Sure, I might own the hardware
Not for long. The goal seems to be to make RAM, flash memory, and GPU’s so expensive that most consumers will need to purchase low-powered client devices and subscribe to cloud computing business models. It’s a handful of companies who are cornering the markets, controlling the supply, and seeking rents.
Maybe I’m odd, but I related heavily to this meme without thinking of porn mods. I’ve played hundreds, probably thousands of hours in Skyrim across various platforms, almost all without mods. Even the creation club nonsense in the anniversary addition I find annoying and half-baked- I wish there was a way to revert back to plain old Special Edition.
To me the feeling of loading up Skyrim for 15 minutes at a time several times a day means… I’m not doing well. It means that I don’t have the mental capacity to seek out or learn a new game. That I’m probably looking for something comfortable and familiar to make me feel better. And while Skyrim is that, sometimes I load up a save and see that I’m about to start a dungeon and the prospect just seems overwhelming. Or I’m over encumbered and need to spend a bunch of downtime crafting, trading, and organizing inventory.
It’s the kind of behavior that, over an extended period, could be a sign of depression.
I don’t want to defend Mr. Beast. I’ve never watched any of his content. But the criticisms of him seem to be things like how distasteful performative charity is. And like, a few minor business disputes. And possibly being a bit too quick to dismiss someone on his team who allegedly groomed minors.
Jake Paul has been accused of sexual assault and is pretty well established as racist. Heck, he wore Hulk Hogan swag the night of this match. He’s pushed outright crypto scams on his followers.
Andrew Tate has more than a decade of plenty of accusations of sexual assault, including against minors, and human trafficking. He has paid out millions of dollars and still has outstanding criminal cases in multiple countries.
I don’t know any of these people personally, but just looking at publicly available information from a distance it seems unfair to Mr. Beast to put him in the same group as actual criminals, racists, and sex offenders. It’s okay to just mildly dislike people.
I mean, even back in the day of listening to local .mp3s on my desktop. I’m pretty sure at least some of the software I used (Windows Media Player, Music Match Jukebox, probably others I can’t remember) kept track of the title number of listens. I definitely remember going through and looking from time to time out of curiosity.
I also just love data and analysis. I love keeping track of things. I love sparking my memory, using data like this to remember a song I loved for like 3 weeks 8 months ago and forgot about.
I hate Spotify for a variety of other reasons. Once I’ve accumulated enough CD’s or direct downloads to have a good sized library again i’m going to cancel it. But I do hope that whatever locally hosted open-source software I use for that will have tracking and analysis tools because it’s fun.
In other words, you’re just making all this shit up. Cool story.
No, you don’t own a game just because you have it physically. Just because you chose not to read the legalese in the manual or in the game itself doesn’t magically grant you ownership. Physical media IS memuch harder to revoke the license for, nearly impossible. This applies to all software, not just videogames.
Superdistribution was one of the earliest forms of DRM, invented in 1983. Even before that there were videogames that came with physical objects and codes the user had to input.
You’re splitting hairs a bit here with Early Access vs Beta, but fair enough I should have specified that HALO 3 had early access. There was a multiplayer, unfinished version of the game available for purchase before the game was finished.
No one is saying that releasing unfinished products is good for consumers, but that happens both with and without early access. Look at Superman64 or Cyberpunk2077. Just because the dev chooses to slap a 1.0 version number on a piece of software doesn’t mean it’s a fair deal, and just because they use a 0.X version number doesn’t mean it’s a bad deal.
At the start of 2015, Steam hit a record of 8.47 million concurrent users. . Just a couple of months ago, Steam set the current record of 41.6 million. That’s basically a 5x increase. For reference, the PS2, DS, and Switch EACH sold more than 150 million units in their lifetimes. Steam was just a tiny fraction of gamers back in 2015, and it’s still only a small chunk.
The Australia lawsuit was NOT because Valve was refusing to give refunds, but because they did not have a written policy fully informing Australian consumers of their rights and did not have statutory guarantees that the goods would be of acceptable quality. The lawsuit itself between Valve and the Australian government for not following the full letter of compliance and having the correct legalese on the storefront, not because Valve was some sort of anti-redund advocate.
You’re just going to call Valve charging for their services predatory? That’s a bold claim. Is Valve colluding with other storefronts? Have they captured regulatory bodies to put rules in place that prevent new competitors from entering the industry? Have they started buying up their competitors to form a horizontal monopoly, or their suppliers/customers to form a vertical monopoly?
Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 were both updated 3 days ago. Counter-Strike 2 was updated LITERALLY AS I WAS TYPING THIS. It’s hard to imagine having a worse take than this lol.
Gamer’s Nexus has reported that it is upgradeable SO-DIMM modules, though they did not confirm whether it is 1 or 2 sticks.
Honestly this is the fairest criticism. Personally I think it’s enough that Steam just indicates what the DRM is clearly in the store, and that they have historically issues refunds when publishers make anti-consumer changes for people who already purchased it.
plenty of games that are DRM-free on GOG are DRM-enabled on steam
I suppose ymmv here. For me, I have a lot of games on my Steam wishlist where every time they go on sale I check to see if the DRM has been removed yet. I also occasionally check these on GoG, but more like every 6 months or so because I don’t use GoG as much. In my experience it’s really rare for a game to have DRM on Steam and still be on GoG. Sonic Frontiers for example - it has Denuvo on Steam but just isn’t listed on GoG at all.
My assumption is that this is something to do with the contracts between publishers and the 3rd party DRM makers like Denuvo. And technical limitations too- I assume there is some level of development needed to add/remove/change DRM. Hi-Fi Rush is a recent example: everyone who owns it now will need to update before January 16th to get the Denuvo removed.
screwing up good games for profit (you know, hat simulator, gambling, push for centralization, etc.)
I actually don’t know what you’re talking about. To me adding cosmetic purchases to free games doesn’t count as “screwing up good games for profit”.
There is also a history of really sketchy anti-consumer choices basically no one is aware of, like them getting sued for not issuing refunds and being forced to implement refund system to
This is incredibly misleading. Valve always have refunds, it’s just that they did not have a written policy at first and it was administered case-by-case. In 2014 they got sued by an Australian in a case that was more about jurisdiction and whether Australian consumer protection laws could apply to digital goods sold by a US company. That was the impetus for Valve to publicly release a written policy, which is widely considered to be one of the most consumer-friendly on the industry.
accepting money from Microsoft to not release a free DLC to L4D, but rather as a new game (just so they don’t set a good example),
Do you have any more info on this? I think you’re getting this confused with the controversy around Crash Course, the 2nd DLC for the first game.
Valve released Left4Dead 1 and an ounces their plans for free updates. The first update released for free everywhere. Crash Course released for free on PC, but cost money on Xbox Live. Valve claimed that it was Microsoft’s decision, not theirs. Afaik Microsoft has neither confirmed nor denied this, but it seems pretty plausible to me. It also lines up with what Todd Howard has said in interviews about the infamous Horse Armor. Microsoft has a history of pressuring DLC prices up on Xbox- i don’t blame Valve for that.
paid mods fiasco
This always seemed to me like a very complicated and nuanced discussion that always gets described as a “fiasco” or “catastrophe”, whether it’s Valve or Bethesda or whoever else. I always thought it was an incredibly cool idea to have a framework for monetization, which could lead to bigger and better mods. I think it’s reasonable for the original publishers/developers to get a cut since they made the game. I think it’s reasonable for Valve to get a cut if it is done through the Steam Workshop and Valve is handling the payyment processing.
Heck, Valve in particular has a history of supporting mod makers. DOTA was a mod of Warcraft. Counter-Strike was a mod of Half Life.
barely fighting back against adult content purge
We’re at the point of literal victim blaming. Blame Collective Shout. Blame Visa and PayPal. Blame governments for not having (or enforcing) legislation forcing these payment processors to be neutral. What do you want Valve to do here? The payment processors are orders of magnitude larger and can destroy Valve overnight if they wanted to.
What licensing bullshit are you referring to?
The big ones being the popularisation of the licence model for video games, so you don’t actually own your games and they can pull your licence at any time.
This goes back decades before Gaben left Microsoft. Valve absolutely did not “popularize” it- this wa ready the industry standard. Even GoG, though they give lipservice about “owning” games, only sells licenses. They give access to files, sure, but it’s still not legal to copy or re-sell them, you can’t legally pass them down in your will when you die, you can’t modify or reverse-engineer the code. Well, technically it depends on the publisher so you may find the occasional exception, but by and large you do not “own” your games on any platform.
They’re the ones that popularised early access as a format.
First of all, I don’t even know what you’re referring to here. HALO 3 had a beta back in 2007. Minecraft was early access in 2009.
Second, is early access even a bad thing? It’s been an incredible boon for the indie scene because it bypasses the need for a ton of up-front capital. This has allowed indie devs to throw up a Kickstarter and start getting money in the door to quit their day jobs, and also allowed player feedback throughoit the development process. Yes, there are some risks and there have been abuses. But there have also been a ton of success stories. Personally I played Subnautica and Hades in early access, and I think they were great at the time and great at their time of full release. Games like Slay the Spire, Prison Architecht, Darkest Dungeon, Dead cells, Kerbal Space Program, and more were made possible by early access. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 benefited from an early access (though that was probably more about the feedback than the money).
Had to be sued into having a refund policy
They still provided refunds prior to that, it’s just that before then they were such a small company it was handled on a case-by-case basis. The lawsuit was about the application of specifically Australian consumer protection law and whether that was applied to international digital commerce. The judge ruled that the laws did apply, so Valve went ahead and covered their asses by writing up the policy, which is still one of the most generous for digital videogames in the industry.
Gabe newall is a biollaire that owns a yatch company and a fleet of super yacht, all that money has been skimmed from actual hard working Devs, many smaller ones also have been squeezed into participating in steam sales when they don’t want to just to get steam to promote their game. Even thought they will happily push asset flips slop.
I’m all in favor of having nationalized platforms instead, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Go ahead and seize all the assets of every billionaire. But if we are going to do that, I think we should start at the top with the richest and then see how the rest divest themselves of assets first.
Technically, this hurts publishers directly and devs only indirectly.
Also 30% has been the industry standard since before Valve existed, going back to physical stores. Should Valve reduce it? Maybe, but if we look over at what Epic is doing with their 12% cut I’m not impressed. The platform sucks and the savings don’t seem to be passed to consumers so I don’t see how that’s any better.
Shovelware has always been a thing. Go look back at the great videogame crash of 1983. Go look at the Nintendo eShop today or the Google Play Store. You’re kind of disproving yourself here- you claim that 30% cut is preventing indie devs from releasing on Steam, yet there were over 19,000 games released on Steam this year alone! Surely there aren’t that many big AAA titles, are there?
What Steam DOES provide is tools to allow the consumer to make an informed decisions and easily filter out what they do and don’t want. I see people complain about all the NSFW games even though the default setting is to hide them lol.
They have also put in place system to protect Devs from “review bombing” when those Devs screw over their olayerbase, then will also allow “legitimate” reviews after a human has reviewed them, that are just culture war stuff that has nothing to do with the game.
Welcome to the modern Internet. “Review bombs” can be for a variety of different reasons and my opinions differ. When 2K updated their launcher and added it to games that previously didn’t, and broke Steam Deck compatibility, those games absolutely deserves to get negative reviews. If a company tweets a pride flag in June and a bunch of incels decide to review bomb the game, well, I’m glad Valve steps in to stop that.
I’d say Valve does a better job of handling reviews than most companies. Having information like the reviewer’s play time and the ability to vote reviews as helpful or unhelpful is great. But really I see reviews as being more for the person leaving it to scream into the void than anything else. If I’m making a purchasing decision and I’m looking for more information on a game, I’ll go to YouTube or Reddit or Lemmy or any one of a variety of other places first anyways.
Because steam has very few employees and basically doesn’t make games anymore.
This is still an instance of them being less shitty than their competitors. They DO still make games, just smaller ones like Aperture Desk Job and Half-Life Alyx. They also support their live service games. They also have hardware.
They make good decisions and don’t take dumb risks with their headcount. That doesn’t make them a great company, but that makes them better than most of the industry.
No, they didn’t break down the doors of individual gamers. They targeted retailers and producers instead. They introduced DRM in their hardware. And with the rise of the internet they HAVE been breaking down the doors of people who make tools to extract the software from their cartridges. Even after emulation was established as legal in the Sony vs Bleem case, Nintendo continues to use their money and lawyers to bully emulator developers. They famously sent DMCA takedowns to people who made Let’s Play videos or streamed the game, or even speedrunning videos.
Speedrunning events have had to cancel or ban Nintendo games because of their legal actions. Nintendo has taken legal actions against tournament organizers for competitive multiplayer games.
Here’s another website dedicated to tracking Nintendo’s bullshit.
I can build a better PC for less money
Can you?
First of all, Valve has not even announced a price yet. Everything is still pure speculation.
Second, have you seen the price of GPU’s, RAM, and SSD’s these days? Consumers for gaming PC parts are competing for supply with industrial buyers now. AI is hoovering all the supply up with the backing from private equity. The GPU market never fully recovered from the cryptocurrency era either.
I’ve been wanting to build a new mid-range gaming PC for years now. I’ve kept an eye on prices. I spent ~$1k on a machine in 2019, with the GPU costing a mere $175. Nowadays a comparable tier of GPU starts at $600, and the cost fo a mid-tier machine is over $1,500, getting closer to $2,000 with the RAM and SSD prices.
Valve can get better bulk pricing on components. Their primary profit center is software sales, and it’s really hard to sell software when no one can afford hardware. So Valve is incentivized to design these machines that are resistant to being scalped or scrapped for specific components, and to sell them for relatively low margin in order to drive game sales. We already saw this with the Steam Deck- it was hardware that could play games without mining crypto.
I do think the RAM and maybe SSS supply could throw a wrench into Valve’s plans though. Just because if the prices go high enough, people could start buying steam machines to rip out the RAam modules and sell them separately. But we are nowhere near that level of RAM pricing yet.
I don’t understand the GoG glazing.
No Linux support. A much worse storefront and launcher. They greatly mislead people about “owning” their games. The anti-DRM stance is nice, but unless more people start to care about that all it does is reduce the size of GoG’s catalog.
Like, they’re fine and probably the next-best option to Steam. I have a handful of games on GoG. But I don’t understand why a small handful of people think they’re so much better than Steam.
I agree with your sentiment, but you’re wrong.
Horse armor was nowhere close to the first microtransaction. Maple Story released in 2003 and is widely considered to be the first videogame with micro transactions. You could make a strong argument that arcade games were the origin of micro transactions even.
Part of what made the horse armor so egregious was that it was for a full-priced game. And it’s also worth pointing out that Microsoft was involved in that mess too. They had purchased times exclusivity for Oblivion on Windows and Xbox. An unnamed Microsoft executive allegedly went to Todd Howard and compared the pricing to things like Xbox system themes or iPhone ringtones, when at the time a 30s crappy quality version of your favorite song might cost $5.
Gambling has existed for thousands of years. I don’t blame Valve. I don’t really play their FtP games much, but my understanding is that the micro transactions are mostly cosmetic and not pay-to-win. There were times in my life when FtP games were a great boon and I had the discipline to not buy micro transactions, but today I prefer games that are just one purchase. Still, just because I don’t like FtP games doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist or that I hate Valve for having some.
I mean, Valve still could have easily stopped once it became clear that the Microsoft Store was a complete failure, but they didn’t.
You never owned your own games, you just never read the documentation that came with your discs and cartridges before.
Even GOG, who pays lipservice to “owning” your win games, just sells the same “license to access” the software that everyone else does. You can’t re-sell it, you can’t reverse-engineer code or modify most games, you can’t leave these “possessions” in your estate. You don’t own them.
A few years ago? I would have said “oh that’s near for laypeople, but I am better off building my own PC”.
With the prices of GPU’s, RAM, and SSD’s… The Steam Machine might legit be a better value than building it myself.
Is it a brigade of worshippers or just pointing out a bad take is bad?
I grew up with a dog. The toilet seat was always kept down to keep him away from drinking it, because we had toilet cleaning pucks in the tank that would have potentially poisoned him. Nothing to do with gender at all.
Also the mythbusters episode on toilet water splashing out onto bathroom surfaces scarred me as a child. We have a soft-close lid and I wait a few seconds for it to get to a low angle before I even flush.