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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 19th, 2024

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  • Bloomberg cites two high-profile cases referenced in the ongoing lawsuit, one involving Ubisoft, and another Warner Bros.

    First of all, I trust Ubi and WB way less than valve.

    Valve allegedly threatened to delist all editions of Rainbow Six Siege after Ubisoft offered a cheaper option on its Uplay store.

    Yeah.

    Because it violates their policy. That’s not a “threat”, those are the terms of the contract Ubi and WB agreed to. Terms that everyone has to follow.

    Heck, Ubi and WB should be hit with a counter suit for trying to leverage their market position to exert control over valve and getting unusually favorable terms.

    Clown suit. Ubi and WB are mad they can’t break their contract with valve in a one sided way.


    edit: I forgot some context:

    The deal between valve and a publisher or dev is: they can sell on steam and elsewhere if steam is at least tied in price, or cheaper, but when they sell somewhere else, that includes the steam key and access to steam and steam’s distribution at no cost.

    What the devs and publishers wanted to do was leverage other features of steam and the steam ecosystem, while undercutting steam’s price.

    They are always free to just not sell on steam for a cheaper price. That’s not what this is about.

    edit2:

    https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

    “Steam Key Rules and Guidelines”











  • I see that requires some more explaining my thinking:

    There is only demand and supply.

    Previously, we had “high demand” and “limited supply” which is what lead to software dev roles being a very well paid job in silicon valley and some other places.

    Now, the promise of AI, making software by itself or increasing productivity, if true, mean that supply increases. That makes software cheaper. Theoretically.

    But that’s the supply side.

    What you’re talking about is also a “I have so much supply, I can now afford to do projects and software I could not do before, because my time, budget, etc. was limited.” But you already had the idea and the “demand” however low priority, already existed.

    What isn’t happening, is that some company sits down and suddenly decides that they need more software than they thought they needed. Even the bit that is “replacing real humans” is replacing humans. It’s meeting a demand that was already there in a new way.

    Using a metaphor / example, we currently, as humanity, manage to feed ourselves. Or let’s pretend that we do and nobody is starving. Someone claiming that “the demand for food is going to go up” is talking nonsense. They can say that demand for “cheese” or “meat” or “potatoes” will go up. But not food, because that market is already saturated. Because we’re not starving.

    Yes, the fact that the demand is there and that the supply gets cheaper will mean that more software will be produced.

    But not because of increased demand. AI doesn’t create it’s own demand.

    …at least that’s my thought process and why I wrote what I wrote in the original comment.



  • If you are ok with factory ish games, I really liked the level based nature of “mindustry”. Factorio is more “you have any space you need, nature bends to your will”. And mindustry does some stuff where it’s similar production chain puzzling, but you are hard restricted by space. Which improves the puzzling, because not all solutions will fit everywhere.

    Otherwise I would also recommend against the storm.