Quoting: Kristian

Quoting: Appelsin

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'm very pleased with this outcome. As to why we got it, there is a cynical side of me saying "Ah! The Supremes concluded Google's pockets were deeper than Oracle's!"
We're just lucky the bigger plutocratic guns were on our side on this particular occasion.

My exact reaction to this.
What we can all take from this ruling, is that Google wields more influence, and have better lobbyists, than Oracle does.

As with the time that Google (et al.) was "pro" Net Neutrality, we can praise ourselves lucky that their interests happened to align with those of the general public (insofar as the 'general' public cares about Java and Net Neutrality).

Companies ain't our friends, and they don't give two sh1ts about what benefits *us*.

The Supreme Court is not congress. There are no campaigns and no lobbying.

No campaigns, true. No lobbying? You are living in a different age. I have seen several exposes of members of the Supreme Court getting schmoozed and wined and dined and taken to "conferences" in very posh vacation spots and so on and so forth. Most of it isn't even illegal; the US has some odd oversights in terms of how you are and aren't allowed to bribe judges.
And most of them belong or belonged to the Federalist Society, which is fundamentally a right wing lobby group of lawyers and judges. The Supremes, in short, are only partly the ones being lobbied--in part they are lobbyists themselves, from way back. If they were the kind of people who went around trying cases based on the merits of the briefs in front of them, they wouldn't have been appointed to the Supreme Court.

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I'm very pleased with this outcome. As to why we got it, there is a cynical side of me saying "Ah! The Supremes concluded Google's pockets were deeper than Oracle's!"
We're just lucky the bigger plutocratic guns were on our side on this particular occasion.

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Quoting: g000h

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI've been gradually seeing more mentions of Pipewire, seems like it's kind of becoming another "next thing that will finally make Linux sound great" (although I understand it can do more than sound). What do people figure the prospects are this time around?

Maybe they've got their finger on the pulse, mix on the alsa, and pipe on the wire, heh.

Haha! So you're saying it'll be Jacked up? OSS-ome.

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I've been gradually seeing more mentions of Pipewire, seems like it's kind of becoming another "next thing that will finally make Linux sound great" (although I understand it can do more than sound). What do people figure the prospects are this time around?

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Quoting: Hamish

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'm not sure I quite get this. So you're in charge of an immortal vampire fallen on hard times and your main objective in returning her fortunes is . . . find a better job?

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Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Heh. I'm just saying, when I think managing a vampire, I think stuff like putting the bite on people and making them into a network of servants to extend my shadowy influence (muahahaha!) not brushing up the ol' resume.

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I'm not sure I quite get this. So you're in charge of an immortal vampire fallen on hard times and your main objective in returning her fortunes is . . . find a better job?

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Seems like an eggcelent game. Eggstreme action!

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As nobody has yet pointed it out here as such, I'll do the obligatory mention:
Anyone who is suddenly figuring out now that it's too hard to support Linux (on a game done in Unity no less) clearly didn't think about how to make the game run well cross-platform back when they were in the planning stage (if there was a planning stage), didn't pick libraries intelligently and so forth. Now they're stuck because they couldn't be arsed to think about what they were promising back when they were promising it.

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Quoting: Grazen

Quoting: Purple Library GuyHuh. Well, I guess if the allegation is true, that Valve's secret contracts involve making developers not sell their games cheaper anywhere else as a condition of being able to sell on Steam, that's kind of anti-competitive in that it stops other stores from trying to gain market share by underselling Steam. And if you foreclose on the whole concept of competition on price, that's likely to be bad for consumers.

Given the high hurdles in US antitrust law, even if the allegation is true that might well not be enough for Valve to actually lose the lawsuit, as noted by EagleDelta etc. But it's still a practice I'd find somewhat annoying--sure, you can understand why they'd want to do it, but then it's easy to understand why any company would do any anti-competitive practice . . . no company wants to be successfully competed against.

Of course if it ain't true then the filers are just assholes. And whether it's true or not, the filers could have questionable motivations and backing.

Anti-competitive means there needs to be harm to consumers (that's a brief legal description) not to competitors. Steam requiring that you keep prices LOWER so that their customers can benefit from LOWER PRICES on other platforms is a plus for consumers. I know it's a plus for me. It means that when I see a sale for a game on another platform, I can go to my platform of choice to get the same price. I win. That's a good thing.

I think you're mistaken on two levels here. First, on what "anti-competitive" is. Lots of tactics are anti-competitive without being anti-consumer. So for instance, if there are four airlines, one of them has more money than the other three, and so the one starts offering airline tickets at below cost in hopes that it will drive the others out of business before it runs out of money itself, that tactic gives consumers cheap airline tickets, at least in the short term. But it is certainly anti-competitive; it's an attempt to establish a monopoly. It also happens that in the long run it's probably not good for consumers, because that one airline did not start the price war just to return to the status quo prices afterwards--the point is that after there's no competition it can jack prices up and reap far more profits than it lost. Once it has the monopoly, jacking the prices up will not be anti-competitive (there already is no competition), but it will sure as hell be anti-consumer.

Second, on what this policy (if it exists) does. The arrow of causation goes in the opposite direction to what you're saying. It does not mean Steam has to match other platforms' sales (actually, it doesn't seem as if it's alleging that sale prices are involved at all, only the regular price or prices which are "on sale" for so long they are in effect the regular price). If it included sales in the first place, what it would mean is that no other platform could mount a sale unless Steam was doing it first.
More generally, Steam is the big player, the main marketplace. And, it charges a large cut, 30%. If a game publisher wants to make $14 per game, it must charge $20 on Steam. But on Itch.io, say, it could make $14 per game while charging $16, or even less if the publisher wanted to be a jerk to Itch. So normally, platforms that took a smaller cut than Valve does could undersell Steam and potentially gain market share via their lower prices, potentially forcing Steam to in turn lower its cut to compete, lowering game prices across the board.
The kind of agreement alleged would mean the publisher must instead charge at least $20 on Itch and other such platforms. At the immediate level that means you can never get a price break on another platform. I don't see any way in which it reduces prices to consumers, quite the reverse, even in the short term. In the longer term, by making competition on price impossible, it reduces pressure for Valve to reduce their cut, so that would keep prices higher in the longer term.

So yeah, I don't see where you get the idea that such agreements would lower game prices in any way shape or form.

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The picture showing before you start the video looks like something I should be playing pinball on.

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