Dude, thank you. Genuinely. I’ve always been baffled by Americans constantly arguing that healthcare in Europe “isn’t free because taxes”. Included in our ~35% tax is healthcare, all education from first grade all the way trough college/Uni, parents get like 2 years of PTO when the child is born, etc.

If you add together the costs of all of the above in the US, It’d vastly outweigh what they “save” in lower taxes.

Penomorph

Have a nive day

Personally, I’d take the latter

Okay so some of your (both of yours) links require subscriptions and in not paying, but the about 5 articles I read exclusively talked about the Azov and one talked about the Colonel Melnyk reburial. Calling a Nazi collaborator from 1940s a hero is obviously a bad look, but that does not equal modern day Ukraine being Nazis.

And literally all the other articles talk about some sort of far-right volunteer group of militias (Azov) fighting the Russian separatists. How is Azovs political standpoint in any way indicative of the Ukrainian state’s political view as a whole?

Good luck to you guys!

This I can agree with! Doesn’t mean it’s = Socialism

Such blasphemy will not be tolerated

Slug or buckshot?

You really believe that Ukraine is a Nazi regime, and you accuse others for falling for propaganda? Yikes

So? They could’ve sued for anything, doesn’t mean they’re right.

They sued for the money issue because they either can’t comprehend that consumers don’t like what they’re providing, or they (the companies) simply don’t want to invest in improving it so they start pointing fingers instead. That’s all it is.

and other online stores have rarely offered features compelling enough to lure people away.

The fear among some developers is that doing so can lead to penalties or even expulsion from Steam — a potentially devastating outcome for their game sales.

The US lawsuit Newell was deposed in, which has been certified as a class action, alleges that it “is not economically feasible” for game makers to leave Steam in favor of a rival store and that they are effectively “forced to comply” with Valve’s rules and high fees.

The above quotes all point to exactly what I’ve been saying: Other stores/platforms simply don’t appeal to users.

“Customers have enormous choice,” Newell has testified. They can decide “where they purchase their products, whether they buy the game on an Xbox, whether they buy it on Steam, whether they buy it on Epic Games Store or whether they buy it directly from software developers.”

No one is forcing anyone to use Steam.

EA experimented with everything including opening its own PC store and stopping major releases on Valve’s marketplace, only to reverse course and eventually bring big-name titles such as The Sims 4 and Battlefield V back to Steam.

Competing marketplaces, meanwhile, have failed to match even Steam’s basic capabilities, never mind its emotional resonance with users. EA’s original store was filled with glitches and had nowhere near the number of third-party titles as Steam, while Epic’s rival launched without such standard features as user reviews and a shopping cart for purchasing multiple games in a single transaction.

They tried, and failed, to launch BFV and Sims on just their own platform because IT WAS A BUGGY MESS. Not because StEaM hAs A BiG MaRkEt ShArE.

Not even having a Cart in your online store is mind boggling. Also, if I have to go to Steam to see reviews I might as well buy it there.

In 2017, Kassidy Gerber, who works in business development at Valve, wrote to Warner Bros. executives that preorders for its new Middle-earth: Shadow of War game had been deleted from Steam because the price was “significantly higher than what was available at other retailers for the same version of the game.”

So Valve protected their own brand by not wanting to be associated with “significantly higher prices”. Sounds like a sound business decision to me.

I’m assuming just a very very small portion of the people contributing are earning money here.

Well, until there are big famous content creators spawning from open source platforms or some collectively owned social media, I’ll remain extremely sceptical. Until then, best of luck

Oh my lord. The problem isn’t the pricing!!! If you feel like you can’t sell your game for $55 on just Epic so you must sell it on Steam too but for $70, there’s a problem with your product and/or service. Not Steam. Epic tried the “1 year exclusivity” for a couple of games, like Borderlands 3 did that. People simply didn’t buy the game. Was the game cheaper? Nope.

See my point? Steam had zero hand in people rather not buy a game than installing Epic.

Do they make a living off of it? Are there any famous influencers based in Lemmy promoting brands?

gamers don’t have a reason to use other platform

Exactly my point. Give them a reason. And they can compete. They just don’t want to. It’s easier to shift the blame onto big bad Valve.

Well, I see. And it sounds great. Unfortunately, I really don’t see it ever being a viable system to foster the development of products in the likes of YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, Facebook etc because no one would want to put in the work it takes to get of the ground to begin with, just for it to be forced out of your hands when it finally starts growing. The innovative brain, the skills (like programming for example), the business mind, the pure motivation, everything needed to create the foundation for such massive corporations, why does anyone else deserve a piece of the payoff just for being an employee?

Listen. Steam is free. Uplay is free. Epic is free. EA App is free. It’s not like Playstation vs Xbox, where the market is divided because of financial limitations on the consumers. What stops anyone from using any other launcher? What stops any publisher from not selling through Steam? “market share” is not really a valid argument when all options are free and easily available to everyone. Monopoly means lack of alternatives.

Right now the option is buying a game for $70 on either Steam or EA App, for example. People choose Steam.

Nothing is stopping EA from saying you know what, we’ll sell it only on our own page but for $60. Nothing. People who want to play a game would most likely just buy it there then.

My view is that these lawsuits etc are purely a way for the failed competitors to force their way in while still providing the same absolute garbage of a service.

Divided how? Does Gates give away half his company when he hires his first employee?

I see how you think I am.

I’m saying that having a clear winner in an open market is not the same as them having a monopoly. Assassin’s Creed games releases on both Steam and Uplay. Same price. Same game. Same everything. Why do people still choose Steam? It’s not because they are forced to. They have the option to simply not buy it on Steam. That is why I don’t think Steam is liable.

Ubisoft wants so sell cheaper on Uplay to pull traffic there. Why not just simply dump Steam and ONLY sell on their platform? I’d really like you to answer this question.

Who and/or what would drive the company to such a size? You think Bill Gates would put all that work in just to give away the entire company? You think Mark Zuckerberg would sit for hours and hours into the night and nonstop code Facebook, just to not own it?