Ugg, another Walled Garden for chat, and with their recent updates they broke most bridging support. At least Matterbridge still works with Discord.

I just wish they would open their protocolls and allow Federation. It is most likely internally using XMPP anyways (like the Epic Fortnite chat and the previous League of Legends one).

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Quoting: monnef

Quoting: JuliusLots of people on Steam giving it negative reviews because the servers are overloaded today... F2P gamers really are the smartest bunch /s

To be fair, how would you rate a game you downloaded, yet cannot play? IMO devs/publishers brought it on themselves. This was totally predictable.

Yeah, as in predicable for players as well... so you just wait a day or two and don't write angry negative reviews about a game you have not even played (and got for free).

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Reminds me of playing 3D games in 320x240 resolution on a CRT because my PC was so slow. Funny how they try to sell a quick and dirty full screen pixelize shader as a cool thing.

I like real pixel graphics because of how sharp hand crafted pixel graphics look... but this isn't comparable to that at all.

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Lots of people on Steam giving it negative reviews because the servers are overloaded today... F2P gamers really are the smartest bunch /s

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On the other hand... the way they pre-announced it was a clear reference to the Occulus Rift S so they must consider it the same market...

My guess is that it will be a bit more expensive than the Rift S, but not Vive Pro territory.

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Julius

Quoting: F.UltraNow you are spreading the myth that EU is undemocratic which is blatantly false.

The EU Comission consists of people assigned by the government of each member state, so by definition fully democratic since they are appointed by the government that we the EU citizens have voted for in our national elections.
The EU Council consists of the heads of state of each member state, so people that we EU citizens vote on in our national elections.
The EU parliament consists of people that we as EU citizens vote on in the EU elections, again fully democratic.

While I agree that the EU is somewhat democratic, that is sadly a gross misrepresentation of the actual very limited democratic process involved :(

The EU commissioners are selected by the commission's president, who in turn is appointed by the governments of the EU countries, basically the heads of states in this case... which may or may not have been voted for. The actually democratically elected parliaments of the member states do not play a role in this at all. However the EU parliament has to agree to the complete team (yes or no, not individuals).
Regarding the council, again representation of governments, not actually elected members of parliament, which is at most a indirect form of democracy.
And the EU parliament, probably the most democratic of these three, is both largely powerless and also not truly democratic as not every persons vote counts the same in the elections.

Representative democracy is already how all of the member states operate nationally so if the EU Commission and Council is defined as "somewhat democratic" than the exact same applies to every single democratic country in the world.

True, but also very much a matter of degree. Switzerland is clearly more democratic than Germany. And Germany is clearly more democratic than the EU. As Germany is already a very indirect democracy, the EU can rightfully be called quite undemocratic (despite not being a totalitarian regime). Edit: In the EU's case that's maybe a bit like Homeopathy... the democracy is diluted to the point of practical non-existence :p

But I disagree with the "EU lobbycracy" statement someone else did... largely the same which happens in the national governments and even more so dirty "EU washing" happens by national lobby driven governments (=pointing the blame to the EU when in fact it is a unpopular but national decision).

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Quoting: F.UltraNow you are spreading the myth that EU is undemocratic which is blatantly false.

The EU Comission consists of people assigned by the government of each member state, so by definition fully democratic since they are appointed by the government that we the EU citizens have voted for in our national elections.
The EU Council consists of the heads of state of each member state, so people that we EU citizens vote on in our national elections.
The EU parliament consists of people that we as EU citizens vote on in the EU elections, again fully democratic.

While I agree that the EU is somewhat democratic, that is sadly a gross misrepresentation of the actual very limited democratic process involved :(

The EU commissioners are selected by the commission's president, who in turn is appointed by the governments of the EU countries, basically the heads of states in this case... which may or may not have been voted for. The actually democratically elected parliaments of the member states do not play a role in this at all. However the EU parliament has to agree to the complete team (yes or no, not individuals).
Regarding the council, again representation of governments, not actually elected members of parliament, which is at most a very indirect form of democracy.
And the EU parliament, probably the most democratic of these three, is both largely powerless and also not truly democratic as not every EU citizens vote counts the same in the elections.

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Quoting: F.UltraSo the main problem can be that Valve and these 5 companies have colluded to introduce geo-blocking, and not that Valve in itself enforces geo-blocking of activation keys.

Yeah, that is an interesting part of it, but if I understood correctly we are talking about Steam activation keys, so how could they not have discussed with the Valve beforehand? Again, I think this is someone trying to apply rules for physical goods to digital ones, but you are of course right that this conclusion might very well also be the outcome of this EU investigation.

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Quoting: F.UltraThe EU is not a single country but the whole idea behind the EU is to create a single market, and that is the whole crux here. If you sell items in one EU country then you cannot deny the purchaser from reselling that item in another EU country since the whole of EU is one large single market.

This is not about prohibiting Valve from having different prices in different EU countries, this is to prevent geo-locking on cross-border resells, nothing more, nothing less.

Exactly, but this is one of the cases where a digital economy doesn't quite work as the regular physical goods/items one.

Being allowed to freely resell cross-border will lead game companies to abolish (lower) regional pricing most likely unless they find another (probably even less customer friendly) way to prevent large scale key "smuggling".

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However, we are talking about positive price discrimination towards poorer countries here... almost like development aid for poor gamers ;)
And it is not really evil companies price discriminating against rich countries, but rather an attempt by them to cut down on key "smuggling", which you would probably also want if you would lets say buy & donate cloths to a poor country, just for some not so poor people to take those cloth and sell them in your own country for a slightly lower price than what you bought it for.

Anyways, its unrealistic to believe such "anti-discriminatory" EU regulation will result in anything but higher prices in those poorer places and ultimately also higher prices for everyone as overall less units are sold.

Edit: I think the EU is a great idea, but run by economic idiots. The last guy who actually knew what he was doing was Yanis Varoufakis :( (who btw worked as an economist with Valve for some time!)

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