I’m not criticizing the choice of C++. I just don’t want to look at the code because I don’t personally like the language.

Languages: C++

Yeah, hard pass on looking at that code base.

And if they are…well, first of all, yikes, and second of all his career as a content creator is going to go from “damaged” to “gone” as no platform would let him stream after that.

What you’re saying is “inevitable” hasn’t happened for the entire 20+ years of Steam.

Something being “inevitable” by definition means it will eventually happen, but has not already occurred.

Steam’s monopoly is actually what’s holding PC gaming together.

“Steam good. Steam has monopoly. Therefore, monopoly good.”

Woof.

It can be a problem at other companies, but even worse than average at Valve by virtue of corporate structure. Both of these things can be true.

Fun fact: Former employees of Valve have said that is actually a huge problem in the organization and that its organizational structure seems to encourage bullying and high-school style “cliquishness” by design.

Well, they’re a game developer. And they own GOG. GOG as a subsidiary is a digital distributor of prepackaged digital content. Developing a system that allows people to find a digital item, pay for it, and then download it, is hilariously, vastly different than developing a compatibility layer for games developed for one operating system to run on another. Like…the former is straight up just basic web development. The latter is hardcore systems programming. They are worlds apart.

This is not “a prediction” - this is inevitably what’s going to happen.

Everyone here who has drank the Valve kool-aid and pretends like they can do no wrong is dangerously short-sighted. Steam’s virtual monopoly on PC gaming is a huge issue. You think Epic has a monopoly on the concept of “Store Exclusives?” Fucking spare me. It’s a matter of time before Steam locks in its own exclusives, kills Proton, and locks every. single. game. behind always online DRM.

If you want to distribute your new PC game, guess what? You don’t get to contract with both GOG and Steam. You don’t get to say your game is Linux compatible because it runs well in the Proton compatibility layer. Oh, and if you say “games could run on Linux before Proton!” then you’re deluding yourself by remembering a time when games were distributed with their own launcher and weren’t packed to the gills with platform specific code so that the game integrates seamlessly with a specific third-party launcher and its DRM tools. You bought a Steamdeck? Cool. The version of Arch it runs is no longer supported. You have to upgrade to “Windows for Steameck.” Yes, you have to pay for a fucking Windows license. Yes, it has fewer features than baseline Windows. No, it’s not less expensive.

You think what’s happening to YouTube is bad? Fucking strap in, boys. Welcome to digital content distribution in the age of unfettered capitalism. I wonder how many of you are gonna eat this shit up, huff lethal quantities of copium, and say it’s “not that bad” once it starts happening and you’re faced with either standing by your own stated convictions and giving up almost all PC gaming in general or bend the knee so you can get your precious Steam Library back. Probably most of you.

I mean, this entire discussion hinges on the definition of “trivial,” so…cool.

Not the person you initially asked, but a good one is Eli Whitney’s cotton gin that made separating the cotton fiber from the seeds much easier. It had traditionally been done by hand, which is very time consuming. Whitney’s invention greatly simplified the process and made cotton farming much more economically viable as an industry, ultimately leading to an extreme expansion in chattel slavery in the Southern United States and serving to solidify a planter aristocracy that would eventually seek to split with the United States in order to create its own slaveholding empire, triggering a Civil War that would decimate a large chunk of the country and kill three quarters of a million people.

Extrapolating from this, we can say that Youtube hosts around 2.5 to 3 exabytes (2.5 to 3 million terabytes) of data. Interestingly, the total volume of data on the internet is, as of the end of 2023, around 120 zettabytes, so Youtube only makes up around 0.0025% of the total volume of all that data.

XBox has always been a weird console. It never really competes with Nintendo because NIntendo always does its own general thing and also slides neatly into the kids and family market. So it competes with Playstation by default. Except Playstation actually has contracts with good studios to make exclusive games. What’s a non-Halo exclusive for the XBox? Back in the day, you’d play games like Gears of War, Halo (obviously), Fallout 3, Psychonauts, KOTOR, COD, etc. I can’t think of a single meaningful game on the most recent generation for the XBox.

it alleged that local developers cannot compete on Steam with international developers, because those do not have to apply the local regulations:

That’s not really contrary to the point, but orthogonal to it. Steam is outcompeting on the basis that it receives special privileges on the basis of its international status. It’s still outcompeting because of a resource advantage. But that advantage exists because domestic developers are disadvantaged by virtue of national regulations over domestic developers.

what is my opposition that doesn’t encompass a de facto defence of free market capitalism? The damage to the users. What about all the Vietnamese people losing access to Steam’s online features, which are arguably necessary nowadays for many games, especially multiplayer ones.

Your argument is the same kind of “consumer rights” argument that I’ve seen everywhere on the internet, because you are implying that there is material harm to the people of Vietnam caused by Steam’s banning. Which is a fairly specious argument. It’s the loss of a luxury item. No one is materially harmed by it. It’s not like Vietnam banned insulin. And while you may not use the same language, you are effectively saying that every consumer on the planet should have free access to the best products available for whatever “thing” they want. In this case, video games. It’s a de facto argument for free market economic policies.

Everyone has accused every workplace of toxic culture. At this point I’m pretty sure going to someone and asking them to do their fucking job is toxicity.

We have reached levels of bootlicking with this comment that shouldn’t be physically possible.

It is impossible to criticize any actions taking place by any entity against a capitalist entity without defending capitalism yourself.

It depends on the purpose and shape of that criticism. If you criticize a communist nation banning a particular corporation’s marketplace from their country on the basis that doing so is a part of a grift that seeks to engineer a national-level monopoly over a particular corporate sector by banning external competition, then, sure, that’s a valid criticism because the intent is innately unethical. But if the Vietnamese video game industry is actively harmed by Steam, an American company, using its vast resources to outcompete Vietnamese publishers, then what is your opposition to this that doesn’t encompass a de facto defense of free market capitalism?

I hate capitalism. And Valve. Because it’s a capitalist institution and I’m at least consistent.

For anyone curious, it’s around 150 million USD.

Valve has faced criticisms from former employees in the past for its toxic work culture. And Gabe Newell, being the CEO, has a lot of power over that.

Just because the places you frequent on the internet don’t shove criticism of Valve down your throat the same way it would do so for, say, Epic Games, doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with Valve as a company. All the pro-Valve/Steam information you get and the general sentiment towards Gabe Newell from people on Lemmy and Reddit are pure, undiluted corporate propaganda. That it comes from Steam users rather than being something Steam directs and pays for doesn’t change what it is.

you’re seeing different posts by different people and conflating the two

This ignores the reality that Lemmy is, at least in the part of it consisting of lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, and others, overwhelmingly leftist. This comment also attempts to dismiss the underlying criticism that Lemmy as a whole has a culture that, much like reddit, seeks to pick and choose its targets under capitalism and actively engages in corporate apologia, like in this post, while collectively professing a broad ethos that is outright hypocritical when viewed in the light of that other behavior. And if you think Lemmy is amenable to a diverse array of economic opinions, then maybe you should try posting a “Capitalism Appreciation Thread” on a major lemmy instance and see how that goes over.

Lemmy: “We hate capitalism! Companies aren’t your friends! Down with corporrations! Down with billionaires!”

Also Lemmy: “Except Steam! We love vidyagames! Valve is friend! Gaben is bae! No, we don’t understand irony.”

It’s “y’all” - as in a contraction of “you all.”