I’m not sure they want to build them in a city. It’s cheaper to buy land elsewhere adjacent to cities with the infrastructure to support them and cheaper property. Seattle has on of the most expensive property markets in the US. Eastern Washington is a better bet.
As for the Bloomberg article. I have problems with it. The first of which is that it’s paywalled which adds a barrier to entry and is one of the reasons it’s not listed with everything else in my original comment.
The second problem is it specifically asserts that Gabe Newell spent an unknown morning in November of 2023 in a meeting talking to lawyers. Who’s lawyers? Is this where he asserted that Valve and Steam don’t have a policy or dictating prices for other platforms? Or was that a statement made in the court room during deposition as it states later in the same paragraph? Are these two things which appear in the same first paragraph related? If so how? It doesn’t really go into anything else he said to these lawyers or anything else said by these lawyers. What is the specific framing of the questions put to him? It claims that he was then presented with written communication of Valve employees that they do in fact have such a policy. But it fails to quote those emails or link to them. Then it switches tac entirely going on about Valve’s consumer fan base and how that fanbase view him. That’s directly geared to make people think a specific way about the situation instead of simply providing facts. It goes on in that same paragraph to talk about allegations from WB and Ubisoft and their emails but doesn’t directly link to or quote those either.
It goes on about the number of developers who believe Steam is a monopoly but can’t be bothered to list the reasons they gave for such a stance.
I cannot tell you how much I do not care how many hours of DOTA 2 Gaben has. I do not care what their employee handbook has to say about taking advantage of company perks. I do not care about his yacht(s).
Critics argue that its freewheeling culture masks abusive business practices that make the gaming market worse for developers and consumers. 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.
What is the culture and how does it mask the abusive practices? There’s so much more in this article but you have to slog through it to find nuggets of substance.
Additionally it has a lot of random paragraphs of arguably superfluous information comparing it to other companies,
and makes claims but can’t be bothered to reportedly documented which ones are privileged court information or link to the court filings or to anything of substance including pointing people to Valve’s own website where they explain the Steam Key program. If people want more context or information about what is going on they can’t rely on that article either. It doesn’t even actually quote the court filing at all that I can see. I take significant issue with that. But in any case I’m not here to argue the validity of any of the claims made in the filing, in the Bloomberg article or in the IGN/eurogamer article copypasta. Mostly I’m here to provide links to the most credible information I can. Some of the links are just biased in their own right but they do provide links to their sources which I believe is extremely helpful. @[email protected]
From the filing:
Of those sales, approximately 75% flow through the online storefront of a single company, Valve. Valve’s online game store, the “Steam Store,” dominates the distribution of PC games. And Valve uses that dominance to take an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its store—30%. This 30% commission yields Valve over $6 billion dollars in annual revenue. For everyone else, it yields higher prices and less innovation. 3. Valve is able to extract such high fees because it actively suppresses competition to protect its market dominance. Many other game stores have tried to charge lower fees, in the range of 10-15%, but they have all failed to achieve significant market share. This is because Valve abuses its market power to ensure game publishers have no choice but to sell most of their games through the Steam Store, where they are subject to Valve’s 30% toll. Steam Key Price Parity Provision. Valve nominally allows game publishers to make some limited third-party sales of Steam-enabled games through its “Steam Keys” program. Steam Keys are alphanumeric codes that can be submitted to the Steam Gaming Platform by gamers to access a digital copy of the purchased game within the Steam Gaming Platform, even when the game is not purchased through the Steam Store. Steam Keys can be sold by rival distributors including the Humble Store, Amazon, GameStop, and Green Man Gaming.
11. But Valve has rigged the Steam Keys program so that it serves as a tool to maintain Valve’s dominance. Among other things, Valve imposes a price parity rule (the “Steam Key Price Parity Provision”) on anyone wanting to sell Steam Keys through an alternative distributor. Put explicitly by Valve, “We want to avoid a situation where customers get a worse offer on the Steam store.”3 But that is equivalent to preventing gamers from obtaining a better offer from a competing distributor. The effect of this rule is to stifle price competition. 12. Because of this rule, Valve can stop competing game stores from offering consumers a lower price on Steam-enabled games in order to shift volume from the Steam Store to their storefronts. Even if a rival game store were to charge game publishers a lower commission than Valve’s high 30% fee, the distributor would not gain more sales because the game publishers could not charge a lower price in its store. Game publishers and consumers suffer because this rule keeps Valve’s high 30% commission from being subject to competitive pressure. The bolded section in particular makes it sound like Valve is forcing developers to pay 30% commission on Steam Keys sold on rivals shops when in fact it supposedly alleges (when you read the whole thing) that Valve is using its Price Parity Rule (which makes it so steam keys have to be the same price as their equivalent steam e-shop price) coupled with its popularity to force other shops that sell non-steam keys at lesser commission rates to fall inline, or alternatively that the game devs must offer their games for the same price as on Steam’s e-shop even when using Keys provided by another supplier.
It doesn’t explain (and I’m fairly sure that’s on purpose) that this means that those same devs would charge the same amount on each shop regardless of who supplies the digital keys, and make more money on those other sites which benefits themselves.
- This Price Parity Provision is one of the reasons why Valve has been able to continue to charge an inflated 30% commission for many years, even as that commission is plainly above the levels that would prevail in a competitive market. Competition would normally force such an inflated commission to come down to competitive levels—but Valve’s restraints prevent those competitive forces from operating as they would in a free market.
- Because of Valve’s restraint, publishers cannot utilize alternative distributors to avoid the 30% tax that Valve has set for the market. Thus, they reluctantly market their games primarily through the dominant Steam Store where Valve takes its 30% fee. While several distributors have tried to compete with Valve by charging lower commissions on Steam Keys, those efforts have largely failed to make a dent in the Steam Store’s market share because publishers using those distributors had to charge the same inflated prices they set on the Steam Store.
Price Veto Provision. Valve also requires game publishers to agree to give Valve veto power over their pricing in the Steam Store and across the market generally (the “Price Veto Provision”). Valve selectively enforces this provision to review pricing by game publishers on PC Desktop Games that have nothing to do with the Steam Gaming Platform at all. Through this conduct, prices set in the Steam Store serve as a benchmark that leads to inflated prices for virtually all PC Desktop Games.
- As explained by the founder and CEO of Epic Games (“Epic”), one company that has tried to compete against Valve, “Steam has veto power over prices, so if a multi-store developer wishes to sell their game for a lower price on the Epic Games store than Steam, then: 1.) Valve can simply say ‘no.’”4 Valve makes every game publisher accessing the Steam Gaming Platform agree to this Price Veto Provision.
- Valve uses this provision to further enforce price parity and prevent rival game distributors from gaining volume by competing on price.5 And by inhibiting rival distributors from competing on price—even when selling games that have nothing to do with the Steam Gaming Platform—Valve inhibits potential competition against the Steam Gaming Platform as well, because rival gaming platforms cannot encourage usage by connecting to lower-priced distributors. Valve therefore protects its monopoly position in both of the relevant markets—the markets for PC Desktop Game Distribution and PC Desktop Gaming Platforms—through this provision.
It doesn’t explicitly say that Valve make a commission on Steam Keys but lots of people seem to be of the belief that they do based on statements by Wolfire including in the filing. I would argue that they heavily imply this by leaving that context out of the filing entirely which is why half the comments in this thread have wrong information about it.
Specifically because part of the filing states that Steam is charging excessive commissions, which is something that is also stated in the Bloomberg article.
The fact that Steam Keys don’t have a commission is integral to the reason why a developer might want to distribute them for a lower price on other retail sites.
However, I believe you are correct that this is not something specifically worded into the legal filing. The wording might lead people to believe this without specifically saying it.
Good point, and a good thing to add to things to consider. Thank you.
I was more thinking along the lines of the different classes of warrantable repairs and different classes of recalls.
You could absolutely have a recall pertinent to your vehicle that turns out to be voluntary and the automaker refuses to honor it if that system has been deactivated, tampered with, or modified.
This is the sanest take in the entire thread.
I wanted to make it particularly clear that some safety features are non-negotiable if you buy a new car from a dealer because the manufacturer is required by law to include them. But some people do believe that more safety features are required by law than actually are and even in the event that some of them are telemetry isn’t, and may be disabled in some instance depending on the vehicle.
I personally am willing to fix my older car until it dies and I can’t anymore over buying a brand new one but I’ve also never bought a brand new car in my life. I understand that my approach is possibly prohibitively expensive for quite a lot of people.
Anyway, I hope you find what you’re looking for.
I want to make something clear about the Valve Anti-trust lawsuit currently making its way through the court system.
This case is predicted on the idea that Valve’s “Price Parity Clause” in its contracts with Game Devs is anti-consumer and anti-competitive.
The original lawsuit filed by Wolfire before this became a class action Anti-trust lawsuit is available online and it alleges a couple of things.
Steam is two separate services that are lumped together in an effort to maintain its market share.
It uses this market share to enforce a Most Favored Nation Clause.
The Price Parity Clause does not only apply to Steam Keys but to all e-shop sales outside the Steam store.
The Price Parity Clause is actually a Most Favored Nation Clause, aka a Price Veto Provision.
The reason that people are claiming this is about Steam Keys is because the original lawsuit filed by Wolfire says that it is. This is what most of the articles that are actually written about this exempt from their writeup and since they don’t provide source documentation (from the filing), they lack this context.
The lawsuit is literally about whether or not Valve applies and enforces their Price Parity Clause to not just Steam Keys but also to non-steam storefronts that do not at all use Steam Keys.
If you are arguing that this isn’t about Steam Keys, your information is inaccurate and based not on the court filing but on articles that exclude information from the court filing.
If you’re saying it’s solely about Steam Keys your information is contextually right to some small degree but just as incomplete and therefore just as incorrect.
Because of the nature of the claims in the Wolfire lawsuit (some of which are actually demonstrably false), it does not lend creedence to the other claims being made by Wolfire (on which the class action is relying).
One of the most notable discrepancies between what Wolfie claim and what is legally proven to be true thus far is that Steam does not make a 30% commission on Steam Keys. In point of fact, Valve do not claim any percentage of sales figures from Steam Keys at all. Only sales made directly on the steam e-shop are charged the 30% fee.
The second major one is that the clause in their contract with Steam on which this is predicated is specifically about Steam Key availability and use.
So far as I can tell, there is not a difference in these particular parts of the lawsuit between the class action and the original lawsuit that was dismissed in 2021. So Wolfire’s original lawsuit and the Class Action still state that Valve does these things and this lawsuit is as much about Steam Keys as it is about Price Parity/Most Favored Nation type market tactics and clauses.
I believe they have not changed this wording because they cannot remove their Steam Key argument from the lawsuit because without it they do not have a written Steam Policy on which to rely.
So far as I can tell Wolfire and the Class Action claim that the Most Favored Nation Clause is only spoken of in person and is not part of the official contract they signed or any such contract that Valve offers for Steam services. It is unclear if this is their own claim or something they point to as being true based on alleged Microsoft Employee statement.
If I come across more information on this I will try to post it, but I might not remember.
I do wish we could stop posting articles with sensationalized claims and horribly clickbait titles that don’t actually providing even a link back to the sources of their information and claims.
I believe there is a separate lawsuit happening in Europe and I haven’t delved into that one to this degree.
There’s also a separate lawsuit alleging price fixing between Microsoft and Valve. I have not looked into that one at all though I did come across it in my rabbit hole dive.
If anyone can direct me to a non-account required court filing for the two video game developers that sued Valve I would like to see them. So far it looks like the court filings were originally separate but have been combined into a single court filing and that court filing doesn’t use the same language as Dark Catt’s singular filing did.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754.1.0_1.pdf
https://lawfold.com/valve-lawsuit/
https://www.classaction.org/media/wolfire-games-llc-et-al-v-valve-corporation.pdf
https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/14/sweeney-vs-steam-cut-epic-tirade-gaben-emails-revealed
https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/revealed-tim-sweeneys-epic-rant-to
https://aftermath.site/gamers-sue-microsoft-valve-steam-antitrust-lawsuit/
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.300801/gov.uscourts.wawd.300801.1.0.pdf
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/it/ip_21_170
If you live in the USA:
Despite all of the arising automobile safety technologies, there are just a few that are required by regulations. These mandated safety functions consist of Seatbelts, Airbags, LATCH child safety seat system, Tire-Pressure Display, Electronic Stability Control, and Backup Cameras. All-new vehicles will certainly have that tech and in addition, the NHTSA recommends the following Motorist Assistance Technologies:
FWD Crash Warning
Automatic Emergency Situation Braking
Lane Departure Warning
Whether you can ask the dealer to turn them off is dependent entirely on whether the manufacturer will allow them to do that. Generally the manufacturer is the one who allows the dealer access to scan tool tech that would be able to do this and what access they have varies by manufacturer.
There are things you can potentially do yourself including pulling fuses or relays (where applicable), disconnecting antennas (depending on your level of skill to get access), and asking an aftermarket shop to physically disable certain systems.
The main problem with this is, 1. It could void your warranty which may mean you aren’t eligible for some warrantable repairs including but not limited to recalls. 2. You could potentially do some damage to systems yourself by accident that you would be on the hook for. 3. You will likely lose other features you paid for. This is of course dependent on how the manufacturer integrated the systems you want to remove or disable.
It may be a better idea to see what options you have to avoid paying for those optional features and make your decision based on what manufacturers allow you to remove them when you order the vehicle. This may be better for you than trying to drive a dealer vehicle off the lot. It will take more time though.
I think if I were you and I had to have a newer car I would try to buy a used car that doesn’t have these features you don’t want.
It’s been the biggest mystery of the year: What video game publisher will have the guts to go up against Grand Theft Auto this November? An empty fall release date schedule left some major questions as players waited to see where anticipated games like Marvel’s Wolverine and Control Resonant would land. After today’s PlayStation State of Play, we finally have our answer to that question: No one. November remains wide open for GTA 6 as it appears that every major holiday video game will instead try to launch in September. Good luck to anyone trying to make that work, because September just became a 200 car pile-up.
Prior to Tuesday’s State of Play stream, we knew that a handful of major games were already planting their flag in September. Blood of the Dawnwalker recently announced a Sept. 3 launch. (Phantom Blade Zero had Sept. 9 locked down for a while before it was delayed to October.) The heavy hitters will continue on Sept. 15, which Sony has now claimed for Marvel’s Wolverine. Things will really heat up the following week, though. Tuesday’s State of Play stream revealed that Control Resonant will launch on Sept. 24, the same day as Silent Hill Townfall. Onimusha: Way of the Sword will drop one day later on Sept. 25. That’s three of the year’s most anticipated games landing in a two-day span.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve just narrowly avoided that disaster with an Oct. 2 release date, but it’s still flying too close for comfort. Deluxe Edition holders will get access to it on Sept. 28, so I’m counting that as a September release. The only game that seemed to get away from the dogpile was Rayman Legends Retold, but not by much: It will release on Oct. 1, which, look, if five bucks is eight bucks, that’s September.
That’s just scratching the surface, as a few other games are stuck in that crossfire, too. Dune: Awakening will come to PS5 on Sept. 22 with new content, and RPG-heads have Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter waiting for them on Sept. 17, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 is on the menu for Sept. 17.
Keep in mind that today’s State of Play is only the beginning of what’s likely to be a busy week for release dates. A Summer Game Fest stream is scheduled for this Friday, which will most certainly fill out the rest of the fall release calendar. Considering how many games have steered clear of GTA 6’s Nov. 19 date already, you can assume that September is going to look a whole lot busier by the end of the week.
At this point, I’m starting to wonder if some of these games would stand a better chance in and around November. Does Silent Hill Townfall really have a significant enough audience crossover with Grand Theft Auto that it couldn’t launch a few weeks before it in time for Halloween? Would something like Rayman Legends Retold do just fine in early December considering that it’s targeting kids? Publishers are undoubtedly going to be asking questions like this when the dust clears this week. Don’t treat any September release dates that you learn about this week to be set in stone aside from those for the biggest games. This fall is going to be one messy game of musical chairs.
Not exactly. If you buy a game on Steam, Valve takes a 30% cut of the first $10Mn in sales of that game and then lowers that cut as the game makes more sales.
BUT that 30% cut does not include Steam Keys. Steam Keys are free to generate and for use on non-Steam e-retailers. Valve do not make a 30% cut from Steam Keys.
Allegedly, WB and Ubisoft and Wolfire/Dark Catt have stated that they were told they can’t sell non-Steam Keys at other retailers for cheaper than the same game is sold on Steam.
So the question is, do WB and Ubisoft and Dark Catt/Wolfire actually have proof that Valve is forcing them to sell non-Steam Keys at other retailers for cheaper than they do on Steam.
Or, do they specifically mean Steam Keys can’t be sold for cheaper on other store fronts (which makes a whole lot of sense).
Steam isn’t just the retailer in this scenario but the manufacturer. The companies/devs who own the game license Steam to produce their product at scale.
This was always the plan. Take in as much investment capital as you can get. When it dries up, and you can’t get anymore loans from big banks, you go for the IPO via every and any loophole you can find. Then you extract as much wealth as you can, funnel it into a different company that you spin up, let the first company fail, get bailed out by the powers that be with tax payer money and buy up all the assets of the old company dirt cheap when the government or lenders inevitably liquidate everything to try to recapture their losses.
I do not prefer this term. I do not.
I don’t think most people mind the masturbation but I’m not writing essays about it afterward. The pay is too low.
I’ve seen a lot of colleges buying their students subs to one of the major LLM’s. So maybe come new semester that will change but it depends on the timing.
The code wasn’t malicious. The prompts their LLM’S followed were in plain text. They failed to read. That’s on them.
I can say that this person should have considered what might happen if someone fell for it, and death threats were certainly firmly in the realm of possibilities, but let’s not pretend this wasn’t their own fault.
Kind of the be expected when you threaten the livelihoods of them and their families. CEOs often seem to forget that they are laying off actual people who need to eat.
I think they mean “remind me again why”.
They don’t offer anonymity. Anonymity does not equal privacy. They aren’t the same thing. And if you’re using the signal app to jerk off I have some questions.
Your argument is predicated on the idea that a few paying more tax should in some way be spread further which would lead to a drop in education inevitably in many places.
My point is that, instead of localities paying more (or less tax) it should be a tax across the board from everyone to maintain the best education. So instead of locality A and B paying a higher local tax and locality C and D paying a lower one (meaning that they have to have their system supplemented by localities A and B) we would have a system where everyone pays percentage of tax and that money is divided evenly among schools.
But by simple math, if we eliminate that tax entirely and instead institute a higher tax rate at the federal level then everyone is paying into the same system and money would be allocated based on the number of children it serves i.e. each child receives $27,000 a year in funding for education to be spent paying faculty, buying school supplies and learning aids and equipment. All of that would of course have to be standardized.
I can name several problems with the system I’m proposing because a lot of the way we standardize things in this country is to pay a private firm and that in and of itself is a whole can of worms.
But something this could potentially do is pay teachers a competitive rates (the disparity between teachers salaries from state to state alone is horrendous let along locality to locality), and allow for a more even spread of teachers to students. Less over crowded classrooms. The same or at least equitable activities and opportunities for the curriculum and extra curricular experiences.
There’s other things that would need to be fixed in society as well. But the current system can do one of two things to make the school system more equitable for all students. They can share (with higher economic yield areas that have higher property values) paying for poor schools to operate at the same standard, or they can consolidate, essentially eliminating the requirement that a student must live in a specific zip code to attend said school.
But one of those things puts a significant burden on poorer parents, and the kids. Having to be bussed hours to school causes its own snowballing problems.
Of course doing it the way I suggested will likely eliminate some school types. Technical schools, agricultural schools, specialty schools, schools with fusion style approaches to teaching that often benefit Neurodivergent kids etc.
But either way I dislike the idea that kids are freeloading by going to the “good school”. If the parents have to game the system then the system to get their child a good education then the system is fundamentally broken.
No problem. I have ad blockers on ad blockers but I can see how it might be problematic for people on more locked down hardware.