I’ll be the first to say I don’t like Linux gaming’s dependence on valve. I wish steam wasn’t the best experience, and I applaud all the effort that the FOSS community puts in to keep them honest.
But for the “gambling” monetization in particular, this is really a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” situation. It’s on people/govts to regulate this. If Valve said tomorrow, “you’re right, we’re not going to monetize gambling anymore because we think it is unethical”, they would just lose to a competitor who is less ethical.
It’s the same as saying, “if you’re rich and are pro higher taxes, why don’t you just choose to pay more? Nothing is stopping you.” Because that’s not going to fix anything, it’s just a losing strategy. What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.
To that end, Valve’s most ethical move would be to lobby the govt to ban unethical monetization. I know they’re making bank, but whether they’re making enough to out-lobby all the others who are also doing this, I don’t know…also we all know the US is not exactly positioned for effective FTC policies right now…
What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.
That’s not feasible, but it’s probably feasible to require everyone to act in a way that doesn’t hurt society, and make restitution when they do hurt society.
For example, I’m okay with gambling in games being legal, but there needs to be rules:
no kids
pay into a fund to help those with addiction
odds of winning are clearly posted in a way that’s accessible and understandable, and the odds are verified independently
there should be a way to buy something instead of gambling for it
must have a way to set spending limits to protect drunk gamblers
Valve could literally ban gambling on all Steam games if they wanted to. stop playing devil’s advocate for billionaires, Gaben has enough yachts already
You can install Proton by other means. It doesn’t have to be through Steam. And by now, since Valve made so much of the groundwork already, the development of Proton can be done by the community, like so many other FOSS projects.
And you can build your own PC and peripherals, yet every aspect of the gaming industry is funded and driven by corporations. Always has been, and Linux gaming is no exception.
I specifically acknowledged the FOSS efforts to eliminate depenence on valve, I think it’s great, but even Bazzite uses the SteamDeck UI. Do you know if there’s a FOSS deck UI replacement that unifies all storefronts/repos, and works as smoothly? I want that to exist.
Steam is just objectively the smoothest linux gaming experience for the largest number of people right now. It’d be awesome if that wasn’t the case, but for now it is.
Don’t assume it is “checking out” from society or taking the easy way out. The news will find you, don’t worry. Plus maintaining focus on your thing is something that can take significant effort.
I have noticed that the smaller I make my world, the happier I am. My free time goes into my family, friends, hobbies, and pets (which I guess is a big subset of the hobbies). I think a big part of the benefit is not just focusing on the people who can have the biggest effect on my life, but focusing on the people whose life I can improve the most with my involvement.
Our brains evolved to keep tabs on our clan or our village, not to monitor the events of the entire Earth in near real time, as if we’re going to do anything with that information. In fact, I think that “need” to be informed is often just an addiction manufactured by the need to drive engagement to validate 24/7 news as a business model.
I was about to rebut the “visit the US” thing, but people really should wait until immigration no longer looks at peoples’ phones or social media. I think I can still refuse as a citizen on 4th amendment grounds, but until that’s extended to visitors, I recommend holding off.
Far Isle was a human colony planet, within Unified Earth Government space. The colony was the site of what is considered to be one of the United Nations Space Command’s worst atrocities; in response to a rebellion in 2492 that they were unable to quell, the UNSC razed the colony using nuclear weapons, leaving no survivors.
We are basically getting a casino shoved in our faces most online games we play now. Not sure why this isn’t outlawed, it is absolutely having an effect on the population, not the mention the growing population specifically (growing as in kids being shoved this in their face while they grow up).
They know nobody is going to purchase the pay-per-view, but I guess they don’t care since the alternative is not getting any money anyways. Esports was never sustainable because fans refuse to spend money, so they rely on shady sponsorships from gambling sites and Saudi money.
They’re charging for it because the Japanese audience will pay for it, and I guess they don’t want to handle it differently abroad. Fighting games, at least up to this point, have been sustainable in a way that the rest of e-sports have not. The rest of e-sports was predicated on future growth, and fighting games have only grown as fast as the money coming in, in general. (2XKO is putting out $50k in pot bonuses for a game that doesn’t look to be earning that much, and the Saudis now own SNK and treat Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting like they’re Call of Duty.)
I feel like Dota 2’s The International goes against your claim. It was the esports tournament with highest prize pool several years in a row, and it was funded almost exclusively by Dota 2 players buying The Battle pass. Valve removed battle pass like 2 years ago, but it’s still ocupies top 1 up to top 7 esports tournaments with highest prize pool: www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments.
A sustainable scene wouldn’t have dropped from a $40M prize pool to $4M. The issue is that the esports scene was not self funded, it was funded by a percentage of the base game economy.
The reduction in prize pool being related to the removal of battle pass shows that fans never cared about supporting the esports scene, they only wanted the battle pass for the skins or whatever it is that you get from it.
Even if the Dota 2 esports was sustainable, that would be one game out of dozens.
Rainbow Six Siege has had a pretty strong competitive scene for pretty much the entirety of it’s lifespan- it’s definitely fluctuated a bit in popularity, but the prize pools have always been reasonable numbers, and it’s always had decent viewership.
Japan’s attitude to e-sports is so bizarre. between this, Nintendo constantly shutting down fan tournaments, and other companies acting like e-sports don’t exist until it becomes big enough not to capitalize on..
How the fuck do they think it’s going to work if they keep gatekeeping the few people interested in esports?
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