Quoting: slaapliedjeThis is why it's almost a breath of fresh air for me to just play games on an Amiga or Atari ST. That and to be able to just double click on an icon or put in a (sometimes virtual) floppy disk and have it load up the game. No DLC, no pay to win, Just the game to play!

I'm now playing Blood Bowl 2 and it could be played without creating an online account, but the game is just missing some of the functionality. But I can't agree with the DLC part, we had them in the 90's there were just called datadiscs and added plenty of new functionalities. What is shame, that the DLC often lets you pay for only cosmetic things or something that should have been in the original game from beginning.

And the worst DLCs are those that are just dividing the online community, like DLC with multiplayer maps, which are not playable for others.

As you said the games should be just fun to play and not only for making money. I have some favorites developers in this case, which are creating games that are fun to play and you don't need to pay additional money to enjoy them. Some of them are even updating the games years after release. :-) You just don't see them creating any AAA titles.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: ArtenSo, you propouse use regulation (forcing valve enable regional pricing) for deal with consequences of another regulation?

You are shifting the blame here.
The consequences of not allowing region blocking should not be that there is only one EU region. Imagine if that was the case for other goods - EU would have imploded the moment that happened.
That this was the result is entirely Valve's fault - they could have, and easily so, only removed the region locking without also removing different EU regions (remember, they had those, even if only three).
They did not do that out of good old corporate greed - capitalistic entities will always strive to maximize profit, no matter the negative consequences. Which a state (or in this case, the EU) exists to regulate in order to benefit its citizens. It's called social capitalism and is working fairly well in most European countries.
It requires regulations, believe it or not.

Now, what can the EU do here?
Abolish its own principles because one fringe entity (in the grand scheme of things, when talking about the entire EU, Valve doesn't amount to anything) chose to be greedy about implementing laws?
I'd hope not - if they did that, it would show that just about anyone could strongarm the EU into backpedaling.
Force Valve to not f*ck over its customers? That would be optimal but as I said, I have no clue if there is legal ground to enforce regional pricing.
Or just do nothing and accept being blamed for another's fault? Unfortunately the most likely scenario here, there are bigger tasks to tackle right now for the EU than Valve.

Quoting: ArtenAnother regulation only do situaction worst in another place!

Not the one that I proposed, at least not for customers.
As I wrote before, regional pricing has not lead to price increases so far - just look at Russian games that aren't region locked, there is no price increase on the scale some seem to be afraid of.
Assuming that this would somehow be different for the EU is just fear mongering without a base in reality.

It would lead to Valve and publishers earning less money per purchase in lower income regions - while also leading to a lot more purchases in these regions. I'm not even sure it would lead to a net loss. I could very well imagine lots of people from lower income regions purchasing a lot more after such a change.

Besides, seriously, what is the worst that could happen?
We already ARE in the worst case for most Steam customers in the EU! Everyone's paying the highest price. Having regional prices again would mean an improvement for pretty much everyone.
Even in the (highly unlikely) case that those regional prices would be rising - they'd still be lower for most than they are now.

I'm not shifting blame. I identified true criminal in this case and it is EU. Whole EU is just regulatory hell which make hell from living in here. Idea of duty free trade is good, but EU evolved into mutch closer to totalitarian organisation. Ok, not china level yet, but wait couple years.
EU is evil organisation to begin with.
Which negative consequences have maximizing profit in this case? That rich germans with houshold income mote then 2* greater then for example czech houshold income can't buy games on third party regional sites and use it? Without this barier, germans can maximize their profit at the expense of citizens of poorer nations. So local third party stores need choose higher prices.

In this case, Valve is purely victim of EU oppression and regulatory hell.
So, some games are using regional lock in russia. Is logical to assume one who change price are the one which move price.

I was going to actually reply in detail and dismantle every single non-argument in that load of poorly veiled anti-EU propaganda.
But I think that would be waste of time and instead I'm going to abbreviate it all with:

Careful, your mouth is foaming.

I for one think that EU is really good thing, it really helped the countries in it to have better living conditions. There are plenty of things about EU that are not nice or just pure bureaucracy, but it really helping as a whole.

It just needs time to find out what is working and what is not. Remember it's here for just few decades.

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Even if they get most of the things running on the M1, the games will be a problem. Because most of them is not targeted on the ARM architecture (with exception of mobile games). But what I read about the M1, the SoC (System on a Chip ) architecture on desktop computer is a big step forward and it will probably take over the desktop segment in the future.

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Quoting: randyl

Quoting: Egonaut

Quoting: rkfgThis is very bad and stupid. They basically force Valve to set the same prices everywhere, no matter how strong economic is in certain countries. I

No they don't. They force Valve and other Publishers to redeem keys all over the EU no matter in which EU country they have been bought. If Valve changes the Prices due to this, it's all up to them and not forced by anyone.

Valve doesn't set the price of a game, publishers do. Valve applies publisher set regional pricing and key validation restrictions so some countries don't have to pay the same price as more economically powerful nations and regions. This was asked for by both players and publishers.

This will just result in poorer countries paying more, or video game pricing going up for all. It sounds to me like richer Euros don't really care about that though. Let those poor nations eat video game cake if they can't afford bread!

Or going down if they earn less, because plenty of people will stop buying them.

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Quoting: mylkawhats the solution to this?
make games expensive for everyone, or cheaper?

In this case, treat EU like one country. Make the price same for all the countries inside it. I think it will not take long and the worldwide digital market will be without borders.

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Quoting: LungDrago

Quoting: ZlopezMost of the people doesn't bother with these things. You need to accept them to play the game, so you really don't have choice, if you want to play it. It's the same as with EULA, you can't really Disagree with it and still use the product.

Fascinating, we do have a choice, though. There is plenty of other products for us to use, it's not like we're forced to play games with shitty DRM and anticheat shenanigans. We could just move on to something else. That applies to us as in Linux gamers, so definately for Windows gamers as well. Strangely people seem drawn to the same shitty games like moths to a flame. Publishers would realize quickly that anticheat=bad if it made cuts into their revenue but gamers seem notoriously bad at voting with their wallets. Or just generally incapable of any more complex decision save for "game fun, me play" and "game not fun, me not play". It might've just killed them, but it is fun, so it is technically a good game :D

You have a choice if you don't want to play this particular game. But if you want to play it, you don't have any. It's same like being excited about one movie, but going to see another, because that one is only on Netflix. Most people would buy the Netflix subscription to watch the movie instead of choosing to watch something else. The hypetrain usually works as manipulation strategy well enough. If it didn't there wouldn't be exclusive titles on only one platform.

Not everybody is able to sacrifice something he loves, because it has some (in this case big) flaws.

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Quoting: dvd

Quoting: damarrinFor someone who just wants to play an online game it’s irrelevant how the anti cheat is implemented and what it installs in their system as long as things continue working. If they’re not a cheater, they are happy they will have less of those to deal with.

It’s us Linux users who bring in other considerations like privacy and control over their own machines into the discussion, since these are among the reasons we use Linux in the first place. But we are 1 per cent. This discussion does not exist for the vast majority of people out there. It’s us who want to have our cake and eat it. And it’s not a jab or anything, I’m like this as well.

This is the result of the incredibly harmful capitalist propaganda. It's like how people in some countries view universial healthcare as a negative thing. But sadly computers and especially gaming is surrounded by some really nonsensical laws and unethical practices.

I don't think this has anything to do with capitalist propaganda. These companies are mostly profit driven, so if they get more money with this DRM, they will go for it. It's sad that people are buying those games, but I would also point on the thing that most gamers doesn't know that the game has DRM or what DRM even is. And some of them find out after buying the game, not before.

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Quoting: CorbenI'm wondering which are those price differences within the EU? Checking SteamDB the countries using Euros aren't listed separately. So I guess at least via the Steam store those prices are all the same. Then it will be keys that you can buy through retail boxes, and I guess there the store which sells them defines the price. Having those region locked seems strange to me.

Not every EU country uses EURO, for example I'm living in Czech Republic and we are still using Czech Koruna (CZK) and the price could be different.

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Quoting: LungDrago

Quoting: damarrinFor someone who just wants to play an online game it’s irrelevant how the anti cheat is implemented and what it installs in their system as long as things continue working. If they’re not a cheater, they are happy they will have less of those to deal with.

It’s us Linux users who bring in other considerations like privacy and control over their own machines into the discussion, since these are among the reasons we use Linux in the first place. But we are t1 per cent. This discussion does not exist for the vast majority of people out there. It’s us who want to have our cake and eat it. And it’s not a jab or anything, I’m like this as well.

True. I've been vocal to my friends against Riot's anti-cheat for example, but despite how much I try to explain how dangerous and even nonsensical anticheat solutions like this are, they simply do not care. It could send nudes of them to 4chan for all they care, as long as it prevents cheating (which it doesn't, but makes you feel like it does so it's good enough I suppose). They lack the education to understand the issue in front of them and such education involes too much text they don't care to read.

Most of the people doesn't bother with these things. You need to accept them to play the game, so you really don't have choice, if you want to play it. It's the same as with EULA, you can't really Disagree with it and still use the product.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ShinyaOsen

Quoting: Zlopezat least there are legal options for games, not like for movies or music

I always forget how hard it can be to get DRM free music im so used to buying from bandcamp and japan and my dad buys classical music. Japan still has a CD market and have multiple DRM free digital stores some times you do need to vpn to be able to buy the music. Movie on the other had ya good luck trying to get a DRM free version in good quality legaly since Bluray's DRM hasnt been fully cracked like DVD.

I thought DRM-free music situation isn't bad. There are a number of good stores where you can get even DRM-free FLAC:

* https://bandcamp.com
* https://us.7digital.com
* https://uk.7digital.com
* https://www.junodownload.com
* https://store.tidal.com
* https://www.prestomusic.com
* https://www.prostudiomasters.com
* https://www.hdtracks.com
* https://www.jamendo.com

Thanks for the links, most of the time I'm using Spotify for music (not really listening to it that much like few years ago and doesn't bother me if I don't own anything, for me it's just interactive radio). For looking on DRM free content I can also recommend this site https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide

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