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Latest Comments by FirearmsUnited
The EU is going after Valve and others for "geo-blocking", a statement from Valve
5 Apr 2019 at 7:41 pm UTC Likes: 5

You're all doing it wrong. Let me explain this from a very simple economist point of view:

I don't know how old or young most of you are but the older ones among us will remember how almost all the big companies, especially those that used manual labour or first level it-support, moved to eastern Europe or even further to India, China, Taiwan, and so on, forcing many long time employees into unemployment.

Our politicians and the media called this "globalisation". They told us that this is inevitable and that we must adapt to it. Still it will benefit us all in the long run because the same way how work force can be bought and sold globally for the best price, we the consumer will also profit from lower prices because we as well are allowed to buy and sell goods from all over the world for the lowest price possible.

We all now that custom duties often make this promise a stale one but after around 10-20 years we actually are able to buy goods directly from Shenzhen or Hong Kong for a reasonable price even with custom duties paid. Still only a fraction of consumers is actually using this option. Most people buy the same products for a huuuuuge mark-up at their local distributors. This makes companies happy because they enjoy giant profit margins

Now for a couple of years digital goods have risen to an insane amount of popularity. The major benefits from them are (among others) no custom duties and instant delivery from all over the world directly to your client devices. It's actually so very easy that many more people are using their right to do so. And why not? They also suffer from the downsides of globalisation. This is their promised compensation. However this makes companies that sell mainly digital goods nervous. Now they don't earn (as much) giant profit margins as in the past. So they install geo blocking and thus destroy the already very lacking balance in globalisation to further the disadvantage of the normal consumer.

Remember: We are only talking about EU wide geo blocking! Actually we should have the right to buy our digital goods from countries like India or Trinidad and Tobago since the companies that are producing those digital goods have also the right to safe a lot of money by not produce these goods in our countries and they make extensive use of it.

So everyone who is defending geo blocking in this thread does either not know or understand about the concepts of globalisation or should ask themselves why they are willingly accepting all the downsides of globalisation without demanding at least a tiny bit of fairness in their own favour by being allowed to participate in the same global market like the companies that try to deny them this right.

Editorial: An open letter to Valve on why they should keep on embracing Linux
10 Dec 2018 at 7:18 pm UTC Likes: 4

Has this been sent to Valve directly as well? Otherwise I fear nobody of Valve will read it.

This was a very wholesome letter and I really really support it! Valve and Linux Gamers happen to fight alongside because we are facing a common enemy: Platform and/or developer exclusive stores with harsh content restrictions. Valve has given us love and support beyond anything I could have ever imaged a couple of years ago and the Linux community, while small, has hoisted their flags in support. While Linux might be the Hobbit that is able to throw the ring into the volcano it is Valve who has to fight and win the war so we are able to. I always wished that Valve would succeed in making Linux a fully fledged gaming platform but it was Proton that made me truly believe that it was possible. Now with the new Hardware in the making we are nearing an important moment in history that will decide for the decades to come if Valve will succeed with their open and uncensored store concept for all of us to enjoy or if we will enter a dark age of console and smartphone like closed stores with painful content "curation" (censorship).

The world around us gets darker and uglier every day and there is nothing we can do against it. I really hope that at least our gaming world will remain an open, creative and easy to use place where people of every kind can enjoy a very diverse catalogue of games. No game will make everyone happy but everyone will find something to enjoy while tuning out the content they don't like without making it unavailable to those who enjoy it.

Man I really just wrote my whole thought process down but it felt great to do, so I will just post it.

Valve have pushed out another Steam Play update with the 3.16-4 beta including corefonts support
1 Nov 2018 at 6:02 pm UTC

Quoting: ghiumaUnfortunately elex crashes when I turn on the xbox360 controller, the keyboard works great, you know a way to avoid the crash...
Thanks for the hint! I play ELEX as well and it (or wine) always locks up after around an hour of gameplay. Since now I always suspected some lighting or particle effects to be the culprit since in my experience it always locks up when using either the jetpack or a flare. Sound is looping, music is playing normally and game is stuck.

However I have a wireless XBOX controller receiver connected that I no disconnected. I will check if my won't hang up any more with this and report back.

Humble are allowing you to build your own bundle of TinyBuild games and save some monies
8 Oct 2018 at 7:50 pm UTC Likes: 1

I already donated multiple times but I totally missed those affiliate links. Thanks!

Humble are allowing you to build your own bundle of TinyBuild games and save some monies
8 Oct 2018 at 7:21 pm UTC Likes: 2

I noticed that you use an affiliate link to humble bundle. That is great, I didn't know that you were a partner. If I'd knew that sooner I would have always used your affiliate link when I bought something from there thanks to an article on gamingonlinux.com :O

Could you create an easy to reach list of all your partner-/affiliate links, so I can always use them when buying from HumbleBundle and such?

The Steam Hardware Survey for December 2017 shows a reasonable increase for Linux
2 Jan 2018 at 7:29 am UTC Likes: 1

It should be noted that Valve might have been tweaking their survey method because yesterday I was asked to submit my hardware statistics and I haven't gotten this opportunity in a very long time. Like over a year.

But that's only my personal experience so it might not represent the overall situation.