Quoting: randyl

Quoting: MohandevirWhy not sell these Steam keys on the Epic store then? :D
Don't answer to that, just being sarcastic.

Your joke brings up a great point though. Why aren't game and media purchases recognized across store fronts, especially for service oriented games? The ecosystem is currently very user hostile and pro-publisher/distributor. If we buy a game from a publisher it should be considered 'valid and purchased' across many store fronts. If anything that will truly drive consumer prices down and provide incentive for distributors to make better deals with studios and publishers.

EGS does not allow it, at least for exclusive games. Steam only supports steam keys for games that are also sold on steam itself (which is a very reasonable limitation.... Though I remember Tim Sweeney calling them out for that once :D). In theory though nothing forbids to get a key on EGS, register it on publishers site and then obtain a steam key. Ofc it requires support from publishers.

But honestly I hope it never happens, at least for games that have been timed EGS exclusives. It's pretty obvious that if you could have done that for games like Metro Exodus then everybody would have bought on EGS, played there with all the hassles for one year but then obtained a feature complete copy on Steam after a year (proof: see g2a prices for metro keys. EGS ones became worthless once steam one appeared). That would be a clear abuse of Steam good faith: EGS would get the profits and Steam the costs. Valve would necessarily have to put some restrictions on Steam keys and that would be no good for anybody.

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Quoting: randyl

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: amataiThe 30% is only for game bought on steam. Valve gives dev key generator so they can sell how much keys they want without the need to pay a cut to Valve.

It's true also that to sell those keys you have to pay for a variety of infrastructure and services unless you want to drown in frauds. I came to realize that for small indies generating steam keys (outside the free ones for press and PR) can often result being a bad idea. Sometimes even when they sell those on sanctioned stores (see g2a controversy). But then they'll have to pay a cut anyway so...

Ofc none of this is Valve fault. Just nothing that choosing to renounce some of their services to save some bucks still mean that you have to pay to build those services or pay someone to provide them to you in their place.

Your answer is hyperbole in an effort to dismiss a valid claim. How does a studio generating its own keys suffer from fraud? Do you have any proof of that? What are the additional costs for self-hosting keygen?

A studio may suffer from stolen credit card fraud, but there is no inherent massive cost to hosting your own keygen. Many studios do offer keys through their own site and they don't have to pay the 30%. Authorized reseller sites also don't suffer from keygen fraud (again credit card, but not keygen).

I really need to see proof of your claims because they don't sound grounded in reality at all.

Quoting: SalvatosThat's not what I’m reading from Mal’s post at all. They’re saying that even if you get the Steam keys for free, there is a cost to then distribute and control those keys outside of Steam. Meaning that you may be better off just selling them on Steam and letting Valve take their cut if you don’t have the infrastructure in place to handle this easily.

Yeah, basically what Salvatos said. I wasn't trying to dismantle any argument. I'm very much pro Valve (or better, firmly anti EGS). But saying that if you sell steam stuff outside steam you get 100% profit is inexact because of what Salvatos said better then me: selling those keys safely has a cost.

Besides, I got this idea from Factorio dev diaries, where in these long years they enumerated a good amount of exploits and issues they faced with the steam keys they distributed outside steam (again, is not steam fault. It's credit card circuits fault, but regulate those is not in the agenda of any world institution so people can only cope with their shit). Eventually they found a solution they are satisfied with. But to arrive there they paid a cost both in terms of damages along the way and man hours invested to figure them out. Which not all indies may be ready or willing to face.

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Quoting: amataiThe 30% is only for game bought on steam. Valve gives dev key generator so they can sell how much keys they want without the need to pay a cut to Valve.

It's true also that to sell those keys you have to pay for a variety of infrastructure and services unless you want to drown in frauds. I came to realize that for small indies generating steam keys (outside the free ones for press and PR) can often result being a bad idea. Sometimes even when they sell those on sanctioned stores (see g2a controversy). But then they'll have to pay a cut anyway so...

Ofc none of this is Valve fault. Just nothing that choosing to renounce some of their services to save some bucks still mean that you have to pay to build those services or pay someone to provide them to you in their place.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPBesides, how are you supposed to release hotfixes for your recently released game if you are too busy playing Cyberpunk? ;)

They won't fix any bug after release. Because they are applying the inversion of control principle: all bugs are fixed before release. :D

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Quoting: The_AquabatYou have a missconception about latin america, maybe?

No. I wrongly assumed that

Quoting: The_Aquabatjust meh another service for the northern hemisphere and other few countries.

was about launching a service that half of the world can't benefit from due to technical limitations.

If you concern is about purchasing power I would say that cloud gaming could actually benefit low income countries more than high ones. It's a definitely cheaper access cost to buy a game and play on cloud (even for a monthly fee) than buy all the hardware and then play the game. But I admit I've no idea how much a modern nvidia card cost in emerging countries so I may be totally wrong here. I guess hardware cost is proportional to purchasing power like for games prices?

My post instead was about technical limitations in places where there shouldn't be. If I have to compare the download speed at my parents house with steam download statistics it sits in between Angola and Namibia average numbers. And, as I said, it's not they live in a remote village of a low GDP per capita region. Their in the third city by size of a region that is on top of European statistics (the purple area in link. By contrast now I'm living in a blue one, although in the regional capital. And I've a connection that is on par with avg South Corea according again to Steam.

My point is, even in first world, not all people is young and connected and demographics are not evenly distributed. So where I see Internet and cloud services as opportunities for remote jobs, faster production tools, easier access to knowledge, useful services and then entertainment as well, many voters just see nothing more than costly playthings (Netflix at best or free porns at worse, depending on how backwards they are). And apart from big cities where connections are widely available because it's easier for private investors to recoup the costs, politicians in charge of non-metropolitan areas often don't have the interest pushing to make adequate Internet access to their voters. Because their electors themselves largely don't care (at least before corona). As a consequence the more dynamic people migrate in the cities. And those that go away (like me lol) are less voters asking for a better Internet.

Ofc these things won't change just because Valve starts offering cloud. My point is that little by little, offer by offer and service by service, general public will start to realize how having performing connections will increase their quality of life. And push for having access to that. So having a new cloud service that only half of the world can use, is actually good for the world as a whole.

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Quoting: The_Aquabatjust meh another service for the northern hemisphere and other few countries.

Well... If anything services like these creates demand for this kind of infrastructure and eventually make it happen. I'm born (not live there anymore but I maintain connections) in one of the richest provinces in the world as avg income, in the heart of Europe. But it's a mountainous territory and the people is backward in many ways. The home Internet service level for households there is on par with remote territories of the Southern hemisphere as you would put it. Yet people don't complain much (4G is enough for casual usages). When talking with politicians, even of my age, I've always been dismissed as a guy fixated with unreasonable things (thing is industries and institutions have access to Corea level fiber infrastructure, the household access restriction is purely a political built up thing. The backbone is there and is even County owned).
Stuff like Netflix, stadia and (now) covid is helping making people open the eyes into the big opportunity and investment that are Telcom infrastructures. Any new addition is welcome. People is finally asking for fast internet in addition to money for tangible things like farming or roads. You don't urge the world to move by crippling the vanguards.

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Proton anyone? I've quite a few memories with those two titles.

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Nice. I used inkscape ten years ago to make vectorial images to include in my master thesis. Which was completely made with foss ofc.

Fun anectode. I was Linux only user since ages when I graduated. Soon later I got my first job in a software firm. Which was ofc using windows machines. The embarrassment and ackwardness on my first day when my new boss and previous interviewer asked me to open a pdf on my new brand new Windows 7 machine and I was clueless on how to open the file manager, being the last windows I used at home win95. He looked at me like: "WTF I screw up in the interview?". XD

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Awesome! I bought overcooked 2 last week to play with my fiancee during the lockdown. Amazing game. I'm still surprised we will marry despite that game.

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Quoting: LinasLet me just say that this is fucking cool, and exactly what we need to make Linux gaming console a reality. I will be very surprised if the next SteamOS will not be (exactly like) GamerOS.

More than that, even if&when new SteamOS comes out, this distro promises a more round experience with unofficial proton configs and emulators integration. It also opens the door to integrate other digital stores in the OS... if any digital store beside Steam will ever embrace the future.

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