They're a distribution mechanism. If you buy a Steam game you need Steam. Allowing developers to require Steam to play their game is not anticompetitive or in any way unethical.
They didn't force any developer who wanted to sell games on Steam to only sell games on Steam. That's what would be anticompetitive and abusing their market position. Games choosing to only distribute through Steam because there's no other storefront that wouldn't be a worse value if it was free isn't Steam doing something wrong.
But they haven't crushed any other competitor through any mechanism but having a dramatically better product.
They don't force you to be exclusive to be on steam. They don't force you to implement any of their Steam stuff. They are very permissive unless you do shit that potentially exposes them to liability down the road, like the NFT nonsense.
And they let you generate keys for literally free to sell on other stores.
All their stuff companies use is because it's things customers value.
Still, there are a few things getting in the way of the plaintiffs being successful here. For starters, games and in-game content are often cancelled - an unfortunate reality of the industry. Furthermore, even if refunds weren't granted, Aspyr did offer affected fans a copy of KOTOR 2 on Steam - where the mod can be played for free - or another Star Wars game altogether.
How is this relevant in any way?
I don't think they're legally entitled to a refund for buying a game with content that didn't exist, but neither of those are even sort of substitutes for the content or a refund.
I wonder if Nintendo would consider removing the engine version requirement if enough developers make it clear it's a dealbreaker and cancel ports or stop maintenance.
JRPGs are a very distinct genre, and either you like it or you don't. The idea that it shouldn't get its own descriptor when it's clearly different from a crpg or other approaches to RPGs is nonsense.
Exactly. It was plopping his dick on the table, then realizing "oh shit, no one actually is impressed by this".
Insider trading would be more "I know we're about to get sued for this egregious fuckup and have no defense, so I'm going to sell before the news leaks". Strategy knowledge can be part of insider trading, but it would tend to be more buying shares because you have advanced knowledge that a highly lucrative contract has been signed before the announcement. It would be harder to have selling because of a strategy decision be insider trading unless you were opposed to it internally, because decisions you make are intended to make the shareholders (you) money.
This has nothing in common with insider trading and doesn't resemble it in any way. The shares he sold weren't a relevant proportion of his ownership. He didn't sell then deliberately tank them. He sold then announced something he thought would improve the value of his big stake in the company. The decision almost definitely cost him a lot of money by substantially lowering the trajectory of his company's ability to maintain market share.
"Selling shares before the announcement" was a pretty egregious misrepresentation. He has scheduled pre-registered sales on a regular basis because he gets paid partly in stock.
It was always going to be relatively soon after a sale of stock.
It would have been perfectly fine if they did it this way to start. Tie the new licensing costs to a future engine version, give lead time before you start collecting data, and have the number be manageable.
But trust in such an absolutely critical vendor that your entire business relies on, and they told you they're perfectly fine trying to retroactively change contracts. The uncertainty of legal costs to protect your rights is a huge concern.
You got it for $200 because you're paying with your privacy. It's an absolute dumpster fire of a deal that's not remotely worth it. They could pay you $100/hour to play it and requiring an account with them, in and of itself, makes it the worst possible theoretical version of VR.
Facebook is absolutely the reason VR is fucking terrible. Their involvement, in and of itself, completely destroyed the community, many of whom abandoned the space entirely when they took away viable options to replace with privacy invading crimes against humanity. Turning enthusiasts from advocates into activists against their product is the reason there's no money left.
Literally everything about game development is a trade off. It's not possible to make a game at 5% of Starfield's scale as polished as a rockstar game. The difference in scale is too massive.
The scope of Bethesda games is a huge part of the point. Nobody else makes anything similar to what they offer.
Literally no one but legal should have the authority to remove a contract from the website, and allowing any other human being to do so is gross negligence at absolute best.
It should have sent a cascade of giant red flags the second it was touched.
lol at choosing to present it in a way that implied there was no way to avoid the retroactive license change (which you explicitly said you wanted to apply retroactively, charging fees based on activity prior to your license change), then blaming the community for interpreting it how you told us it works.