FeelsMeltingNESMan

But honestly, I barely ever look at those banners, so I guess I can at least understand why they'd use AI art there of all places.
Put something there? Yes.
Spend actual money on real people for something practically no-one will even look at? No.

But then... why have any art there in the first place? Just have text. Or stock art.

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Quoting: CaldathrasThat's your opinion (one that I happen to agree with, mind you) but that doesn't make it right or wrong -- which is, after all, a value judgement.

Eugh. Spare me that relativistic stuff.
Having an opinion does not make that opinion valid.
There is such a thing as correct and such a thing as wrong.
Is 1+1 2? Are there clouds in the sky? Would fulfilling minimal end-of-life plans be expensive for publishers/developers? Etc.

Most opinions around this topic can be rather easily proven right or wrong - and honestly have been, plenty of times. Certain people just choose to ignore that and continue doubling down as if their opinions had not been proven wrong dozens of times over.
Maybe some day this will be known as PirateSoftware syndrome.

Quoting: CaldathrasHe may feel strongly that their strawmen have validity. Can you show him how those strawmen are not valid?

Engaging with strawmen or even validating them is pointless. They may well be valid, but their entire substance is not even being relevant to the actual topic.

The classic here is the "it would be too expensive for publishers to keep the servers infinitely".
Is that a correct statement? Yes.
Is that statement relevant to the initiative? No.

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Quoting: pbWhich means that anyone suing Valve does not represent the interest of the consumers - ever.

That is quite a sentence to write in a post probably meant not to be corporate bootlicking 😆

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Quoting: CaldathrasSpeaking from long experience in the retail industry, 30% is pretty much standard fair unless you are targeting wholesale business levels (mega corps with big box storefronts like Walmart, Home Depot, Office Depot, Best Buy, etc.). Computer hardware and livestock feed are two areas that I am aware of that operate on wholesale pricing margins. As such, I have absolutely no objections to Valve's commission structure and see no reason why they should be expected to target wholesale margins like the big box mega corps.

There is no argument anywhere that this isn't standard.

The argument is that the standard is simply way too high, filling coffers drastically more for the one taking the cut.
As someone who has worked with online infrastructures for ages, there is no calculation that even remotely ends in the 30% range of cost coverage.
Much more realistic is somewhere between 12-20% - and that doesn't even take into account all the services Valve charges for with that cut, WHICH AREN'T EVEN USED BY THE MAJORITY OF DEVS.
There is also size - a 2GB game quite frankly should get a (marginally, as one factor of many) lower cut than a 200GB one. Yet that doesn't happen.
Etc.
The whole system is full of logic holes like that. It is equal for all, but somewhat paradoxically, that does not make it fair.

I do not believe physical stores are a good comparison to digital ones. Digital infrastructure is much, much, much, much cheaper.
Although, hey, with the current pricing spikes and shortages, who knows, maybe we'll actually end up with 30% becoming reasonable.
I sure hope not...

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Quoting: Mountain ManFrankly, I have no time or patience for people who dismiss an opposing opinion as "drinking the cool-aid".

That is okay, not everyone can deal with honesty and rather just goes "lalala I can't hear you" when being called out on how wrong they are.

Let's be honest here, you aren't engaging with any arguments because you know you've already lost them, and the cool-aid snip gave you a good exit strategy.

Quoting: CaldathrasIt means blindly accepting direction and/or the status quo without giving it any consideration of your own. From what I've read, this does not seem to apply to you.

Oh, but it does.
Everyone who would actually give these things consideration would realize that the publisher's talking points are entirely wrong, with no basis in reality - because they are almost entirely strawmen.
Opinions are not equal - they can be right, and they can be wrong, and they can be in-between.

At least if they are capable of reason, and I very much believe Mountain Man is, he just doesn't want to admit how wrong he is here.

He might still be very right regarding the outcome, though.
It all depends on how well the initiative can prepare for and counter these strawmen in actual parliament.
This is somewhat out of non-European hands, but once the process for that opens and there are some centralized calls to action, I very much intend to contact whatever MPs would be "responsible for me" about this.

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Quoting: Mountain ManYou really can't demand that software developers not take advantage of cost saving technologies like cloud servers.

Of course you could.

But that isn't the goal - as I already wrote, those mock servers are already a reality in almost any project.
It would be work to make these more user-palatable, but not much. Paling in comparison to the dough raked in by online games that were even just a bit successful.

It is also by far not the only way to go about this, nor the cheapest.
You are drinking the publisher cool-aid already and they haven't even really started firing their propaganda - weird, dude!

You could absolutely - and reasonably! - demand that an end-of-life plan must be made before an MMO/Online-focused game is released, and that end-of-life plan MUST include a way to play in a "reasonable, minimal way" (eg. say offline only, or self-hosted, etc) past end-of-life.
Or you can't release/sell it in the EU.
Simple, really.

If those few weeks of work and minimal amount of resource cost would keep a game from being developed, then developing that game was never a viable business decision anyway.
Publishers really have no leg to stand on here.

You also can't forget: When you ignore the suits, the vast majority of developers is in favor of this.
Understandably so, as nobody wants to see years of their work just ceasing to exist.

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Quoting: LupertEverett

2: In-game purchases yadda yadda

"Hey Sony, so I have this DLC for a game I bought from GOG, can I play this on PlayStation?", said nobody ever.

True - it is also not even remotely the point made in the lawsuit.
But tearing that strawman down sure must've felt great.

Quoting: LupertEverett

3: Commissions commissions

The fee, that is... 30%...

You know... the same amount Sony and Apple also gets, yet somehow it is only Steam who is constantly put on target for it.

Lol, lmao even.

Hmmm....
You mean only Steam as in:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/legal-claim-filed-against-sony-over-30-store-cut [External Link] (Sony)
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1751446916 [External Link] (also Sony, but other country)
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/10/1023834758/apple-app-store-epic-games-fortnite-verdict [External Link]
I'm quite certain there were more, but I can't be bothered to do more digging.

What was that common sense rule again, about not talking about a topic you know nothing about?
I can't quite remember.
Oh, well.

But I guess it is really surprising that we hear more about Valve on this Linux-focused website.

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Seems partly reasonable to me.

I've always said that Valve's cut is undeniably too large. I just don't see any legal grounds to lower it - but hey, who knows.
And that their practices especially for charging with in-game purchases are double dipping in many cases is also quite clear.

I'm not too sure about the PPO stuff, I've read too many conflicting statements here.

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Quoting: mr-victory@soulsource how much difference is there between a cloud platform and, say, a Linux PC? Besides the scale of the cloud. Is it possible to reuse the software designed for a cloud and run it on a conventional x86_64 Linux device with perhaps minimal changes to the game client so it can locate the custom server? Same for Arm64 Linux, I don't know which one is more popular on cloud

Not much of a difference in principle.

And if we are talking solo-play only (which would be the minimal requirement the initiative aims for), no "scale" is needed really.
Only a "mock"-server of sorts that allows a single individual to play somehow.

Such mock-servers (at least in a limited capacity) are already a reality in all major MMOs, as they are a necessity of development (you wouldn't want every single dev to have to connect to some online instance for testing their latest change).

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Quoting: pbSo what's stopping them from disclosure?

Nothing. And plenty do.

Quoting: pbAre thy ashamed of using "a tool"?

Shame has nothing to do with that.
But you can see from the absolutely braindead "outrage" over Swen Vincke's very reasonable stance on AI usage why a developer wouldn't even want to talk about it at all.

Anyway, this is about Steam enforcing disclosure when it comes to generating content that is "consumed" with the product.
And as said already, that only makes sense with parts where that can even be reasonably checked.
You can't check if someone uses Mistral in their IDE to help debugging, as a more efficient "Google" with more context, not at all, or writing half their code with it - the dev can tell you what exactly they do, or not.

Quoting: pbIt's also our right to know if the code was produced using genAI,

There is no such right.
You are hallucinating harder than ChatGPT on its worst day.

Quoting: pbWe have obligatory lists of ingredients on food products, cosmetics, detergents - not only because of allergens, but simply because we (the consumers) have the right to know what kinds of shit went in there, before we buy.

Apples and oranges.
You have a right to know what is in the product.
You have no right to know what brand of tool was used to harvest it, nor could that be reasonably checked.

Quoting: pbI'm not necessarily saying it should be obligatory to disclose the full toolbox used to make a game, but it would certainly be well received and I hope it will become a good practice.

I agree, disclosure would be nice and IMO beneficial to devs.
But there is no right to that, and some will do it while others won't.

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