their masks off, not even the lawyer asking him questions, so in that regard Gabe will still be somewhat protected.
Like I say though there are far more effective measures involving good ventillation. If you spend a long enough time in a sealed room with someone infected, even the mask won’t be enough protection, but if there is good ventillation then you won’t be breathing in anywhere near as much of other peoples’ germs.
Accordingly, Mr. Newell is ORDERED to attend the deposition in person as noticed. (See Dkt. No. 165-2.) In hopes of alleviating Mr. Newell’s health concerns, the Court mandates the following additional health measures: all participants (including questioning counsel) must wear a tightly fitting certified N95, KF94, or KN95 face mask throughout the deposition. At his discretion, Mr. Newell may provide those certified masks to participants. But Mr. Newell shall remove his mask when responding to questions from Plaintiffs’ counsel.
The bit about Gabe providing the masks makes me raise my eyebrow a little, but I think everyone would still be required to wear a mask regardless of whether or not Gabe hands them out at his own expense - I think it’s just so that Gabe can be sure everyone’s mask is up to snuff, if he’s concerned about that.
So they are still not absolute in that the users still get to buy a PC or an Android phone or get satellite connectivity via a global ISP, which boils the issue down to inconvenience/cost/hardship, not the absence of alternatives.
It’s the logic of the comment I responded to. The existence of this upcoming trial alone is proof that the mere presence of alternatives is not enough to claim there’s no monopoly in the relevant market.
The (my) comment that you responded to presented you a list of actual monopolies that have no alternatives on their platform. There was no “logic” presented, it was a statement of observation.
The existence of the lawsuit does not mean there is proof, it means that Wolfire has enough of a case to begin discovery on two of their claims that the court is interested to find out more. That’s it.
One of the claims is also very weird and I can’t actually find any information corroborating the claim besides the claim itself (re: Valve acquiring and shutting down World Opponent Network). The only thing I see is that Sierra was acquired by Havas who made WON into it’s own entity, then merged it with PrizeCentral under the name Flipside.com and the last WON game was released in 2006.
The only thing relating to Valve I can see is that Valve announced Steam in 2002 and then they removed WON from their own games, which they had every right to do so.
WG’s strongest claim is the MFN clause, and they actually have to prove that it’s for anticompetitiveness.
Wolfire originally operated Humble Bundle, and they have a very legitimate case. Steam uses anticompetitive pricing policies that makes it difficult for other marketplaces to compete.
If anticompetitive means “it’s your choice to enter into an agreement in which we host your game for 30%, and distribute it on our platform, with unlimited patch updates, and unlimited user downloads, and a fuckton of features like community forums, guides, groups etc., also if your game is good we will promote it free of charge”
Then I suppose companies like Epic who choose to run at a loss, as opposed to providing a good service, have no chance, and Steam is anticompetitive.
The counter narrative exists though, Steam is just a good service, and if you want to compete with them, you need to provide a good service, like GOG.
The Platform Most Favored Nation policy employed by Steam is the one at issue in this case. And yes, it is anticompetitive. It abuses userbase size to prevent alternative marketplaces from providing fewer services for smaller cuts
Again, it just sounds like Valve is offering a good service and other companies don’t want to compete. If it’s Valves fault for providing a good service and lots of users choose to use their platform instead of others, I fail to see what they could do to rectify that.
Valve offers a great service, and I enjoy it a lot. But it’s very difficult for a competitor to enter the market because they won’t be able to match Steam’s services immediately. Typically in a market the approach is then to undercut Steam, but that is exactly what this policy is designed to make impractical by forcing publishers to overprice, on penalty of losing Steams’ userbase.
I mean I don’t know what else to say. It is anti-competitive. It doesn’t take too much to see why. There are many good articles and legal briefs on the matter. It hurts you and me, the consumer, and it hurts publishers. It enriches Valve, benevolent though they may appear. You shouldn’t like this type of strong-arming the market when Amazon does it, and you shouldn’t roll over and take it from Valve either.
Doesn’t even matter, the court is going to sort it out for us. But I hate to see the reputational hit Wolfire is taking here. I like their studio, I believe their developers are operating in genuine good faith, and I think they are doing consumers a favor.
Just to play devils advocate, what do you think Valve should do differently?
After learning more about it, I’m understanding the problem is that Wolfire (and every other developer/publisher) has a contract with Valve, in which they aren’t allowed to sell their game on another PC market for a cheaper price than Steam.
Though, I wouldn’t describe that as anticompetitive, rather, neutrally-competitive. Valve is offering a level playing field, they can take it or leave it. This is a fairly standard practice among businesses (though I understand this does not make it right).
If valve wanted to be anticompetitive they would dictate that games published on Steam are exclusive to Steam on PC.
What Wolfire wants to happen is for game marketplaces and game services platforms to be decoupled. Right now Valve has vertically integrated the two. You buy the game, and they offer peer multiplayer, social, workshop, etc.
If those services were charged separately, so that the costs of those services was not forced into the pricing of other marketplaces that don’t offer those services, you open the market to more competition.
So Wolfire’s idea of being anticompetitive is to restrict how many features a platform may offer?
Honestly, it just sounds like Wolfire has an axe to grind. Steam doesn’t price in the features it offers, their 30% cut existed a long time before most of this stuff was added.
Something like this will never be implemented. Consider the outcome: Steam decouples the marketplace from the extra services, so they create a separate application and offer it as a free service, and creates a link between the two services. There are a hundred ways around this, and all of them inconvenience the consumer.
I’m at my wits end trying to explain this. I guess I can just recommend reading the legal briefs that summarize the matter, or articles that dig deeper than this one.
Maybe I’ll think about it later and make a more complete write up with concrete examples. I really hate to see the confusion here. Wolfire is doing us a favor, we should not be handing Valve the keys to the market just because they act like Mr. Benevolent.
That us all fine. David is alleging that Valve is trying to restrict other platforms wolfire can sell their cases on. Valve needs to compete, not threaten to stop distributing a game if they don’t like how it is selling elsewhere.
I can’t believe that a company that puts out a device running Linux that gives you access to the OS in a few clicks and provides guides for how to install competing distribution platforms is more anticompetitive than Sony, Apple, Nintendo, Microsoft, Google. Valve and Steam aren’t perfect. It’s difficult to accept that having a store and charging for it is worse than, for example, Sony buying studios and paying millions of dollars for some games to be exclusive on their platform.
I love this new narrative that undercutting the competition’s pricing is anti-competitive and not just winning at the competition because the other teams don’t want to improve.
Is this why they were giving away all free steam keys on 4chan yesterday? I thought it was just Black Friday deals, shoulda known those anons don’t do anything for the sake of being nice.
Valve is trying to escape Microsoft’s monopolistic practices with Linux while out performing their competition in a fair market. I like competition but I don’t get what advantage steam has that their competition doesn’t. Even with the steam deck they’re using standardized hardware and open source software to make a competitive product leaving room for competition to create their own versions.
One can appreciate Valve’s contributions to Linux gaming without idealizing them. The likely reason they went for Linux is that they would have to pay Microsoft to use Windows.
This is true that it is a likely reason. It is also possible that Gabe Newell runs his company in a very deliberate way because he thinks it’s a net benefit to both his company and gaming in general. From what I have heard, which of course may be a flawed understanding of the man, it seems like he has certain principles. I guess the question is whether or not a person believes intent matters or only the end result.
I don’t idealize them, I use the other storefronts (gog epic) potentially more because they often don’t sell games with any form of drm. I just don’t get it because as far as my experience goes they’re all about the same minus more jank on the other two.
I’ve actually spent the most time with Rockstar games launcher thanks to GTA V and RDR2 and that one is a real piece of work tbh.
Steam has a large userbase, which offers a lot of consumer inertia to prefer games on Steam. They also have a policy where game pricing on other platforms cannot undercut Steam.
The main complaint is that this pricing policy coupled with the consumer inertia makes it difficult for other gaming marketplaces to enter the market. You cannot undercut steam unless a publisher wants to not put their game on Steam at all (which would be suicide for anything but the largest titles), so you have to sell at Steam’s price point. Few platforms could match Steams’ established workshop, multiplayer, streaming, and social services; all of which benefit from costs at scale and the established user content.
Imagine trying to convince a user: “Buy your game here instead. It will cost the same as on Steam. No, you won’t have access to the existing Workshop. No, you won’t have in-platform multiplayer with your Steam friends.” Even if you had feature parity, people would prefer Steam since that’s where their existing games and friends are.
Note that the main argument Wolfire is making is that game marketplaces (buy/download the game) and game platforms (online features, mod distribution, social pages) need to be decoupled. By integrating the two, Steam is vertically integrating, amortizing the cost, and then forcing every other marketplace to bear the cost of a platform in their pricing.
If you bought a game and paid for platform services separately, then competition can better exist for both of those roles. Which is good for consumers.
I’m going to be real, the seperatization might be good technically from a consumer standpoint, but mostly will just prove to make consumers lives harder for no reason. One of the major benefits of Steam is that it handles everything, and isn’t something I, or anyone else, would be happy to give up.
I typically try to buy games from gog if available and on epic if not and steam if it’s on sale. The only harm I see is how janky the other storefronts are and how frequently they break or refuse to load and that’s not steams fault. I don’t play a lot of online games but epic and gog are my primary platforms to play on.
I’m not defending steam but I also don’t see how the advantage a platform like steam has is a direct result of any anti consumer practices. Honestly I prefer a storefront over rootkits and heavy handed drm any day not to mention downloading gamepatches directly from the publishers website.
Blame the gray resellers. If the world courts had found those sites illegal, then devs could likely still set regional prices without having 90% of them getting resold to the outside world.
Back then Amiga computers were at their peak, it wasn’t uncommon for a whole game to be on a single 1.44 MB floppy. It was also pretty common that booting from the disk was the only way to launch the game.
I guess it’s good that devs don’t need to optimize as much as they had to, but I also feel like we’ve collectively allowed the laziness to go too far, with 110gb updates and stuff.
I personally would prefer spending my time building new stuff, but I think if I had to, optimizing can also be fun and interesting in its own way.
Yes I too look nostalgically look back on my games having nothing but beep audio because I didn’t have one of three sound cards my chosen game decided to support
I recently finished the game for the first time and was thinking about to get Phantom Liberty extension too. Now I have to wait a bit longer. BTW in the article this part:
To ensure everyone knows it's not kidding, it even threw in a little fire emoji.
The fire emoji. It makes everything believable. xD
What parts are you having trouble with? The game has a serious learning curve but once you’ve got a full campaign under your belt it gets way easier. Try doing a run as a paladin or sorcerer (melee or caster) on explorer mode. Those two classes will be good for combat and dialog making your run easier. Also research how to create a proper character. The earliest levels are the hardest to get through since you’re super weak at those levels.
Skyrim is a first person action adventure game with RPG elements. Baldurs gate is a much more traditional fantasy RPG which I a focused on tactics and D&D core rules and character stories where action stakes a back seat. So it sounds more like you enjoy the action and immersion of Skyrim than the “RPG” side of it.
BG3 is really a love letter to the people that liked the original games and wanted more depth to the systems to try to capture the tabletop experience a little more. Since you described it as “clunky” I’m guessing that the slower tactical aspect is what you’re bouncing off of.
It honestly sounds like its just Not your thing. BG3 is about as modern as a game of this Genre can be. Dont force yourself through something you dont enjoy.
There’s a decent chance you might not be missing anything, it’s just not for you. Minecraft and Terraria are beloved titles that people put thousands of hours into, but I never got into them myself.
A turn-based CRPG is a very old-fashioned thing (the C stands for Computer), and it’s a pretty faithful adaption of a TT (tabletop, so pen-and-paper) RPG, which is even older (though the current ruleset for DnD is pretty new). I can definitely understand how Skyrim appeals to you but something like BG3 doesn’t; they’re fundamentally different games, and Skyrim is much faster-paced
Are you playing with a mouse on a PC? Try it with a controller, it completely changes the game. The PS5 movement system is vastly superior to the PC movement with a mouse.
I have never played a Baldurs game, but I’m planning to play this one when I eventually get a PS5… And I thought it would suck with conventional controllers.
I have it on both PC and PS5 and I greatly prefer it on PS5. My computer loads things faster, and it looks better, but the PS5 version is much more immersive and considerably easier to move around. Inventory management is a lot better on PC though.
Does it? I haven’t tried. When I tried to use a PS4 Pro controller in the past it messed it up and I had to reset it to use it with the console again. Can you use PS5 controllers with a Linux PC?
I don’t own a ps5, so I’m not 100% sure on the ps5 sync, but there shouldn’t be any issue for that as Sony put out a firmware update to make it work well with pc at one point. But for me with my ps5 controller, it works and pairs flawlessly, and the touchpad on the controller works as a mouse on the desktop.
Running around the world is better with a controller, but actually interacting with things is easier with a mouse. You can click the left stick to use a cursor for precise targeting.
For me it’s just being old… I love what I played but only had 1 opportunity to sit down and play it. I realized I love and hate the fact that there is sooooo much to do and think about. For me, my time is limited to an hour tops here and there, so sadly, this type of game just frustrates me because I am always looking at a clock, and I hate that. Wish I was a kid again, so I can actually enjoy all the great games coming out in recent years.
Starfield feels the same, I go back to it for an hour or two and I forget what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s fiddly and I don’t know where some of the menus are.
It follows the DAO formula very closely. Though it also improves on it in some ways. And IMO there is at least one thing that DAO does better, which is that the main player character gets some actual character development.
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