Thr unsavory businesses are paying a premium for being unsavory. There are SOME people who will not work there, which reduces the size of the labor pool and drives prices up. There are others who can be bought, for a price, and that also drives prices up.
Industries with neutral or beneficial impacts on society do have this pressure, so the wages are lower. Simple supply and demand.
I’ll be a lot more open to comparing Valve with Amazon when I hear reports of Valve employees pissing in bottles
Steam also provides value by acting as an intermediary.
There were 21,503 games released on Steam last year. How the hell is a consumer supposed tk make informed purchasing decisions with all that? Steam is a discovery platform which connects a game with the individuals most likely to buy that game.
It is also a central launcher to organize and manage libraries, including non-steam games. It’s easy to move games between drives, and to use the various library tools to pick out what I want to play.
Then there’s Proton, a completely free comlatability layer for Linux that has allowed me to mostly stop using Windows.
There’s the Steam Workshop, which is far and away my preferred method to mod games. It’s so much easier to click a button to add a mod tk Cities Skylines or Civ 6 than it is to fuck around with Nexus Mods and a mod manager for Skyrim.
Steam is a centralized location for support from developers. It also is convenient tk keep track of updates.
Steam Remote Play is probably the single most umpactful thing to my gaming in the past decade. I just need my 1 gaming desktop and I find myself playing on my Shield in my living room, my phone in bed, my tablet on my exercise bike, my Steam Deck on the porch, or even over at my friend’s house on an old laptop. All for free, when I’ve never even be able to get Moonlight or Sunshine to work at all in my desktop.
Steam has social features like friends lists, chat, and even voice, which is relevant with how shitty Discord has been as a company lately. Support for family sharing and multiplayer is phenomenal.
It is not like Steam is just pocketing a bunch of money and not doing anything. They beat out not just their legitimate competitors, but even piracy, because they provide better value for the consumer. They do a lot of tasks that publishers otherwise would have to handle themselves, saving them costs.
And I’m sure there are more features that I’m forgetting kr that I don’t bother with, but other people find valuable.
I do think they should be heavily regulated, but there hasn’t really been much to regulate with them. They had a minor lawsuit in Australia early on relating to the verbiage displayed about refund policy. I don’t like loot boxes, but my solution is… I don’t buy them, and usually I don’t even buy games with them.
Steam was launched in 2003.
By that point the ships had already sailed. You didn’t own software, and micro transactions already existed. Steam did not “bypass” copyright laws- the facilitated a storefront that sold based on already established and litigated law.
This goes back tk the 1960’s with the origin of computers, when they were gigantic. Manufacturers like IBM would lease the hardware to institutions that used it, and the software was just included for free. This practice ended because of antitrust lawsuits in 1969, which led to IBM charging for software seperstely.
It’s funny you mentioned Apple, because one of the foundational cases of software copyright law was 1983’s Apple vs Franklin case that ruled against a company making Apple II clones, who argued that machines readable code was similar to machinery designs and thus not subject to copyright law. 20 years before Steam existed.
But I guess you can just ahead and make things up on the internet to jump aboard a hate train.
I’ve literally never seen any of these so-called “simps”
Like, the internet is a big place and I’m sure some of them exist, but you could make that argument about any view at all. I see way more hatred for these alleged simps than the simps themselves.
Steam, and Valve, operate in a capitalist system. They’ve been successful. They are similar to a handful of other companies, like Costco, that seem to understand that in order for capitalism to be sustainable, corporations need tk govern themselves and show restraint. They need to focus not on merely achieving profit for ownership this quarter, but on establishing long-term and stable business relationships with all of their stakeholders. Customers, emplpyees, suppliers, governments, lenders, the planet itself.
The biggest failure of capitalism is that the system does not incentivize for any of this. Which is why such corporations are so rare.
I started last year, for several reasons. Most of which werr related to my wife and I creating a polycule with another couple a year earlier. After 1 year in I did some evaluation and realized I needed to make some changes, and journaling was an answer for a lot of those.
Being in a polycule means that I both have much less time for that meditation and much more stuff to remember. I also was a mild THC user before, mostly for my knee pain or jjsy because getting high on occasion is fun. But ibstatted leaning on it more heavily to deal with the stress of constant socialization.
So when I found myself in conversations remembering that I had been told things, but unable to remember what they were. Like my girlfriend’s home town or my boyfriend’s favorite Zelda game. Not stuff they even necessarily expected me to remember, but stuff I felt bad for forgetting.
My wife also has a medical condition that derailed her career, so a while ago we decided it made more sense for her to stop working and be a homemaker. So I became the sole income earner, and she took over the chores we used to split(laundry, cooking, dishes, cleaning, grocery shopping, etc). I would still contribute on occssion: I am not some boomer stereotype of a man who doesn’t know how a laundry machine works, and I like to cook on occasion. But as she spent more and more time with our girlfriend and boyfriend she also did less and less of those chores. It led to a lot of Saturday mornings, which are supposed to be so e relaxing time off work for me, but instead I need to spend time cleaning or scooping the litter or getting groceries because she didn’t do it, and with our gf & bf coming over that night I want the house to be respectable.
I FELT all of these things, and discussed them with her a little bit, but journaling gave me the confidencd to talk to my wife about it, provide details, and help her to see what she was doing too. When I said that we never did anything together anymore, her first reaction was “wait didn’t we just watch that TV show like a week or two ago?”. And because of journaling I was able to say “that was 5 months ago”.
Working through feelings. For most of my life I have done this without needing to write anything down. I would just spend some time alone and, well, think. Let the thoughts and feelings flow naturally and sort them out. But with so much less time to myself I wanted to take a more direct and active approach. I still think I prefer my natural approach- doing it through journalling feels forced and rushed. But its better than just struggling.
Monitoring health. I weighed 207lbs when we started this polycule, and now I’m down to 161. Largely due to a couple stints of low-carb dieting.
Also, not to get too graphic but group sex is very different from duo or solo. So having a record of how things have gone and how I’ve felt about things has been nice.
I should also note that for the first 6 months, I just logged narratively. I tried to remember to write down important things, tried to predict what my future self might want to go back and check later. Using keywords I would know to search for (digital is better for me- I use Joplin). After 6 months, I decided to pull out some key measurables and use a separate app to log those. My weed and alcohol use, exercise, and sexual activity.
Both versions (original + Special Edition) were among the first games I installed on the Deck when I got it, and habe stayed installed for years since. I still go back and play one or the other a bit every couple months.
The only issue I can remember is just dealing with the stupid launcher screen before you get into the actual title screen. I think I might have had to change the launch options for one of them to be able to access the graphics settings?
Interestingly, the original version is still listed as Playable even though tbr Special Edition is Unsupported.
Oh you’re just shifting the conversation towards violence against women in particular. Ignoring violence against men and using that ad a cover fke your own thinly veiled racist dogwhistles. Cool stuff.
Poor men, because the rich men have written tbe was so that their violence is not considered criminal.
The go-to example I always think of for 2nd person is Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal, the boss battle against the Tyhrranoid Mother. You cycle through phases of the boss, and one shifts the camera’s perspective to the targeting system of the boss, while you still control Ratchet.
I’m interested, but I think the Dev woukd need to find a way to incentivize “normal” driving.
I think back to my youth playing Driver on the PS1, and it was a lot of fun just… Driving around. Exploring the world. Even dealing with traffic was fun when I was only a kid who could nkt drive myself.
I tried tk do similar in GTA3, and I even had a wheel and pedlas I would use for it. Unfortunately GTA3 is incredibly unlrealistic. The physics are cartoonish, the AI behavior is dumb, the pedestrians are dumb, the cops are dumb. The game incenvitcizes chaos.
The question is: how do we make things likr speed limits and stop signs and pedestrian crossings fun?
My instinct is to model off the real world to an extent. Could involve delivering things that are fragile and cannot handle a bunch of G’s. Could be fines or a karma system of some kind for rolling stops. Could be that a realistic damage modeling system makes dents and scratches look terrible and lead to rust, and repairs are just as expensive as they are in real life. Maybe a LOT of the car is consumable or wearable. Not just gas and tires, but all the fluids too, and brake pads. Maybe taking a turn too hard damages the suspension. Crashing into something means you not only need to repair your car, but also whatever you hit.
The more I list this out, the more this seems like a punishing and tedious slog. It seems really hard to design a game that incentivizes something like this, at least with most of the current mechanics in games today. Maybe a multiplayer social component would help? Like a virtual parking lot and drag strip for people to meet up on the weekends and check each other’s virtual rides out? I would not be interested in that, but my uncle might be.
Maybe it could be heavily story-based. I would go noir-style, where as you drive around either you see things or your driver character provides some narration. Something like “that abandoned building over there used to be an ice cream parlor. That’s where I had my first kiss. I wonder what ever happened to Suzie? I drove a '69 Cobra that night. Lovely car” and then the Cobra is available in the shop. Maybe there is a mystery about stuff going on in the world. Maybe it is a post-apocalyptic world and you’re scavenging, mostly alone and unchallenged, in the ruins of a city, slowly learning what led to this. I think about how Detroit’s population went from ~1.8 million to 0.6 million in ~50 years and what it would have been like to stay there and experience that.
Maybe a parody of Crazy Taxi called Sane Uber where the main priority is ride comfort?
I don’t see Steven Universe mentioned anywhere. That might be my all-time favorite, and slots right in with the likes of Adventure Time and She-Ra.
Sticking to the Adventure Time-related ones, Over the Garden Wall is great and very autumnal. My wife ans I try to watch that every October. Gravity Falls is also great, especially for the summer since it takes place over the course of one summer vacation. Bravest Warriors is okay- not a must-watch, but decent. Bee and Puppycat is pretty solid and chill.
For slightly older crowds (I see yoy have stuff like Gurren Lagan on here), Midnight Gospel is pretty good and also from Adventure Time’s showrunner.
For other anime, there is always Fullmetal Alchemist. Saiki K if you can get past the fast editing. Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is one that’s probably just “okay” but I like a lot.
Centaur World was surprisingly good.
Your “ask Grok” comment is particularly relevant because this day seems to be the turning point researchers cite for when Musk decided to fully support Trump.
I could only speculate as to whether it was staged and Musk was involved in that, or if it was Musk’s genuine response, or what exactly, but its highly suspicious.
The best way to win the game is to not play.
Reddit had a lot of issues and I am glad I left, but one sub I really liked and wish Lemmy had was r/anticonsumption. You make a great point about razors, but that already relied on the assumption that you have decided to shave.
That is not to say that shaving is bad, but to recommend that all individuals think about it. WHY do they want to shave, and how much time and money do they want to put into that? How much of it is mere societal expectation, and is that really worth it?
Look at the Got Milk campaign as another example. That was not promoting any particular company, just the concept of consuming dairy, and led to disastrous health, environmental, and economic consequences in the US today.
The problem is that downvotes do not work. They do not function as an incentive for these users to stop posting, because they do not matter at all.
It can work on larger platforms, where thousands, or even tens of thousands of people vote. There the users form roles based on how they sort the posts. People who sort by New are well aware that they are going to have to sift through a lot of trash, but their reward is that they get to have a more active role in setting the taste for the entire community. Because then you have people who sort by Hot or Active, which tends to be the majority of users in most communities (and is often the default). So in communities with dozens of posts, hundreds of comments, and thousands of votes every day, the things the community doesn’t like gets buried.
The Fediverse is too small for that system to work. There simply is not enough posts, comments, and votes to make any of that meaningful. The same users can just spam the same authors over and over again, and it doesn’t matter whether the post gets 100 upvotes or 100 dpwnvotes- the whole community is going to see it in their feed regardless. And it’s not as if having negative "karma"really matters.
One of tbr systems Reddit had to combat this was that karma occasionally mattered. Some subreddits would require karma to join, or ban if your karma dropped. I’m not sure if the tools exist for something like that here or not. There are a lot of different t ways you can slice up the numbers, but basically looking at post history, ratios of up/down votes, total down votes, etc. Effectively letting community feedback drive the moderation process.
That’s still not perfect because users can block/mute other users. Doing so would effectively be abstaining from voting, and that’s not the healthiest system. But we shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
They are getting downvoted because other commenters here who have actually read the article have found and quoted the definition of cash, which includes savings.
As it pretty much always does in any financial reporting has in the past 50 years. This same story keeps getting re-reported on every 5 years and the conversations around it are always the same.
The stroke was before he took office. For his first 18-24 months in office his voting record was pretty much along Dem party lines.
Similarly, what about wishing for another linear and stoey-focused 3D Zelda?
Anker owns Eufy, a security camera company. A few years ago people were able to access footage remotely, even thpugh Eufy claimed it was only stored locally. Anker, as the parent company, doubled-down and responded poorly at first.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/anker-admit-eufy-security-issues/
Now, that does not impact stuff like cables or battery banks at all. In 2024 when I was shopping for new battery banks, Anker had the best value so I bought Anker. But the corporate response is kind of sketchy so I’m never in a hurry to buy from them anymore. And I woudk never buy anything where security or privacy could be an issue.
I think a LOT of people require external validation to feel good about themselves. Its why we see places like Facebook and Reddit fracture into echo chambers, and why humans separate themselves into social groups based on similarities. Groups then can outcast the “others” which creates a social floor. As long as you’re within Group, you know you aren’t as bad as those Others over there. At the same time, the people within Group build each other uo and reinforce their common behaviors. Dissimilar behaviors within the group leads to either note fracturing within the group, or leads to people changing their behaviors and homogenizing.
When I was last in a band, I noticed the pattern. The 3 of us would each write things on our own that sounded unique, like our individual selves. When we brought the pieces together, or wrote songs together, the result was bland and generic stuff. All of our respective rough edges that made us interesting were rubbed smooth to make room for each other. And the songs that seemed to do the best with crowds were the smoothest ones (not that we had a ton of success- we played a handful of gigs before the pandemic hit and they ended up moving away).
I’ve noticed a lot lately that introverts in media are often portrayed as broken. Evangelion is one of my favorite anime, but its guilty of this. Shinji is often used in memes and internet culture to represent an introvert, but pretty much every scene where we see him alone he is miserable and craving some external validation. When I’m alone I usually just feel at peace.
I think a lot of people fear themselves, their own thoughts. They consider “being in your own head” a bad thing, like your own thoughts are scary.
My older sister is autistic and we were recently talking about traveling. She said that she prefers to travel alone so she can just wander around a new city at her own pace without having to consider the needs of her husband or children or friends kr anyone else, and I related to that a lot. I may also be autistic- I’m waiting for my assessment results lol.