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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Spedwell@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldSteam :: Introducing Steam Families
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    3 months ago

    This is demonstrably wrong. The 30% cut is standard because Steam has used the same strategy as Amazon to fix prices across the market (a “Platform Most Favored Nation” clause—see the Wolfire Games v. Valve class action, specifically items 204 and 205 on pg 55). Competing storefronts cannot undercut Steam, so why would they take less than a 30% cut?

    Epic Games Store—which is trying to undercut steam at a 12% fee—still list games at the same price as on Steam because of Valve has strongarmed publishers into fixing the prices. If Epic is charging 18% less but Valve is stopping publishers from reducing the game cost by that much, how is that not blatantly anti-competitive and anti-consumer?

    enshitifies

    Oh good, you are familiar with Cory Doctorow. He has an article on how Amazon abuses their position using the exact same playbook Valve uses.



  • Spedwell@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldSteam :: Introducing Steam Families
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    3 months ago

    You have to have never seriously engaged with the details of the Valve monopoly if you think that’s what we are upset about.

    We know Steam is an amazing storefront—I buy my games there because it’s the best experience for the cost. But Steam charges a premium. And despite taking smaller cuts, competing platforms like Epic cannot actual pass those cost savings to consumers because Valve is strongarming game publishers into fixing prices.


  • Spedwell@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldSteam :: Introducing Steam Families
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    3 months ago

    Yep. Because honestly, Steam is better than Epic in almost every way. When you want to buy a particular game X, you get a lot more from your purchase if it’s on Steam (workshop, friends, multiplayer, etc.). There is strong inertia and network effects that keep us all preferring Steam.

    Epic can’t compete with the Steam experience. But if Epic was able to list everything 18% cheaper (the difference in fees between Epic and Steam)—then they would rightly be able to compete on price.


  • Spedwell@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldSteam :: Introducing Steam Families
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    3 months ago

    “Platform Most Favored Nation”. It’s a type of clause in platform/marketplace agreements that prohibit a seller from listing their product for a lower price on a different sales platform. Specifically, it prevents selling on a different marketplace with lower fees (e.g. Epic Games or a publishers own website) and passing the difference as savings to the consumer.



  • Spedwell@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldSteam :: Introducing Steam Families
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    3 months ago

    Sigh… I’m getting tired of the Valve apologetics in every thread. They make good products, yes. They also abuse their market share to implement anticompetitive policies. The first doesn’t absolve them of the second.

    Truth is, no one has any idea what it would look like if there were actual competition among the PC games platforms. Steam may be the best possible world, or maybe we don’t know what we’re missing.


    To learn more about Steam’s anticompetitive practices:


  • Ya know, all perfectly fair.

    Good choice on reddit. As much as I love a good 'ol sneer, there’s a lot of jargon and clowning to wade through. There are a lot of genuinely solid critiques of his views there, though.

    I appreciate you doing your due diligence on this, but I’m not really sure where to keep this discussion going. I still stand by my original comment’s warning. Reading Siskind is probably not going to corrupt an unassuming reader to immediately think XYZ bad thing. His writings tend to be very data heavy and nuanced, to his credit.

    Is he Hitler 2.0? No, far from it.

    But he shares a set of core assumptions with the other ideologies, and the circles between his community and the other communities have large overlap. If you start with one, it’s likely you encounter the other. If you start to think like one, it’s a small jump to start thinking like the other. (From experience).

    In my opinion, anyone encountering Siskind for the first time is well-served by an understanding of TESCREAL—which they are likely to encounter in either his posts, its comments, or linked material—, and its critiques—which should help them assess what they encounter through a critical lense.

    That’s more or less what I wanted to give caution about, which may or may not have come across correctly.

    (Not that his stuff is entirely innocent either, but beside the point)


  • I understand, a good instinct to have. Unfortunately I have read so much in such a piecemeal way I cannot really compile a specific list. But I can point you to where “evidence” can be found. I don’t expect you to read any of this, but if you want to evaluate Alexander’s views further it will help:

    • The New York Times did a piece on him that does a good job outlining Alexander’s ties to and influence on Silicone Valley. Probably the best actual piece of journalism on him.
    • There used to be a reddit community (/r/SneerClub) that would read his (mountainous, as you point out) posts and pull out errors and misteps to “sneer” at, but that’s been dead since the API revolts. The old posts are still up. Basically you had a club of people that spent years finding (cherry-picking, mind) the juicy bits for you.
    • You may find some passing reference to Alexander is one of Émile Torres’s articles or interviews on the subject of TESCREAL, but probably nothing substantial.
    • If you spend time on communites like LessWrong and the EA Forum, you will see heavy reference to and influence from Alexander’s writing among members.

    A lot of what I say comes from my experiencd spending way too much time following these socisl circles and their critics online. Unfortunately, the best way I know to see for yourself is to dive in yourself. Godspeed, if you choose to go that way.

    Edit: of course, reading his work itself is a great way , too, if you have time for that.


  • The example is pretty standard, but I feel obligated to caution people about the author (just because he’s linked to here and some unassuming people might dive in).

    Scott Alexander falls loosely under the TESCREAL umbrella of ideologies. Even in this article, he ends up concluding the only way out is to build a superintelligent AI to govern us… which is like the least productive, if not counterproductive, approach to solving the problem. He’s just another technoptimist shunting problems onto future technologies that may or may not exist.

    So, yeah, if anyone decides they want to read more of his stuff, make sure to go in informed / having read critiques of TESCREALism.


  • Additionally, there’s the usability hurdle of interacting with non-home instances from outside mastodon. If I pull up someone’s blog and click the little mastodon social media icon, it may very well link to mastodon.world. If my home instance is mastodon.social, now I have to launch into my own server, search up the account, and then begin interacting.

    It’s trivial to do but it is an extra step, but for your less-tech-literate friends and family it can be a point of confusion. Mastodon handles federation great in-ecosystem, but the broader web is still going to treat each instance as a different site.