big_slap

@big_slap@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musk’s plan to axe X's block button is a real win for stalkers and abusers.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  good point, I agree.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musk’s plan to axe X's block button is a real win for stalkers and abusers.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Better media and infrastructure support

  the only positive you’ve stated lol. man, do I wish the fediverse would take off

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musk’s plan to axe X's block button is a real win for stalkers and abusers.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  other than userbase, what does twitter have that mastodon does not have? genuinely curious

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon tried to buy part of Valve in the days before Steam, according to former exec who says she's been "erased" from Valve's history⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Monica Harrington isn’t one of Valve’s official co-founders, but she was heavily involved in its formation and initial success - working by day as a marketing manager at Microsoft with responsibility for the games division, while helping her partner, Mike Harrington, and Gabe Newell get the Half-Life studio off the ground. In a lengthy post on Medium - which Nic has already covered in the most recent Sunday Papers, but which I think deserves a piece of its own - Harrington takes us through those heady early days.

  Amongst many other things, Harrington discusses how she and her husband poured their own money into Valve, and how she walked the complicated line of drawing upon her Microsoft experience to shape Valve’s approach with Half-Life, without developing an actual conflict of interest. When the line became impossible to walk, she resigned from Microsoft, becoming chief marketing officer at Valve from 1996 to 2000.

  There are intriguing memories aplenty - how Valve and Sierra fell out over the marketing of Half-Life after release, and how concerns about CD burners led to the implementation of an authentication scheme which accidentally gave Valve a direct line to their first players. Harrington also treats us to a marketing-eye picture of the industry during the 1990s and the balance of clout between developers, publishers, press, pirates and players, drawing comparisons with music and film.

  There are insights upon the development of Half-Life - how it looked after its first triumphant E3 showing versus how it was shaping up internally - and to a lesser extent, Team Fortress. But I think the most interesting part is Harrington’s account of a pitch she made, shortly after Half-Life’s release, to set up a digital games store and community platform in partnership with… Amazon. Had that gone all the way, industry history might have been very different. Here’s the excerpt in full:

  In a nine-page document, I proposed that Valve and Amazon team up to create a new online entertainment platform. I scaled the business opportunity within four years at $500 million dollars. The gist of the idea was to create a made-for-the-medium platform that would bring users together in a sticky, compelling entertainment experience, with digital and offline content sales. I wanted Amazon's financial backing as a way to gain first mover advantage against Microsoft and Electronic Arts, then the major PC games players. I didn't see a role for Sierra. If pushed, we wouldn't create any new games ourselves, and instead would team with outside developers so that they could distribute content not subject to an 85% publishing fee. At the time, I considered it an act of rebellion against the traditional publishing dynamic where independent developers took on huge risk, and the big publishing houses reaped the rewards. 
  

  According to Harrington, Amazon offered to buy a minority stake in Valve a few weeks later. You can obviously see the bones of Steam in that proposal, though Harrington appears to have conceived of it mostly to get a valuation for Valve, to help her and her partner when they eventually sold their share of the business to Newell.

  Sadly, Harrington’s motivation for writing the post is partly that she has been left out of Valve’s history - including Valve’s own 2023 Half-Life making-of documentary - despite being so heavily involved with the company during its first few years. Harrington attributes this partly to her consciously stepping back to avoid interfering in her husband’s partnership with Gabe Newell, and partly to “bro culture” and sexist practices in the tech biz at large. Here’s that part in full:

  As I look back on the huge success Valve has become, I'm proud of what the team accomplished. I'm also proud of the work I did while recognizing that my biggest contributions to Valve's business went largely unnoticed and unrecognized within the industry. Part of that was due to the bro culture of the software business, part of it was that I receded to support my husband in a partnership where he was effectively the lesser partner, and part of it was that women, especially in tech, often seem to disappear when the story gets told.
  
  I was hugely disappointed when Valve released a video in 2023 about the creation of Half-Life where one of the people interviewed, Karen Laur, a wonderfully talented texture artist, talked about the isolating experience of being a woman at Valve and essentially said that the only other woman during her tenure there was an office manager. I understood why she felt as she did, but the senior Valve team knows better. Watching the video, I felt like my place in Valve's history had been completely erased.
  
  I know that Valve wouldn't have been successful without Mike. It wouldn't have been successful without Gabe. And it wouldn't have been successful without me. A friend of mine who knows the full story once said to me, "you were a founding partner" and in hindsight, I agree. From the beginning, I invested time, treasure and industry expertise to make the company a huge success.
  
  And it is. 
  

  Harrington has done a variety of things since leaving Valve in 2000, from getting into whale conservation to a job at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She and Mike Harrington broke up and divorced in 2016. The full post is worth a read. As it happens, I’ve recently been trawling back through the ancient annals of Rock Paper Shotgun and learning about the site’s formative early interactions with Valve, while thinking about RPS’s future under Ian Games of the Ian Games Network. It’s useful to get some perspective on one of today’s weather-makers from the other side of the aisle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube to restrict teenagers’ exposure to videos about weight and fitness⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  thank you :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube to restrict teenagers’ exposure to videos about weight and fitness⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  hi, what does FTA mean? google shows a lot of different answers, thanks

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Under Meredith Whittaker, Signal Is Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Black Myth: Wukong shows very clearly Valve are selling a lot of Steam Decks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I purchased the 512 GB one. I upgraded the drive to 1tb and gave the 512 to someone else. If I want anti glare on my screen, I’ll just add it myself. extremely happy with my purchase, the colors are fantastic

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Black Myth: Wukong shows very clearly Valve are selling a lot of Steam Decks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  i have no issues with my steam deck as it is now. just want a computer I can dock and have extra horsepower like the competitors have with their thunderbolt and usb4 support whenever steam decides to release a new one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Black Myth: Wukong shows very clearly Valve are selling a lot of Steam Decks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But, another thing, this also goes to show that Valve are likely in no rush at all on a Steam Deck 2. They simply don’t need to do one right now.

  the only thing I need out of the deck 2 would be eGPU support. everything about my oled is basically perfect

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is going to happen when AI becomes extremely advanced?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  imo, its uncharted territory, so we do not know yet. all I can guarantee is the displacement it will cause won’t be to our benefit and will hurt us more than it will help

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam sets a new record with 37.2 million concurrent users online⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  randy pitchford is such a weirdo, it’s not that hard to understand what is so likeable about steam: respectable prices with a storefront and customer service that is A+. they protect me as a consumer with their refund policy and positively push computing forward with their R&D work towards linux (proton as my shining example).

  oh, it’s too expensive for a gigantic company to sell their game on steam? Then DONT sell it on steam and DONT be shocked when you have a large chunk of the pc gaming community not playing your game because you lost millions from your billions.

  am I missing something? should steam not be on top?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Peloton to ruin the secondhand market by charging a $95 ‘used equipment activation fee’ | It doesn’t apply to refurbished models bought directly from the company⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  companies can’t keep getting away with this

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gearbox founder says Epic Games Store hopes were “misplaced or overly optimistic”⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll revise my opinion when Valve changes to a more overtly predatory model of capitalism, but for now, I’ll enjoy only needing to keep a partial eye open.

  this is the correct approach towards how a society should support big buisnesses. the companies that don’t fuck us over will continue to get my public support and money

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨He really wants to kill that platform lol⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  While it sucks to have less content here, we at Lemmy also have a healthier demographic, and that’s something we should praise and look after.

  yes, say it louder for the people in the back!!

  quality > quantity, and my interactions on the fediverse, compared to reddit, are so much more fruitful 😁

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is coming to last-gen consoles next month⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  it is pretty terrible, I was one of the people who purchased it. I stopped playing because it crashed three times at the same mini boss. but porting backwards gives me some hope for a verified status. time will tell

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is coming to last-gen consoles next month⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  does this mean it will be steam deck verified?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bungie CEO faces backlash after announcing 220 employees, or 17% of its workforce, will be laid off | Pete Parsons has spent $2.4 million on classic cars since Sony acquired Destiny developer Bungie⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  this company is about to implode, no doubt. there’s no way they recover from this when they launch whatever comes next (I hope I am wrong, but this is just so messy)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  didn’t some programmers go fight in the Ukraine war, hence the delays? or am I mixing that fact up with another game?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gen Z job seekers should be willing to work for free, long hours, ‘willing to do anything,’ says Squarespace CMO⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  she should lead by example

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Announcing the Kawaii - A keychain-sized Nintendo Wii⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  whoa! on top of this being really cool, the whole website seems littered with interesting things. thanks for sharing!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  you are aware you can click the link and read through the articles, right? lol

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rockstar might be bringing GTA+ to Nintendo Switch⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I hope the wait will be worth it. may be the first game to me that’ll fully utilize all the horsepower between the ps5 and xsx

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft has gone too far: including a Game Pass ad in the Settings app ushers in a whole new age of ridiculous over-advertising⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  yeah, I switched it back. for a split second, I just couldn’t believe they had the audacity to do that… lol

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft has gone too far: including a Game Pass ad in the Settings app ushers in a whole new age of ridiculous over-advertising⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I updated my work laptop, and they put their shitty copilot button on the bottom right and TURNED OFF MY SHOW DESKTOP BUTTON.

  nothing more to add, just wanted to vent with people who may understand my rage with windows lol

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rig the game in Pip My Dice, a Yahtzee roguelike experience inspired by Balatro⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  now THIS is a gaming fad I’m all for!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marvel Vs Capcom Collection⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  yup! haven’t played mvc2 since the 360 days. excited to finally have it forever on steam!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I Don’t Want To Spend My One Wild And Precious Life Dealing With Google’s AI Search - Aftermath⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  here’s my new favorite helen keller quote, haha

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The “Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state” petition just got a response.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  one way of complying would simply be to only sell a 1-mo. “lease” to your game. You don’t own it, and at some point they stop selling more leases, and then kill the game.

  I prefer this route, to be completely honest with you. it will be easier for me to tell which games are just trying to suck dollars out of me and which games want me to just have fun.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky backs a project that would let Mastodon apps, like Ivory, work with its network⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  theyre sinking too much money trying to avoid using activitypub