It’s really hard to find any sympathy for people whose entire business model is to leach money from young impressionable men. It’s almost like their asking “Please stop extorting us, so we can continue extorting our own clientele in peace.” And don’t tell me that all those men are giving up their money voluntarily. It’s like saying the gambling addicts put their money in the slot machine volutarily, therefore it’s not a problem. No self-respecting individual in their right mind would or should enter his card information and buy naughty pictures of some rando, while there’s a backlog of billions of them online for free. Rub one out and get in with your day.
They can themselves “sex workers” while there is literally zero sex in their work. Imagine thinking that posting pictures of “yourself wearing short skirts” ads any value to society. Actual sex workers at least provide physical and social comfort, even if it’s just an act, it’s still a professional form of commitment.
Do those women ever stop and think why there is no one stepping in for them and preventing this scam from happening? Almost like what they do has zero value to people with the actual power to do so.
Maybe take a long hard look at yourself and see your accounts being suddely deleted as an opportunity to freshen up that resume of yours and get a real job with taxable income.

Also the fact that this is happening to the 0.0X% of highest earners, is ironic. Usually, it’s the lower end that gets scammed the most.

Houseplants. I feel like they are slowly disappearing. My grandma has plants in nearly every window, but us younger folk would rather have a Displate with a picture if a plant instead if an actual plant.

I think DLCs are becoming a thing of the past in general. Usually the data for the DLC comes with the main game, you just buy a license to unlock it. I can’t remember the last time I bought a DLC and hat to download something additionally or update my game. I’m not a fan of it, but this is where we are going. This just means that wherever you bought the main game from, you will also have to buy the DLCs, since companies will never accept to share licenses between each other. This is not a Steam issue, this is a developer issue.

Yes

You have to bring your own. You may play with the other dogs if they approach you.

So can’t I, what’s your point?

Jane (Krysten Ritter) from Breaking Bad. Because… just look at her.

I’m on the 4th book but finished the series. How does she have any red flags? Given what she’s been through and her profession, she seems to be fairly well composed individual. Great friend and always kind to the people important to her. It’s like dating a trucker, them not being around often and being somewhat detached comes with the territory of their profession.

Did you say “Dogs at work”? Deal.

Yeah, but why? They would still all be owned by Valve. Or are you suggesting the government forcefully taking away private company assets?

Yes. The way it works now is:

• Play video until ad timestamp
• Pause video and fetch ad from ad server
• Play ad
• Resume video

But presumably with the new system, your computer will just receive a continuous bitstream with ads embedded in them. What was previously happening on your machine through HTML or JavaScript and was detectable by ad blockers, will now happen on YouTube servers beholind the scenes.

I think you severely underestimate the cost of hosting servers for ~46.000 Games, across 9 regions, in 190 countries, with 500Mbit download speeds. On top of that billions of screenshots, trillions of lines of text, customer service, development of new features and hardware, etc.

Valve has an est. revenue (not profit) of roughly $10 Billion this year. Tencent Games has an est. $85. How is Steam even remotely considered to be a monopoly in gaming?

Those things put seperatly Steam is far from the best option , except for the store part because that’s their main thing.

The launcher part is just part of Steams basic DRM, some games can be started from their directory without Steam running.

The subreddits and Discord servers for certain games are usually more organized, cohesive and feature better fan made content than Steams Community Hub.

Nexusmods is far superior to the Steam Workshop in every single aspect.

For Reviews most people go to YouTube and watch a video. Steams review system is more an indicator of general reception rather than actual gameplay.

Steam doesn’t try to squich all the other platforms they just provide a convenient alternative to them. So why are all those things suddenly an issue.

How do you even enforce breaking all those things up? Should there be a law that all governments agree on, that states Steam exclusively can’t host mods anymore? Should they be split up into subsidiaries, like Steam Store, Steam Community, Steam Mods etc.?

No, but anything can be grounds for a lawsuit as long as you have enough money to throw out. And given that they are being sued by the government, all bets are off.
That’s my whole point, none of the provided arguments are a good reason for a lawsuit. This has early 2000s “It’s those darn videogames” vibes, except this time instead of saying that their doing it to protect our children, they are openly doing it to get the money.

The whole point of having ads be separate from the video is for youtube to easily distance itself from malicious ads. If an ad is malicious it can easily be reported and taken out of commission. But if ads are now part of the video, what stops an ad from being an ISIS beheading clip in the middle of a video made for children? If there is still a way to still report it, then there is a way to recognize the ad.

Also how will this interfere with creators? Editing a video and giving it a proper pace is already a huge challenge. But now ads can just be automaticaly cut into it without the creators control? That’s gonna fuck up so many quality channels. That’s already a big problem with the current system, bit at least you can skip or block them.

As far as I know, regional pricing through Steam is completely controlled by the publisher/dev. It’s literally a checkbox for each region and a text field to enter an adjusted price. And Steam has made great efforts to stop regional key trading to prevent people from just buying cheaper keys from 3rd world countries and reselling them.

What the hell are these points?

Steam forces developers to ask for higher prices? Ah, yes, because Activision is so eager to sell Call of Duty for just $20 but big bad Steam is just forcing their hand and they have to sell it for $70. See if you look at their own store where they can set their own prices its… also $70… hmm, that’s weird. Maybe others… nope same prices across all platforms. Almost like publishers can actually freely decide on their prices.

Steam also forces customers to buy DLCs for games on their platform. Well, how else is this going to work? I buy a game on Steam and then call up the devs to venmo them $2 and they send me a DVD in the mail? Or should I make a new account on some other website and get my DLCs seperatly from there? Most games don’t even sell you DLCs, they sell you credits so you can unlock content that’s already in the game. Often times you have to buy those credits trough the devs website and link your account to Steam. That’s already a pain it the ass.

Steam takes 30% of the cut. True, that sound like a lot. Imagine you’re a solo Dev and you’ve been working 9 years on a game. 3 of those years you’ve essentially been working just to pay off Steam. But look at what you get for those 3 years. You get a seperate store page for your product that you can essentially design however you want. You get access to high speed distribution servers all over the world, that also allow you to effortlessly push updates out, the option for regional pricing, the industries most reliable user review system, an integrated discussion and fan art forum, third party controller support (important for people with disabilities), and a refund system. Sure 30% still sounds like a lot, but would you be able to provide all this if you would’ve self publish the game, probably not.

Steam is consistently the cheapest option to buy games on sale. And even if it isn’t the cheapest, at no point in time have I thought, man Steam has this game for $7.49 but EGS has it for $6.99, I better get it on EGS. Maybe on GoG but no where else.

It’s mind boggling to think that through inflation and some shortages almost all groceries have nearly doubled in price over the last 20 years, but a AAA game is still $60, even though the cost of making a game has skyrocketed. Imagine gas prices would’ve stayed the same over the last 20 years and people would complian that gas station sandwiches would tast like shit.

I copied my own comment from a cross post on another instance, so don’t @ me.

What the hell are these points?

Steam forces developers to ask for higher prices?
Ah, yes, because Activision is so eager to sell Call of Duty for just $20 but big bad Steam is just forcing their hand and they have to sell it for $70. See if you look at their own store where they can set their own prices its… also $70… hmm, that’s weird. Maybe others… nope same prices across all platforms. Almost like publishers can actually freely decide on their prices.

Steam also forces customers to buy DLCs for games on their platform.
Well, how else is this going to work? I buy a game on Steam and then call up the devs to venmo them $2 and they send me a DVD in the mail? Or should I make a new account on some other website and get my DLCs seperatly from there? Most games don’t even sell you DLCs, they sell you credits so you can unlock content that’s already in the game. Often times you have to buy those credits trough the devs website and link your account to Steam. That’s already a pain it the ass.

Steam takes 30% of the cut.
True, that sound like a lot. Imagine you’re a solo Dev and you’ve been working 9 years on a game. 3 of those years you’ve essentially been working just to pay off Steam. But look at what you get for those 3 years. You get a seperate store page for your product that you can essentially design however you want. You get access to high speed distribution servers all over the world, that also allow you to effortlessly push updates out, the option for regional pricing, the industries most reliable user review system, an integrated discussion and fan art forum, third party controller support (important for people with disabilities), and a refund system. Sure 30% still sounds like a lot, but would you be able to provide all this if you would’ve self publish the game, probably not.

Steam is consistently the cheapest option to buy games on sale. And even if it isn’t the cheapest, at no point in time have I thought, man Steam has this game for $7.49 but EGS has it for $6.99, I better get it on EGS. Maybe on GoG but no where else.

It’s mind boggling to think that through inflation and some shortages almost all groceries have nearly doubled in price over the last 20 years, but a AAA game is still $60, even though the cost of making a game has skyrocketed. Imagine gas prices would’ve stayed the same over the last 20 years and people would complian that gas station sandwiches would tast like shit.

• also a bigger flex on the locals dying of dehydration.

The Witcher. You can even transfer your save game between 1 & 2 and 2 & 3.