steam came at the exact right moment to prevent region locking regulations for online gaming. granted companies and special interests still want to de-globalize gaming for licensing cash, but that’s never going to happen as long as steam is a monopoly. any company taking a cheap shot at steam such as epic or discord or EA can go suck it.
As long as Gaben is alive steam will be the good guy. Even if they charge 30%, and I thinm it’s why things are actually pretty neat on steam on the consumer end, because they can either choose to bill the consumer or the developer, and I’m personally always pro-consumer first - albeit for small indie publishers they should (if they already don’t have); a means to launch a company with their game and not give 30% to Valve and be kept from much needed resources to grow their business, much like Valve would benefit from such deals long-term if the developers do a good job and bring in a lot of buyers with their next title in the future. AAA companies is a whole different matter, no passion, no soul, just money-milking-bullshit, should charge them 50% to 70%! they get off easy with a measly 30%.
But yeah, as for the overall topic itself, I do not understand why anyone would want another netflix situation. I don’t want 300 game libraries and accounts installed on my computer, eating up resources, time, and email space - if I could have just one, super convenient and nice place where all is collected and no foreseeable concern that it will suddenly go bankrupt and die and take my investments with it (like some of the game libraries already have). If that ever becomes the case (e.g. when Gaben dies one day), I’ll be the first to sail the high seas out of spite and convenience. I’m fine with monopolies as long as they benefit the end-user first, like Valve.
Since I started keeping up with all this locally, here is what has happened.
This is not to mention that the door was opened for american and chinese investors to buy up properties and land, shooting the average prices through the roof. Together with the government (of course a rightwing government has been in power for the past 20 years, causing all this to happen in their quest to privatize and let their friends milk tax money, reduce taxes on the rich, and balancing it out by forcing your average joe to take a massive housing loan), reducing the loans to just 3% to make them “affordable to average people”, which further spikes prices upwards and it ain’t coming down until something catastrophic happens.
i don’t understand the question. what does it matter what they do with it when the point is to make housing affordable again, in a permanent way.
i’m so tired of this bullshit. all because of greed. the only real solution to all of this (without completely bricking the economy) would be “one family one home policy” (married/legal) made into law. no more landlords, no more nonsense. got 3 homes? too bad, time to sell. market oversaturated? well go the fuck down in price to the damn value you bought your houses for 20 years ago. own an apartment complex? too bad, it’s now owned by the habitants council (those who actually live in it, like it actually works in many places). and make hotels the sole exception to the rule.
no more homelessness.
no more shelters.
no more trailer parks.
no more need for social housing.
no more assholes buying up property abroad and fucking the locals.
everyone’s happy except the 0.001% landlords and market gamblers. who now have to get actual jobs. or have well paid jobs already and didn’t need to sit on 4 houses because they got in early.
the problem is privatization for things that doesn’t even make sense to privatize. if the cost of discovery is too high for a private entity then why are they the ones to supply it? they aren’t actually doing anything but taking the foam from the top of what everyone else have collectively created. it’s like the privatization of energy, a natural monopoly that literally runs into negative value through surplus. or the privatization of mandatory services that cannot be sustained at cost such as nation wide mail delivery. if it doesn’t make sense the right choice is the only choice yet here we are lol.
even if fuel is cheap it’s still has an upfront cost per production and can be manipulated based on demand to ensure prices never drop and always go up.
or i mean, super, nuclear is obviously what society needs, because energy supply is a natural monopoly and nuclear uses fuel you can burn based on demand and guaranteed awesome profit as a private entity unlike infinite energy resources that produces surplus energy and only benefits society and not the shareholders and owners who are the only ones who obviously matter.
whatever russia says, they mean to do the opposite. they’ve been pulling this nonsense from the start and this is no different, and we know this because they are STILL THERE. if they wanted peace, THEY’D LEAVE. ukraine doesn’t have a choice, they have nowhere to go. they can’t pull out of the conflict because they are literally the one being invaded. there is no logic to this argument. it’s like ordering cheese and wondering why you are served cheese. it’s plain and dumb.
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except in theory they can borrow from the bank with their stock as leverage and would never actually need to liquidate anything (and they do just that).
yes, it’s a good reminder that capitalism doesn’t actually work and needs to be propped up with bailouts to ensure it doesn’t collapse and gets replaced.
your example is irrelevant and makes little sense as a counter when all research and innovation globally is still paid for by taxes. no business will spend billions on new ideas, they spend billions on commercial application of public (tax paid) ideas in order to profit.
got news for you, all innovation happens on the tax roll. and because it’s free and public to use, companies take it, stick licenses on it, and sell it back to you (gotta love paying twice).
sweden is well known for bowing to US requests. just look at the history of the unlawful attacks on the piratebay and the sham court they were passed through to get sentenced on no broken laws.
not to mention Sweden’s constant bullshit in other data related sectors pushing american (hollywood) agendas into EU (and thankfully failing). the pay to take action against the will of the people IN A DEMOCRACY must be the recipe for immortality or some such because i don’t see why they would otherwise be able to legally betray their countrymen.
you got a cult bombing your public buildings for years, and attempts to identify and prevent such attacks by standard means have failed.
how do you stop it?
frankly, the US is STILL fighting in the middle east after 9/11. the chinese has shown more restraint and milder treatment towards their local terrorist group. so i’d say they’ve handled it better than the west ever could.
our taxes goes to fund resources and development. and a large part of those taxes goes directly to microsoft so our governments can maintain windows and office installs instead of developing a public solution; its a problem because we aren’t actually getting anything from the taxes that goes to microsoft; which, unless you live in the US, is practically illegal unless specifically hiring a domestic corporation to supply the product (good ol’ privatization).
oh sure. big bad china gonna get us. meanwhile, the US keep fucking with us over here in europe and breaking our laws in the name of american private enterprises.
but yes, europe should really stop relying on foreign corporations for vital infrastructure, and yet here we are, laws being broken, national security thrown out the window, and no one cares.
nonsense, it’s not like microsoft, google or apple is logging every input you do and scanning your shit at every turn!
it still amazes me that the whole globe is paying R&D taxes to microsoft, a private foreign entity, instead of, you know, what R&D taxes are actually supposed to be spent on. is it even legal?
the new norm is the old norm, sailing the high seas.
It probably doesn’t hold up. The idea of overpopulation is wrong because the west is suffering a birth crisis while the third world is having a child boom. It’s not that more children are being born, it’s that their standards are being improved so more of them survive. They in turn will level out and see less children born the better their standards become; so it’s reasonable to assume if standards are collapsing in the west, then in a generation or so, more children will be born.