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Looks like we might see the end of developers constantly changing their Steam release date
7 Aug 2019 at 7:26 pm UTC Likes: 1
So any time someone calls out Valve, or developers, or whoever, for greed . . . depending how you look at it, it's either irrelevant or it's someone's personal instincts rebelling against the existing economic system without realizing it. But it's not really a valid personal criticism of the people involved; they're just doing what they're supposed to.
7 Aug 2019 at 7:26 pm UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: doomiebabyWhy so insistent on sanitizing language? I can see where it bothers you to think that the way of life you're embedded in is based on "greed" as opposed to some less-ignoble-sounding version of the same thing. But let's be clear, the system isn't based on working for food, it's based on maximizing income, on the idea of everyone trying for an infinite amount of money. "Greed" seems a succinct summation of that. Now a lot of people don't, for practical purposes, really do that--most don't really have the opportunity anyway. But anyone who's a player in the game, anyone who could be considered an entrepreneur or engaged in any for-profit endeavour, is greedy, grabbing what the traffic will bear, or they're losing. And even those of us who aren't, are constrained to operate and even think that way to some extent. It's not like it's our fault. It's how things are rigged.Quoting: tuubi"Should" all be able to agree on?? how's about we can all at least agree on definitions for words like 'greed'? that is if we're going to use them and bother trying to communicate at all. personal gain != greed. if i work for food, i want personal gain. that is not the same as greed.Quoting: kuhpunktIt's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat seems like an overly negative attitude :dizzy:Quoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
" You can call it" .. tell ya what, i'll call it what's most accurate and not accusatory. sounds like a serious case of characterization. is it really honest to start making assumptions about people's motives?
So any time someone calls out Valve, or developers, or whoever, for greed . . . depending how you look at it, it's either irrelevant or it's someone's personal instincts rebelling against the existing economic system without realizing it. But it's not really a valid personal criticism of the people involved; they're just doing what they're supposed to.
Looks like we might see the end of developers constantly changing their Steam release date
7 Aug 2019 at 7:01 pm UTC
7 Aug 2019 at 7:01 pm UTC
Quoting: kuhpunktI can see it's a disturbing thought. And I'm willing to believe you are, say, less greedy than many or most other people. But you are constrained to be motivated by money; it's the game in town. Do you prefer buying things on sale or full price? If you have retirement savings, do you want them to make a high rate of return? Would you like a raise? Would you like to win the lottery? Do you worry about either the poor, or the rich, taking all the money (via social programs or immigration for the former or tax breaks/evasion and subsidies for the latter) and leaving none for your kind of people?Quoting: Purple Library GuyEven if that is/would be true... what makes you say that everybody is greedy? I'm not. Many others aren't.Quoting: kuhpunktWell, let me give a contrast. Imagine there was a system where everyone got a certain amount of credit every year that they could dedicate to paying creative people via sort of patreon/kickstarteresque portals (and that's all--it's not money, it's just a sort of vote to award someone money). Musicians, writers, game developers and so on. They'd all get paid from that. The amount any given creator could get per year would have a sort of soft cap, with rapidly diminishing returns past a certain point--but that point would involve a pretty solid living. But then the stuff they created would be free to all, available on public websites, steam-like portals or what have you built with open source code.Quoting: tuubiBut calling _everybody_ greedy... that's kinda insulting. Even the less offensive "pursuit of personal gain" is hard to swollow. Is everything you do just for your personal gain? Don't you share things? Don't you gift other people presents? Don't you think others should be treated and compensated fairly?Quoting: kuhpunktIt's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat seems like an overly negative attitude :dizzy:Quoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
If you think that's how all people are... that would be just sad.
Of course this would all involve a fair amount of tax money. And might be inefficient, and so on, so it might not turn out to be a desirable setup, that's not my point.
But it would not push anyone to be greedy. The game designers could make a decent living without coming up with all kinds of tricks to boost revenue; they could just get on with making cool stuff. The "Steam" things would be public, not for profit. The public would get all the games, music, books or whatever they wanted, for free. Incentives would be very different. Our current system, for better or for worse, is based on greed, on harnessing the power of greed to (in theory) motivate productive effort. It is possible to imagine other systems based on other things, on harnessing different aspects of human motivation, but those would be different systems. Could be worse; the feudal system was largely based on pride and bloodthirstiness.
Looks like we might see the end of developers constantly changing their Steam release date
7 Aug 2019 at 6:45 pm UTC
They lack infrastructure and that's bad for many potential customers. They lack infrastructure because they don't have money, they don't have money because they're not greedy; they are in effect trying to buck the existing system without the help of having any other system in place that could enable their lack of greed. It's a hard thing to do.
But their platform is open source. In theory it would be perfectly possible for international customers and/or game developers to write an international pricing extension for it and ask them if they wanted to use it.
7 Aug 2019 at 6:45 pm UTC
Quoting: PatolaCosting more to you /= greed. To the contrary, as you point out they simply lose you and a huge category like you as a customer for lack of that kind of infrastructure. itch.io as I understand it have a "pay what you want" cut from developers; I don't see how it's possible to define such an arrangement as greed.Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe only people in the whole biz who seem pretty clearly not driven by greed is itch.io. They're weird, I like them.And then again, Itch does not have regional prices, and to people in the third world like me, their prices are simply excessive, I have never spent 1 "real" (brazilian currency) there. Sometimes Steam is like 4 times cheaper than in there. So in my viewpoint, they are the greedy ones.
They lack infrastructure and that's bad for many potential customers. They lack infrastructure because they don't have money, they don't have money because they're not greedy; they are in effect trying to buck the existing system without the help of having any other system in place that could enable their lack of greed. It's a hard thing to do.
But their platform is open source. In theory it would be perfectly possible for international customers and/or game developers to write an international pricing extension for it and ask them if they wanted to use it.
Looks like we might see the end of developers constantly changing their Steam release date
7 Aug 2019 at 8:55 am UTC Likes: 1
Of course this would all involve a fair amount of tax money. And might be inefficient, and so on, so it might not turn out to be a desirable setup, that's not my point.
But it would not push anyone to be greedy. The game designers could make a decent living without coming up with all kinds of tricks to boost revenue; they could just get on with making cool stuff. The "Steam" things would be public, not for profit. The public would get all the games, music, books or whatever they wanted, for free. Incentives would be very different. Our current system, for better or for worse, is based on greed, on harnessing the power of greed to (in theory) motivate productive effort. It is possible to imagine other systems based on other things, on harnessing different aspects of human motivation, but those would be different systems. Could be worse; the feudal system was largely based on pride and bloodthirstiness.
7 Aug 2019 at 8:55 am UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: kuhpunktWell, let me give a contrast. Imagine there was a system where everyone got a certain amount of credit every year that they could dedicate to paying creative people via sort of patreon/kickstarteresque portals (and that's all--it's not money, it's just a sort of vote to award someone money). Musicians, writers, game developers and so on. They'd all get paid from that. The amount any given creator could get per year would have a sort of soft cap, with rapidly diminishing returns past a certain point--but that point would involve a pretty solid living. But then the stuff they created would be free to all, available on public websites, steam-like portals or what have you built with open source code.Quoting: tuubiBut calling _everybody_ greedy... that's kinda insulting. Even the less offensive "pursuit of personal gain" is hard to swollow. Is everything you do just for your personal gain? Don't you share things? Don't you gift other people presents? Don't you think others should be treated and compensated fairly?Quoting: kuhpunktIt's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.Quoting: Purple Library GuyThat seems like an overly negative attitude :dizzy:Quoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
If you think that's how all people are... that would be just sad.
Of course this would all involve a fair amount of tax money. And might be inefficient, and so on, so it might not turn out to be a desirable setup, that's not my point.
But it would not push anyone to be greedy. The game designers could make a decent living without coming up with all kinds of tricks to boost revenue; they could just get on with making cool stuff. The "Steam" things would be public, not for profit. The public would get all the games, music, books or whatever they wanted, for free. Incentives would be very different. Our current system, for better or for worse, is based on greed, on harnessing the power of greed to (in theory) motivate productive effort. It is possible to imagine other systems based on other things, on harnessing different aspects of human motivation, but those would be different systems. Could be worse; the feudal system was largely based on pride and bloodthirstiness.
Looks like we might see the end of developers constantly changing their Steam release date
6 Aug 2019 at 8:31 pm UTC Likes: 3
I think it's pretty clear EGS is running a strategy where they run up short term losses, which they can afford to do thanks to a huge war chest from fortnite and certain investors, in order to grab market share; once they've pushed that as far as it will go they can be expected to boost the price up again. But the question of what cut is fair remains open--we don't have information about just what the expenses and revenue are, so we're forced to judge based on not very relevant data, like wossname from EGS seeming like kind of a jerk.
In theory this whole war of each against all in the marketplace is supposed to lead to efficient pricing and not overly huge profit margins due to competition. But that lack of information (among other things, like barriers to entry, network effects creating economies of scale and many, many more) mean that doesn't necessarily happen.
So it may well be that Valve's cut of each sale is in fact excessive, giving them windfall profits while most devs barely get by, and they've been guffawing all the way to the bank for years. Or, it may not. We don't have the info we would need to tell the difference. (If it is true, EGS are still not our saviours, they're just an outfit who wants to replace Valve as the ones grabbing the dough, and they see the only way to do it is by loss leaders)
The only people in the whole biz who seem pretty clearly not driven by greed is itch.io. They're weird, I like them.
6 Aug 2019 at 8:31 pm UTC Likes: 3
Quoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
I think it's pretty clear EGS is running a strategy where they run up short term losses, which they can afford to do thanks to a huge war chest from fortnite and certain investors, in order to grab market share; once they've pushed that as far as it will go they can be expected to boost the price up again. But the question of what cut is fair remains open--we don't have information about just what the expenses and revenue are, so we're forced to judge based on not very relevant data, like wossname from EGS seeming like kind of a jerk.
In theory this whole war of each against all in the marketplace is supposed to lead to efficient pricing and not overly huge profit margins due to competition. But that lack of information (among other things, like barriers to entry, network effects creating economies of scale and many, many more) mean that doesn't necessarily happen.
So it may well be that Valve's cut of each sale is in fact excessive, giving them windfall profits while most devs barely get by, and they've been guffawing all the way to the bank for years. Or, it may not. We don't have the info we would need to tell the difference. (If it is true, EGS are still not our saviours, they're just an outfit who wants to replace Valve as the ones grabbing the dough, and they see the only way to do it is by loss leaders)
The only people in the whole biz who seem pretty clearly not driven by greed is itch.io. They're weird, I like them.
A look at how Steam Play is doing, based on the ProtonDB reports from July
6 Aug 2019 at 8:04 pm UTC
6 Aug 2019 at 8:04 pm UTC
Quoting: TheRiddickProtonDB is really only a guide, for the most part I might go there to read comments on howto get a specific game running and ignore any ratings I see since they tell me nothing.Well, up to a point. If most people were rating a game platinum and I found it borked I'd be thinking something must be wrong with my setup.
Simple and relaxing trading sim "Merchant of the Skies" has entered Early Access
6 Aug 2019 at 7:50 pm UTC
6 Aug 2019 at 7:50 pm UTC
I like the music.
NVIDIA releases the GeForce RTX 2060 and 2070 "SUPER" GPUs, along with a new Linux driver
6 Aug 2019 at 7:28 pm UTC Likes: 2
But I would like to note for future reference that if someone makes a point which is about sides and says nasty things about the side they are not on, which can be expected to have some representatives around, that's going to lead to problems even if they are not already in a discussion with a particular specific person on that side. So then, sure, if someone from that side comes along and takes issue snippily, they can then say "Look! They're being mean to me and I didn't even do anything!"
But it's kind of disingenuous; the fact is that there's a group of people they already collectively gave the finger, and it's not too surprising if members of that group take offense. There's actually a couple fairly venerable (by internet standards) words for the act of talking trash online about groups you expect to be reading the trashtalk. They are not words synonymous with "respect".
So for instance, say you're on a Linux-oriented discussion board and call open source a religion--the very deliberate implication of which is that positive beliefs about open source are baseless and irrational, and in turn that people holding such beliefs must be unthinking, gullible fools. You can expect that there are going to be people on such a board who have positive beliefs about open source and consider this insulting. Further, since they have likely arrived at those beliefs by thoughtful reflection, they are going to think the person saying it is an aggressive moron or an exemplar of certain venerable internet terms referenced above. Someone leading off with that kind of approach should be grateful if all they get is condescension. Well, unless a flame war is what they were after from the start.
So yeah. Provocative behaviour on internet boards is not limited to attacks on individuals. Trolling is generally aimed at broader groups.
6 Aug 2019 at 7:28 pm UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: GuestSince lunix is out, this isn't for lunix.Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou know, both I and various other people I have seen arguing with you normally have very calm, pleasant discussions on these boards. All of us seem to find this impossible with you. Seems to me the unifying factor here is you, consistently dissing everyone you talk to.In the first comment you wrote to me you were VERY condescending and acting holier-than-thou. In your second comment you acted like I was stupid and you were some kind of enlightened genius who could educate anyone with a few words.
Would it kill you to be civil?
The second guy was the usual AMD fanboy: amd gud, nvidia bad.
The third one dissed every nvidia user and he's constantly doing that.
Would it kill you amd users to be civil and objective once? Oh, never mind, I'm out.
But I would like to note for future reference that if someone makes a point which is about sides and says nasty things about the side they are not on, which can be expected to have some representatives around, that's going to lead to problems even if they are not already in a discussion with a particular specific person on that side. So then, sure, if someone from that side comes along and takes issue snippily, they can then say "Look! They're being mean to me and I didn't even do anything!"
But it's kind of disingenuous; the fact is that there's a group of people they already collectively gave the finger, and it's not too surprising if members of that group take offense. There's actually a couple fairly venerable (by internet standards) words for the act of talking trash online about groups you expect to be reading the trashtalk. They are not words synonymous with "respect".
So for instance, say you're on a Linux-oriented discussion board and call open source a religion--the very deliberate implication of which is that positive beliefs about open source are baseless and irrational, and in turn that people holding such beliefs must be unthinking, gullible fools. You can expect that there are going to be people on such a board who have positive beliefs about open source and consider this insulting. Further, since they have likely arrived at those beliefs by thoughtful reflection, they are going to think the person saying it is an aggressive moron or an exemplar of certain venerable internet terms referenced above. Someone leading off with that kind of approach should be grateful if all they get is condescension. Well, unless a flame war is what they were after from the start.
So yeah. Provocative behaviour on internet boards is not limited to attacks on individuals. Trolling is generally aimed at broader groups.
NVIDIA releases the GeForce RTX 2060 and 2070 "SUPER" GPUs, along with a new Linux driver
5 Aug 2019 at 5:02 pm UTC Likes: 3
Would it kill you to be civil?
5 Aug 2019 at 5:02 pm UTC Likes: 3
Quoting: GuestYes, that's the only relevant thing you mentionedYou know, both I and various other people I have seen arguing with you normally have very calm, pleasant discussions on these boards. All of us seem to find this impossible with you. Seems to me the unifying factor here is you, consistently dissing everyone you talk to.
. . .
Also, stop with this "proper" way nonsense
. . .
AMD can only compete at the mid-tier but you won't care because you AMD users were defending AMD and trolling nvidia users
. . .
More smugness from an AMD user - what a surprise! I know, I know - "don't ever question the holy mesa driver!"
Would it kill you to be civil?
What have you been clicking on this weekend?
4 Aug 2019 at 7:02 pm UTC Likes: 6
4 Aug 2019 at 7:02 pm UTC Likes: 6
Quoting: TiedemannMerchant of the SkiesThat is indeed a majestic carrot.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1040070/Merchant_of_the_Skies/ [External Link]
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