Makes sense. Individuals regularly get patents in America and individuals regularly get cancer in America. It’s just an asset albeit one that may have emotional value. But cancer will cost you your heirlooms here too
Future museum
“And here we have yet another product of double human stupidity: one for stapling an electronic and another for buying the entire thing for over 120k dollars”
Yeah, even if it’s a big brand attachment or whatever, I’m never going to complain about a big charity donation. (as long as it’s not a bogus charity, of course)
Whatever you are willing to pay, since they are most likely looking for a new job. They have experience in damage stacking and liability research. And stapling.
In an actual free market all the corporations would act like this, because shit like this is what people want out of a business they patronize.
You will recall that there was a bit of a fuss a month or so ago when an undoubtedly-harried GameStop employee stapled some customer receipts directly to Nintendo Switch 2 boxes—and through the boxes, and into the Switch 2 units themselves. It was all quickly resolved, without lawsuits or fistfights, and with the ugliness now behind it GameStop is looking to make some proverbial lemonade by auctioning off the Switch 2 killer for charity.
No lawsuits, no fight required by affected consumers
The company made it right and turned a bad situation into a PR move that helps a charity.
I really thought we’d see some kind of ethical capitalism out of the whole GameStop thing but it never really spread.
“You no longer have the liberty of buying a game from wherever you want. You must consider whether your store is going to continue receiving patches, whether the store itself is going to continue supporting your hardware and software, and whether your friends online bought the game from the same store.”
So are we pissed at the entire industry, or just Steam? You don’t have the liberty to buy anything from wherever you want. Go download Fortnite from Steam, buddy! Oop! It ain’t there!? Here’s hoping he deleted the rest of his online accounts while he was at it, but online blowhards tend to be hypocrites.
You’re only underscoring Kaldaien’s point about Steam by bringing up Fortnite, given that Epic is willing to release their products on other stores, whether it’s mobile or Microsoft Store on PC, as long as the terms are reasonable, not junk fees, as Sweeney puts it.
Yes, Valve is quite consistent about keeping things locked to its store. Steamworks is also limited to Steam. Proton is an exception, but the LGPL license of Wine simply wouldn’t allow it to be otherwise. Publishing the source code is required if building on it rather than just using it as a component.
They immediately lost me with props to the Microsoft store with what a pain it was to even access the game directory in the past. And even if it is improving is something that just locks you into having to use Windows OS as opposed to being able play the purchased game on other OS.
Hell with stuff like recall and Windows moving to trying to force OS online accounts compared to how clean Winows 7 used to be they just lose credibility for whatever they are trying to argue.
Stores should only provide DRM, and anything else that they do must be optional.
But earlier:
I would rather pay a fraction of the price to play a game for one month than pretend digitally distributed games have the lifespan of a boxed physical product.
So, DRM is bad… but acceptable if it’s only DRM?
If DRM is a critical failure point for game preservation and ownership, then a store providing only DRM is still part of the problem.
In lieu of even the simplest commitment by Valve… Game Pass represent far greater value to consumers.
Game Pass is the epitome of temporary, self-updating, DRM-heavy software that you can’t patch, mod, or preserve. Yet it’s presented as a solution?
Valve does not expect users to delete their account; they think… nobody will ever hold them accountable.
Then:
They claim that upon deleting your account, your community posts will remain and will be attributed to [deleted], however this is not true…
Wait, isn’t it contradictory to say they didn’t expect users to delete accounts while criticizing their policy on deleted accounts?
Because the Steam client patches itself… their DRM prevents running Windows 98-era games on original hardware.
That shit is 25 years old. Does this goober really think it’s reasonable to expect support for an obsolete operating system?
Also, is this really a steam-only issue?
Valve’s… design deliberately hooks and blocks access to those APIs as part of Steam Input’s initialization.
This is typical behavior of API abstraction layers.
If Steam Input replaces lower-level APIs, that’s exactly what it’s designed to do. Epic, Microsoft, and others do the same. The difference is the option to disable it - not the architectural behavior itself.
In summation: This dingbat is a walking contradiction with an axe to grind.
I would field a guess, that this person is super angry about being left behind in the ever growing tech industry. Some of the complaints are valid, but directing them at specifically Valve seems super weird, since they are currently the best company concerning user-experience.
Family sharing: nobody asked for it, and it seems like a bad business move - Valve did it anyway.
Index: great piece of tech. Too bad about the price tag though.
Deck: fucking masterpiece. Blows Switch out of the fucking water.
Support staff: fucking legends. I’ve had multiple interactions where they have breached their own policy to keep me happy,
Privately owned: despite the incentives to cash out and make bank. They have a fucking spine, which makes them dangerous to other platforms.
This guy claims to be a long-time developer and modder, yet suggests Game Pass is better for preservation than Steam. If that’s their industry insight, no wonder nobody at Valve took their feedback seriously.
There is a valid argument against the DRM being that your ancient air-gapped system should be able to run the game still but can’t run the DRM due to the requirements changing after the point of purchase. Perhaps there is a discussion to be had about whether DRM should be removed once you change the system requirements drastically, but this feels like a rare circumstance.
The simple solution is to get DRM-free copies from GOG where possible. Archive the installers if you’re worried about future compatibility. That way you can have a nostalgic Windows 98 machine or whatever that only plays games and won’t bug you with random unprovoked changes and updates from day to day.
Enter Monthly Subscription Game Libraries and DRM-free → Exit Steam
In lieu of even the simplest commitment by Valve to keep their DRM client free of system requirement creep, business models like Ubisoft+, EA Access and Game Pass represent far greater value to consumers. The claim is often made that you “do not own the game” with these services, but you do not own them on Steam either; Valve stops pretending to care if their store’s software breaks your game after you have played it for two hours.
I would rather pay a fraction of the price to play a game for one month than pretend digitally distributed games have the lifespan of a boxed physical product. You can consume the entirety of a game within one month and pay an appropriate amount of money for the ephemeral service offered.
this person is extremely misguided. the a copy if the game files, drop in the goldberg emu dll, and done. works forever, in as many copies as you feel like. DRMs can stand in the way, but that’s exactly what makes it even worse on subscription platforms. and online only, or strictly multiplayer games? these won’t work whatever you do, but that’s not valve’s fault.
valve is careless but today other than GOG, it’s still the best (read: least bad) popular storefront, and subscription based systems are simply just the worst.
pcgamer.com
Gorące