Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI won't pretend to understand the specifics here (and there are a lot of documents to sift through), but my understanding is that these are direct quotes from emails. I think the only way Valve could come out of this cleanly is if the emails were completely fabricated.

But it does seem early to conclude whether that is evidence or not.

Oh, I'm sure they were excerpts of actual emails sent from actual people at Valve. Discovery dredges up a tonne of stuff - from other companies, too, as you noted. The court will look at the context of the documents, and both sides will make their arguments, and the court will decide whether it shows a policy or pattern of wrongdoing, or whether it's just perfectly fine course of business stuff.

Plaintiffs have to throw every accusation they can, since they can't generally add them afterwards, and then they have to dig around to find something that might support their position; the court case is what determines whether there's any validity to it.

Media and commentators love to look at accusations of the plaintiff, since they get to go first and they necessarily have to throw in the most salacious stuff, whereas actual court cases are really long and kinda boring.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualIn the Exhibit 85 document on Aug 23, 2024, there is some reference to emails from Valve about price parity that is being submitted as evidence.

For context, the plaintiff's expert witness produced a report saying what the plaintiff wanted; Valve's expert witness (compellingly, IMO) said that plaintiff's report was terrible and shouldn't be allowed in the case, and the document you're looking at is plaintiffs arguing that their export report should totally be allowed. None of it's actually in the case as evidence yet. Both sides are still in the "what is this case actually about" stage. Although, to be fair, once "what a case is actually about" is decided in anti-trust cases, the outcome tends to follow directly - hence the years of haggling before that point.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the anti-trust stuff

What about the price parity enforcement Valve has been doing?

There's been no evidence that that's a thing that they've done.

Maybe some evidence of that will turn up, but it hasn't yet.

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Quoting: KithopI'll echo the sentiment here though: good news for publishers, but they're doing *nothing* for consumers, so why should we care?

Their plan is to starve Steam users of games, so you should probably care. There's definitely no reason to welcome it, of course.

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Quoting: ElectricPrism

Epic Games reduce their cut for Unreal Engine games for same-day Epic Store launches

I'm pretty sure that is illegal and that other companies have been litigated against for this kind of thing.

You'd have to show that Unreal Engine had a dominant market position in game engines, and that they were using that to unfairly tie the Epic Games Store. It's a feasible argument, but not a slam dunk.

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Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: CatKillerI realised partway through the second game that the character I'd created was basically Xena.

You only realized that after one and a half games? :shock:

Yeah... Strong, charismatic, good with weapons and first aid but otherwise not too bright. Just how it turned out. Till I noticed, at least, and then I leaned into it.

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Quoting: neolithOh, I should give them a try then. I've gotten two of them in a bundle I think, but I've never looked into them let alone on the Deck.

The trackpads are super comfy for it. I don't generally go for RPGs, but those ones grabbed me. In part, I suspect, because I could just do a bit as and when on the sofa rather than having it be a big time commitment. I realised partway through the second game that the character I'd created was basically Xena.

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I did really enjoy the Shadowrun games on the Deck, so I'd recommend picking those up to anyone that's interested. The individual games are in the sale but the trilogy bundle hasn't had that discount applied and so works out more expensive than getting the games separately.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeThis just makes me think back to the early days of video games where a single dude in his basement, or the back of some store writes up a game that everyone wants.

Not just the early days, though. [External Link]

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It's a shame Sony are being so sloppy with their PC releases at the moment. The little one was intrigued by the setting of HZD but is too young to play it himself for now, so we built a Lego tallneck together. This would be a great alternative for him to play on the Deck if Sony weren't half-arsing their Deck support.

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