They can absolutely make it so that disk won’t load the game though so long as you’re connected to the internet.

Pretty much all software EULA’s are like this. Anything you “buy a license for” certainly. Same as it ever was.

Good news, you can opt out of Netflix entirely. The dark side has a flag and shanties and everything.

Lol, no.

This is absolutely subjective. Assets flips could count, but I’ve played and enjoyed several of those. Flappy Bird style games kind of fall into this category.

This is subjective. Just because a full grown adult with different tastes doesn’t like something doesn’t mean it’s shovelware. A 5 year old kid might love it.

But, here’s a better question. How much does it cost to moderate a platform with that many games?

Because they do moderate the platform just not in a way you like.

Literally in this comments section there’s someone else talking about how they delist or de-prioritize games that don’t get good feedback. You just want them to not allow those games at all.

The game Horses was moderated off the platform. You just want moderation to fit your specific model that you made up in your head.

What does terrorism curry taste like?

Would a decentralized version of Steam do that?

Is that 30% the bulk of Valve’s profit?

What do Indie developers get in exchange for Valve’s 30% cut on Steam that they don’t get elsewhere that charges 30% or charges less of a percentage?

So could physical retailers, so how’s that working out?

I’m not going to say they can’t do that. It’s not a bad suggestion but it seems to be suggested continually in a vacuum without considering other factors.

Yes. But it is likely that the seller made such upgrades based in the spec sheet provided by the company on question (either Best Buy or the manufacturer) and in either case someone is liable for that spec sheet being wrong and it promoting the purchase of said laptop.

Ok. So what percentage of the games launched on steam are shovelware vs quality indie games. And where is that line? And who makes that decision?

The main problem I see with this is that game devs are trying to use capitalism to make money. So what you’re saying is, it’s alright for game devs, but not for store fronts.

That doesn’t make sense to me.

Additionally though, of the major gaming retailers, Valve has the least predatory model (I’m not counting smaller game retailers in this because we need to be honest about the fact that they aren’t competing in the market with Valve as far as what they offer devs).

Did you take into account the reasons that game devs choose Valve over other retailers like GOG? Or the fact that very often game devs will use Valve, GOG and other gaming retailers?

You didn’t give any specifics in your answer to me and honestly I have to wonder if you even know where the majority of Valves money comes from.

Follow-up question.

How does the consumer benefit from and why should they switch to a different retailer than Valve’s Steam? What is the benefit of a fediverse style retailer and how does it work?

I believe that this is as much about game quality, over saturation, and marketing/inertia as it is about Valve in general, but I’m trying to understand what they think (based on the contents of the article) can be done to fix this problem for game devs.

It’s a bailout for life. It’s use bailing out every year for the rest of time. It’s still a bailout but it’s not a one time thing.

Lol, no. We don’t want to use our tax payer dollars to fund your failing tech.

We don’t even have government healthcare for all but you want us to pay for this? Absolutely not.

Hey op, I see a lot of your arguments in the comments.

I have a challenge.

Name 5 things Valve could implement to change this that would not be to the detriment of indie devs.

This is not a joke. You have opinions. I want to hear them.

I’m also curious (since I see you pushing a decentralized market place in the comments), how you think a decentralized marketplace would function and what would be better about it.

Then literally no indie games would ever get popular.

I’ll fully admit that the scenario you experienced is probable, given what’s in the article.

But the main issue is that Best Buy sell a configuration of this laptop with 64GB of RAM and this fix openly contradicts that such a configuration is possible.

On top of that they “repaired this laptop” by removing part of the product the consumer paid for. If I had a repairman come look at my washing machine and they removed the extra rinse feature because that was causing it to flood but that feature was a stock feature, I would be pissed and litigious.

The fact that they didn’t actually inform the customer is also bogus.

It appears to be a bizarre episode where Best Buy ‘repaired’ an under-warranty laptop by simply removing one of its SODIMMs, testing it worked reliably, and then sent it back to the customer with half the memory it originally shipped with installed, confusion possibly caused by a purchase made from a third-party seller.

I wasn’t buying books from Amazon. I’m not gonna start now. Certainly not going to start buying AI slop “books”.

Google has had a feature variant of this since at least 2014. Back when Google Now was a thing (before LLM’s took off) there was a significant outcry about privacy because Google was scraping your emails to tell you when your packages shipped and when they would be delivered, to remind you when your flight was and what time you needed to leave for the airport and if your gate changed etc.

The thing that bothers me about this is, at that point it could be a opt in thing (on the email providers side), and it shouldn’t be up to Amazon to use “customer protection” as a reason to enshittify their services so that they can continue to be anti-competitive.

Twitch doesn’t have donations built into their platform (but you can absolutely donate bits which can be converted into cash). 5% is a me questioning the amount they take from donations of Bits, that’s why there’s question mark next to it. I don’t remember the exact amount but I do know that it’s less than YouTube, and that YouTube takes approximately 30%. I was hoping someone would correct me if I was wrong.

To purchase bits Twitch takes a cut. But when you donate bits to a streamer thats not the same as charging the customer who purchased the bits 30%.

Additionally though, some streamers use Kofi or other platforms like stream elements to get donations from their viewers, so there’s that too.

I don’t like this version.