Comment on Arch Linux and Valve Collaboration

• Giooschi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Lots of major companies like Microsoft and IBM also contribute to Linux, it doesn’t make them saints nor even necessarily compare to what they get for using the volunteer dev work inside Linux.

  Most of those companies actually contribute to the kernel or to foundational software used on servers, but few contribute to the userspace for desktop consumers on the level that Valve does.

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  • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    So?

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    • tempest@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      People more readily appreciate things that obviously directly affect them.

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      • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        And the Linux Kernel which powers the whole thing directly effects them, so we should all praise Microsoft and IBM like we praise Valve right?

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• helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’d like to see a Sankey graph of where Valve’s money goes before I praise them that much for helping out a Linux distribution a bit.

  I’d say it’s a lot more than “a bit”. It’s an enormous amount of help that pretty much everyone in the Linux (professional) community can, has, and will attest to.

  I don’t agree that they’re a monopoly, because they’ve done absolutely nothing to prevent competition. Other stores do it to themselves.

  I do agree though that their fees are exorbitant and their contributions to Linux are a teeny tiny fraction of their wealth, but I appreciate it regardless.

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  • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I don’t agree that they’re a monopoly, because they’ve done absolutely nothing to prevent competition. Other stores do it to themselves.

    Yes they have. The steam friends network and the fact that you can’t transfer your purchases, friends data, or community data to other platforms is an inherent form of lock in. Just because you’re used to it because Facebook also does it, doesn’t mean it’s not.

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    • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What do you expect them to do? Not actively helping your competition is not remotely the same thing as being anticompetitive.

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      • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It literally is if you have a monopoly.

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    • pivot_root@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Lock-in != Monopoly.

      The fact that you can’t transfer your purchases […] to other platforms

      This is ridiculously unrealistic in a capitalist society.

      It costs the platform money whenever a user downloads a game, and a user who didn’t buy from their store isn’t a user that they make money from. No other platform would voluntarily accept a recurring cost like that.

      Also, it’s not like they stop publishers from doing that themselves. Ubisoft and EA use the cd-key generated by steam to associate the game with your U-Play and Origin accounts.

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      • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Lock-in != Monopoly

        They asked if they did anything anti-competitive. Lock-in is inherently anti-competitive.

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• pivot_root@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Being cautious of a corporation is never a bad thing, but remember: Valve isn’t a public company. They don’t have the same incentives and fiduciary duties that led to the enshittification of most other companies and services.

  Ultimately, everything they do is entirely for their own benefit. But, they’re also free to focus on their long-term growth and returns. As long as the leadership doesn’t get changed to a bunch of shit-for-brains golden parachute MBAs, they’re going try to keep their customers happy. It’s good for them, and it’s not terrible for us. Everybody wins.

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  • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Ultimately, yes, everything they do is entirely for their own benefit. But, they’re also free to focus on their long-term growth and returns. As long as the leadership doesn’t get changed to a bunch of shit-for-brains golden parachute MBAs, they’re going to want to keep their customers happy. It’s good for them, and it’s not terrible for us. Everybody wins

    No, they don’t. Literally every single gamer across the world pays 15% more on every single game purchase, for literally no reason except to make the 1% at Valve even richer.

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    • pivot_root@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      No, they don’t. Literally every single gamer across the world pays 15% more on every single game purchase, for literally no reason except to make the 1% at Valve even richer.

      Do you seriously believe that if a developer pays 15% less in platform fees to Valve, that savings will be passed on to us? Epic Games tried that. Guess what: games still cost us the same there as every other platform.

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      • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It literally either goes back to the consumer or back to the game developer.

        Why are you defending it going to Valve for no reason?

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  • index@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’ll tell you a secret: you don’t need a proprietary launcher to run software

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    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’ll tell you something you missed:

      Steam’s DRM is notoriously easy to bypass, allowing that. They also don’t force DRM on their platform, it’s entirely developer/publisher opt-in (and they are also free to add additional DRM on top if they wish), and many many releases on Steam run fine directly from the executable without the launcher running.

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• tyrant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Oh come on. Mr negativity over here. FFS Valve has been a godsend compared to the likes of EA or Blizzard. I bet you complain when you get ice cream that it’s too cold

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  • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Valve has ripped off every single game purchase to the tune of billions and billions of dollars (taking an objective 15% more than they need to from the total cost of every single game), for the past 20 years.

    But let’s thank them for that! Thanks Valve for making every single working class gamer poorer. We all love the fact that every single Valve employee is a multimillionaire, at the expense of literally every single game maker and developer. What kind generosity! /S

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    • pivot_root@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      At the expense of literally every single game player

      How is it at the expense of the game player? Even if they paid less, the publisher and developers aren’t going to pass the savings on to the consumer. That’s wishful thinking in the same vain as hoping Starbucks would make their drinks cheaper because their rent went down.

      If anything, one can argue that the 30% fee shelled out by the publisher pays for the various nice-to-haves that players get on Steam, like: a functional review system, free cloud save syncing, the workshop, game discussion forum, game streaming, Steam input (which is a godsend for accessibility), etc.

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      • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        How is it at the expense of the game player? Even if they paid less, the publisher and developers aren’t going to pass the savings on to the consumer. That’s wishful thinking in the same vain as hoping Starbucks would make their drinks cheaper because their rent went down.

        This is the most dumbass asinine defense. So now you’re pro landlord rent gouging?

        Jesus fucking Christ how are people upvoting this flat out landlord simping crap.

        It does not fucking matter if Ubisoft remains greedy. Every single independent self publishing dev gets 15% more money.

        The fucking fact that you brought up landlords rent seeking as a non issue is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.

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  • index@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You don’t seem to have idea of how much a billion is and how much money is valve making. Enjoy your icecream while it’s cold because you can’t afford too much of it.

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