Quoting: BoldosSo, if I understand it correctly: People/users do not like AI stuff in games? :huh:

Incredible, eh? Who'd have thought?? /sarcasm

Specifically though, it's genAI that's so hated. ML/AI has been around for decades without burning the planet, stealing jobs, pirating books, abusing copyright, talking kids into bad situations, or kick-starting a new nuclear era during a climate crisis. I could also point out the price of Nvidia GPUs, or 32Gb of RAM, I suppose, but I feel like it's already earned its derision by this point. Screwing up gaming/computing generally is just icing!

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Selfishly, I have Netflix (albeit debating keeping it much longer after I ditched Spotify a couple of months ago), and won't ever take Paramount, so hopefully this hostile bid fails completely. Also, as others have noted, this is backed by Jared Kushner apparently - Trump's step-son, with additional backing from the middle east.

According to the FT, Paramount are on the hook for only (!) $12bn, while $24bn is secured through several middle eastern sovereign wealth funds (who are still separately diversifying from oil through initiatives like PIF's investment in EA e-gaming), and the remainder is a debt through a combined commitment from the Bank of America, Citigroup, and Apollo.

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Terse is a better word, yeah. Caustic was too much, sorry.

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Quoting: cybolicTo make myself perfectly clear, I very much welcome discussion of the content of the game and its ban, and of course think you a free to interpret the original scene in any way you wish, but I cannot stand misinformation.

That's probably not going to be possible, because as I said, the FAQ was ret-conned somewhat. I believe the devs are "doing a Wolfire" and blaming Valve, perhaps not unreasonably, for their situation. But they're not helping their case either, beyond stirring up publicity by painting Valve as the big bad.

I don't really want to argue with you either - you're quite caustic when replying, so sure of your "facts" that I have no will to argue the semantics of "art" vs "sexual" vs whatever.

Like, you're still using the FAQ as the source of truth, but I've already pointed out that it's unreliable. Speaking of...

Quoting: cybolicDo you remember where this was posted?

Nope, sorry. I remember it only vaguely - I follow the IndieDev bot on Bluesky, so I noted the story briefly and moved on.

I think we could do with moving on from this one now.

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We've got a few folk reading the developer's FAQ and commenting about why folk are talking about a scene with a child riding a "horse" in the game - the FAQ has now removed any reference to this.

However, original reports of the issue, on social media, made by the developers, claimed that they submitted an early-release version of the game, in which a live-action sequence depicted a young child (about 10-12 years old) riding a "horse" (a naked woman wearing a horse-head). The developers only uploaded this version to create a game-page, but Valve used this version to block-list the game.

While the scene could be argued to not inherently be "sexual" itself, the developer believed that this was the reason for the block and so they attempted to resubmit, after re-filming the scene with a 20-year old version of the character. Valve refused to re-review. Sadly, the social media posts have been removed now, so evidence of this is difficult to source. Also, the developers have changed their story in the FAQ, making it even more difficult to pin down the "real" story.

Hopefully that clears up some of the confusion in previous comments.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: scaineThis reminds me of that ridiculous situation where a gay activist asked a bakery for a "support gay marriage" cake and the bakery refused. And the gay activist got up in arms about this, and it went to court! Madness. Sure, the bakery are bigoted scum, but they're a private firm, and they get to be bigoted about the cakes they sell. Thankfully the courts agreed [External Link]. But in summary, if I was selling pizzas and someone came in asked me to make a pizza in the shape of (insert something offensive here), I'd throw them the fuck out of my pizza parlour. My house, my rules.

Hrm. I have a bit of a problem with that perspective. So, if someone has a bakery and they do wedding cakes, it's OK for them to refuse to do the wedding cake if it's for the wedding of two gay people. What if it's for the wedding of two black people? Or, two black people wanting to be served at a diner? I think the US had a whole big movement about that kind of thing, what was it called, "civil rights"? What if it's for the wedding of two Christian people? I'm an atheist, I'd be happy to refuse to serve evangelists, except I believe they have rights. Basically, your position takes us back to Jim Crow, except against whoever a lot of people can be persuaded to be prejudiced against. There should be limits to the rights of businesspeople to run their businesses the way they want. They're not allowed to commit fraud, they're not allowed to put poison in their cakes, and they shouldn't be allowed to poison society either.

Also consider: How does your instinctive reaction shift if, instead of simply refusing to serve (group you don't like), merchants were to start charging different prices to groups they don't like? The product costs twice as much if you're gay, or black, or muslim. That OK?

The BBC article covers some of that. Another gay activist, for example, challenged how a gay bakery would feel about being forced to make gender critical cakes.

I'm not saying we should scrap discrimination laws, but I'm very glad that common sense won out here. Let's just say that if I was forced into making a cake for an asshole bigot, that bigot probably wouldn't enjoy the cake I made...

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@kuhpunkt - I have no idea why you're being so argumentative about this - your quote-cutting sounds really aggressive, so apologies if I've pissed you off somehow.

But if you believe that a game only takes 6 months to develop, and that everyone was just instantly cool about this change, you're deceiving yourself. Similarly, 5000 keys, many of which would have gone out to press already, is nowhere near enough to cover the possibility of a top-selling bundle. Finally, sure, the Valve cut change happened seven years ago, but is predated by nearly two decades of an unchanging, non-negotiable 30% cut, a cut that's still valid for the vast, vast majority of developers. It's perfectly normal for people to have latched on to that??

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: scaineAs noted in the article itself, it's the devs themselves that bemoan that this change prevents them from putting their older games in a bundle.

Yeah, but why lie about this? The change happened almost 3 years ago. If they can't be straight about this... why should anybody trust them?

How are they lying?? 3 years is recent in terms of a game's life-span. They had the rug pulled out from under them on this. There was no notice of it happening, just a sudden announcement that they'd changed how they issue keys.

Quoting: kuhpunktIf their previous game Saturnalia had sold well, I'm pretty sure that they would be able to generate more keys. The game had a peak of 15 players 1.5 years ago. It's got 80 reviews on Steam. It apparently didn't sell well... so why should they be able to continue generating keys? You can still buy some keys online, so at some point they must have been able to generate keys.

Putting a poorly-selling older game into a bundle is a huge deal for a dev, generating sales that simply wouldn't happen any other way. You still get 5000 keys under the new rules, but that's not feasible for putting the game into a bundle.

Quoting: kuhpunktYes... and that's known for years. I'm just wondering where Pete is getting the "developers can negotiate the cut" from. I'm not aware that anybody can negotiate that. Everybody has to earn it.

Not that well known, no. Most people still tend to quote the "30% of all steam sales go to Valve", I find.

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Quoting: Cley_FayeCensorship is censorship, no matter how some people think they have the high ground.
Disturbing content in fictional media should not be regulated the same way we protect actual people, because those "in power" that decides where the line lays will change, and their decision is extremely dubious. I'm more annoyed by extreme violence, gore, and torture than nudity, but it seems that only the later is deemed horrible enough to warrant censorship.

As long as it's all fictional content, let it exist. If it can't find its public, then it will fail. But I am the one making the decision, not some random bureaucrat/employee somewhere. This kind of issue keeps happening repeatedly, and keep coming from countries that are usually against "nanny states", but quick to accept it when a boob is visible. The hypocrisy of it is stupid.

Hard disagree on this from me. Valve is a private company and isn't beholden to our views on right and wrong. There's a big distinction between government oversight (aka regulation) and a private company not wanting to host things it doesn't like. It has it's own reputation to consider, by association to the content it sells. Sure, that's a low bar for Valve, but it's their decision.

This reminds me of that ridiculous situation where a gay activist asked a bakery for a "support gay marriage" cake and the bakery refused. And the gay activist got up in arms about this, and it went to court! Madness. Sure, the bakery are bigoted scum, but they're a private firm, and they get to be bigoted about the cakes they sell. Thankfully the courts agreed [External Link]. But in summary, if I was selling pizzas and someone came in asked me to make a pizza in the shape of (insert something offensive here), I'd throw them the fuck out of my pizza parlour. My house, my rules.

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Petethegoat

Quoting: kuhpunktAnd they have RECENTLY begun refusing keys? That change happened almost 3 years ago. It just comes across as disingenuous.

wanting to put their previous game in a bundle does not seem disingenuous.

I didn't say anything about wanting to put their game in a bundle. I just talked about the change... 3 years ago isn't recent.

As noted in the article itself, it's the devs themselves that bemoan that this change prevents them from putting their older games in a bundle.

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Petethegoatthey are not good for developers in the same way they are good for consumers - especially smaller developers who do not get to negotiate down the 30% cut.

Which developers get to negoatiate the cut?!

It's not a negotiation, but bigger devs suffer from a smaller cut.

Here's the breakdown I took from a Reddit thread, so I admit I haven't verified this, but I have no reason to doubt it.

Valve's revenue share ceased being a flat 30% revenue share arrangement in 2018. Valve's cut is now:
30% of the first $10million revenue.
25% after $10million of revenue until $50million revenue.
20% on all revenue above $50million.

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