I agree we should have better laws to protect people against evil monopolies (google, etc).
Steam has been at the top of pc gaming for a very long time, so they would have enshittified by now if that was the plan, but luckily they are a private company and their leadership caters to their user base.
If someone evil took over Steam somehow then yea that’s bad news and the laws we should establish will help if that happens.
YEESSSS I WIN
They won’t, at least not for a very long time, because they deeply resist breaking changes, even when they are a net benefit.
I think they are working towards getting everything out of the kernel though, ever since that Crowdstrike outage.
At least they dont release a new counter strike every year with negative new features and a $80 entry fee, in the process leaving your game from last year to die.
Plus CS is an actual good game, cod is just yearly slop
Funny how you say “So fucking original!” as if you aren’t still booting up COD (the thing that stays the same or gets worse, rather than better).
This was funny to read, can’t deny ur right
The games that require secure boot/tpm already are installing kernel level “malware” so they can do much more with that than they can by knowing if you have tpm or not (which you do because you are playing, so 100% of their userbase will have it).
Idk but im seeing cyberpunk, the apartment you have
The difference is that a monarchy usually rules over everything and has the last say.
Steam is a monopoly only because every competitor has tried but failed to make a new compelling service.
Steam does have the last say within their platform (usually it’s the correct say), but they don’t disallow competition by lobbying or with other anti-competitive practices.
Some company just has to make a better service.
It’s not impossible, just no one wants to do it because they can’t make bajillions like they usually do in their other sectors where they can freely abuse the customer because there isn’t someone like Steam looking out for them.
So I agree with you, but someone must make a better service before the pc gaming marketplace marketshare can be more evenly distributed, but no one will or has. But keep in mind that Steam isn’t doing anything illegal and by no means should they forcefully be separated or anything by the government (they are not an illegal monopoly like google for example, they are simply a monopoly because they make the best service and no one is competing).
That’s always a possibility, but if it was going to happen, it would have already by now.
It’s very obvious to me that Valves leadership cares about the end goal of making gaming accessible and as easy as possible for everyone.
If they ever become evil, I feel it’s guaranteed to be because of leadership change to someone who is secretly corrupt, we just have to hope the reigns are handed down to someone good.
And if they do become evil and their product suffert as a result, they are going to create an opening for the others to fill.
The market gets harder to join as Steam makes their platform better and better. This is very very good compared to other companies that get to the top and then add physical and legal barries to others to stop them becoming competition.
Xbox has killed itself and I can’t see Playstation going anywhere anytime soon. Steam machines could take some tiny % of Playstation users, but if they do, the users stolen might have been people who wanted to swap to PC anyway. + you can access other stores on a steam machine
Bad take. The energy AI is using right now compared to all search engines is immense and real people can feel this effect because their energy bills are rising as a direct cause of new datacenters all for AI.
A lot of things are destroying the planet, but AI is certainly up there towards the top i’d think.
(And not everything in tech is bad)
Luckily unlike monopolies in other sectors, Steam doesn’t involve itself in evil oractices that more or less stops others from competing.
Someone just needs to make a better store, but they can’t because no company big enough to compete is willing to be as user friendly.
Epic, probably the second biggest store people thing about, can’t even make a good platform. They try underhanded practices like bribing developers and customers… maybe they should make their store work properly first.
There are tools for that, no?
You can install NAS software that turns self hosting stuff into one click installs.
I think it’s lumped in because Steam sells games with DRMs, but GOG on the other hand will not sell games that come with any type of DRM at all.
I’m sure if Valve had the choice, they’d banish DRMs too, but I’m sure they don’t because they don’t want to piss off their big publishers (even though drm literally does nothing except make paying customers have a worse experience with their shitty games).
(I don’t really agree with “oritented to publishers”, especially when they release features like a more polish family library, but i guess i can see their point in some ways)
Correcto X11 just works for me, never had any issues, there is literally zero benefit for me swapping over.
Every time I am booted into a Wayland session, something doesn’t feel, look or work right which causes me pain and suffering through my OCD which i don’t have.
I’m planning on trying hyprland soon though because it can look very pretty so if I swap over to that then yes I’ll be a wayland pleb, but in that case there’s a real reason to me swapping… not just for zero benefit.
Really will never understand people who won’t vote (at least when its not super inconvenient like it can be? I think it can be for some idk)
I do feel like it was a blunder having Joe run again though.
Can’t find a video, gonna assume it’s the video explaining this? Anyways found this article which was very cool to read: https://awesomeocean.com/guest-columns/natgeo-photographer-seal/
(Guessing its the same thing)
It didn’t sound like a big deal, but somehow you just instilled in me an existential dread of having no teeth to enjoy solid foods when craving some.
Maybe if you wear headphones(?) like most people, then you might not get bothered or whatever (so if you really don’t want to be talked to, wear headphones or go late?).
Honestly though, it’s kinda nice when every now and then someone asks for a spot and you have a nice small interaction, but maybe that’s just me cuz it forces me to face my social fears.
I did this exact thing yesterday and Powertoys told me no one was using the file. Now it will just exist forever because I gave up.
Obviously I deleted powertoys after it failed to help and now all I can be is glad that this isn’t my main OS.