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1. Embed this notice
   Eniko Fox (eniko@peoplemaking.games)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 19:32:16 JST Eniko Fox

   I'm struggling to survive and can't afford to run heat, but 30% of what I make goes to this motherfucker (Gabe Newell) and his fleet of yachts

   https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php

   • Embed this notice
     13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 19:32:15 JST 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

     in reply to

     @eniko The fuck does even the most ethusiasty of boat enthusiasts have to do with five fucking yachts. Let alone this plant-killing superyacht nonsense.

     (I'll let the Pressure Drop slide because it's being used for actually-useful deep sea research, although I still don't feel the private sector should have a role in any of this.)

   • Embed this notice
     13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 20:11:16 JST 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

     in reply to

     • Martijn Frazer

     @Tijn @eniko That really highlights the next-level rent-seeking when you put it like that.

   • Embed this notice
     Martijn Frazer (tijn@dosgame.club)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 20:11:20 JST Martijn Frazer

     in reply to

     @eniko It's absolutely beyond insane that Valve has essentially been receiving 30% of *the entire PC videogame industry* for 20 years now.

   • Embed this notice
     carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 21:03:43 JST carl marks

     in reply to

     • Neg4tiveKD

     @Neg4tiveKD @eniko that boot must be absolutely delicious today, huh

   • Embed this notice
     Neg4tiveKD (neg4tivekd@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 21:03:46 JST Neg4tiveKD

     in reply to

     @eniko

     Came up with a great idea at the right time. Good luck to him. Stop buying Steam games out of principle, let alone necessity, if it bothers you that much.

   • Embed this notice
     13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 22:19:12 JST 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

     in reply to

     • Martijn Frazer
     • Lunar 🛸 ♾

     @lunarloony @Tijn

     Right? For instance, I appreciate Valve putting money and person-hours into my pet special interests (specific areas of open source software, for example) where most corporate behemoths would not, but the only reason the likes of Valve, Nintendo and Sega (each in really specific areas and not in general) seem likes "good" or "responsible" companies compared to the industry's conspicuously bad actors isn't because the "good" companies aren't bad actors themselves, but because they occasionally meet a minimum bar of corporate responsibility (and don't mind benefiting from the PR gloss it gives them).

     Fundamentally, the role of "large enterprise" as an institution and "billionaire" as an individual are both locked into social and economic roles that are inherently predatory and destructive.

   • Embed this notice
     Lunar 🛸 ♾ (lunarloony@dosgame.club)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 22:19:17 JST Lunar 🛸 ♾

     in reply to

     • 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
     • Martijn Frazer

     @Tijn @HauntedOwlbear I think it's easy to forget that, while Valve is certainly more pro-consumer than most others like it, is still a massive corporation with a business edging on a monopoly. Gabe may seem like a nice bloke, but... he's still a billionaire

   • Embed this notice
     Martijn Frazer (tijn@dosgame.club)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 22:19:22 JST Martijn Frazer

     in reply to

     • 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

     @HauntedOwlbear It's also the reason why there's no Half-Life 3 and why Valve has all but stopped making games altogether.

     Why would they? What possible benefit could putting in all that effort have? Just to receive the other 70% on a single game? Who cares about making games when you're receiving 30% of *every single game* made by other people?

   • Embed this notice
     Anatoly Shashkin💾 (dosnostalgic@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 22:29:29 JST Anatoly Shashkin💾

     in reply to

     • 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
     • Martijn Frazer
     • Lunar 🛸 ♾

     @HauntedOwlbear @lunarloony @Tijn I agree with everything above, but I have a big suspicion that things are gonna get much worse for both consumers and devs when Gaben is gone.

   • Embed this notice
     13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 22:29:29 JST 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

     in reply to

     • Anatoly Shashkin💾
     • Martijn Frazer
     • Lunar 🛸 ♾

     @dosnostalgic @lunarloony @Tijn

     Yeah, I suspect you're right, too, which is another item on my list of "things that concern me about Steam-as-DRM".

     To wave vaguely in the direction of classical history, it's only ever a matter of time until a Bad Emperor comes along.

   • Embed this notice
     13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 23:24:39 JST 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

     in reply to

     • Anatoly Shashkin💾
     • peterb
     • Martijn Frazer
     • Lunar 🛸 ♾

     @peterb @dosnostalgic @lunarloony @Tijn

     Monopolies are an overwhelming problem in many walks of life.

     I think someone in another branch of this thread already made the point that the fixes are often appalling (e.g. electricity resellers, or the UK competition and markets authority's obsession with stopping Microsoft to the exclusion of deterring other harmful monopolies), but that doesn't mean that the problem isn't doing harm.

     The utilitarian position for consumers in particular certainly makes Valve an excellent "lesser evil" example in the corporate world, but that doesn't really help the devs who effectively have no choice but to put their games on there at a mandatory 30% or be effectively invisible to the market they need to sell to.

     I don't have a solution here (yes, capitalism is structurally bad, and the People In Games Revolutionary Army is unlikely to be a deciding factor in the immediate future), but the people trying to run an entire small gamedev business under these conditions certainly have good reason to be peeved.

     (Which is why I mostly work as a contractor for other people.)

   • Embed this notice
     Anatoly Shashkin💾 (dosnostalgic@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 23:24:42 JST Anatoly Shashkin💾

     in reply to

     • 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
     • peterb
     • Martijn Frazer
     • Lunar 🛸 ♾

     @peterb @HauntedOwlbear @lunarloony @Tijn While that's all fine and good, you're not really paying any different price. Games are usually priced the same on Steam as they are on any other platform. It's the devs that are "paying", not you.

   • Embed this notice
     peterb (peterb@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 23:24:42 JST peterb

     in reply to

     • 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
     • Anatoly Shashkin💾
     • Martijn Frazer
     • Lunar 🛸 ♾

     @dosnostalgic @HauntedOwlbear @lunarloony @Tijn Sure. Lots of products work that way, not just games. It seems to me the key question is whether the 30% devs are paying to Steam is worth the value they get from it. Whichever way that question is answered I think leads to an obvious answer.

   • Embed this notice
     peterb (peterb@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 11-Jan-2024 23:24:44 JST peterb

     in reply to

     • 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
     • Anatoly Shashkin💾
     • Martijn Frazer
     • Lunar 🛸 ♾

     @HauntedOwlbear @dosnostalgic @lunarloony @Tijn It's never fun to be in the role of Big Company Defender in any thread, but I'm gonna do it here. I resisted Steam mightily when it first launched but I came around because I realized that the 30% they were taking - from my POV as a consumer - was in fact giving me value for money.

     Might they turn evil someday? Sure - I spent money on other platforms (drengin.net anyone?) where the games are lost forever. But I have games I bought on Steam in 2003/2004 that I can still play today, and in practice they work better than many DRM-free games I bought *on disc* in the same timeframe. And I don't have to keep track of the disc.

   • Embed this notice
     13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Friday, 12-Jan-2024 00:49:26 JST 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

     in reply to

     • Anatoly Shashkin💾
     • peterb
     • Martijn Frazer
     • Lunar 🛸 ♾

     @peterb @dosnostalgic @lunarloony @Tijn

     Fair, I'm certainly being overly casual with my definitions. I've provided guidance to the UK CMA on monopolistic behaviour in the digital software/SaaS industry previously, but as an industry specialist, rather that for my legal chops!

     Regardless of terminology, I think it's worth considering the potential for abuse that those business kaiju have over far smaller enterprises that have no choice but to do business on terms dictated to them by the large enterprise.

     In other industries, similar disparities have traditionally been rebalanced by union action, but there's no model for that when the disempowered party is officially an independent enterprise, even if it's just one person, and the gorilla is a marketplace, rather than an employer.

     There are parallels to gig economy and creator rights issues reaching from Uber to freelance journalism, and it's definitely something that there's little prior industrial action to take inspiration from (Ned Ludd notwithstanding.)

   • Embed this notice
     peterb (peterb@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 12-Jan-2024 00:49:27 JST peterb

     in reply to

     • 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
     • Anatoly Shashkin💾
     • Martijn Frazer
     • Lunar 🛸 ♾

     @HauntedOwlbear @dosnostalgic @lunarloony @Tijn My perspective on this is different, no doubt because of my legal background. To me, the word "monopoly" has a very specific meaning, and I don't think Steam rises to that level. I'm not disagreeing that maybe it sucks to be in that market if you don't want to work with them, but this is true of a lot of competitive businesses. Lots of industries have 800-pound gorillas, and just because they exist and have lots of influence (and real power!) doesn't mean they're monopolies.

   • Embed this notice
     Adam Cafolla (adaliabooks@ohai.social)'s status on Friday, 12-Jan-2024 06:05:48 JST Adam Cafolla

     in reply to

     @eniko

     As I was reading it I thought "Oh, he has a hospital ship, that's surprisingly philanthropic" until I released it was a private hospital ship solely for his own benefit when he's on one of the other ships.

     Seriously, eat the fucking rich.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.