ClamDrinker
@ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 1 week ago:
Installing Linux on PS5 is an exploit as far as I understand it, and requires specific software versions. But PS5 already runs a Unix like kernel as far as I know. So yes, it would be possible to do it on them if Sony or Microsoft allowed it. Though I doubt they ever will since you could not run Playstation or Xbox games on Linux without huge investment from their side. It’s a solution for those looking to jump without the hardware cost, but I am a little anxious in recommending it since Sony full well considers it still their device. And Nintendo has recently shown they aren’t shy from just bricking your device if they think you’re not using it the way they want, I would expect the same from Sony. But if you do it right, probably no way for them to find out. But you could never go back to it just being a Playstation 5 too. In the end it’s essentially the same path as my first proposal.
I also notice that when there is a discussion or video regarding modding a console, it’s to “preserve” its longevity rather than having a practical use.
I think that’s in part because it’s an attempt to tiptoe around the ‘red lines’ of console manufacturers. It’s trying to stay as inoffensive as possible so that it doesn’t get put into the same bag as emulators or third party tools to circumvent DRM.
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 1 week ago:
Your point being? I’m well aware these are because of piracy, it doesn’t change my point. If you’re a shitty company intent on abusing your customers to extract as much money from them, of course you’re going to find any way to do it and take away their forms of protest. But in the end, an artist still gets paid for whichever game they end up greenlighting, and not for the amount of copies sold afterwards. Hell they might not even get paid at all since these are the same kind of companies that would rather fire them for AI.
And for the not so shitty companies, they simply make sure people have no reason to pirate them, and there’s a hell of a lot more of those. They just don’t make unreasonable amounts of money, almost like that’s antithetical to treating your customers fairly.
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 1 week ago:
I mean it really depends on what your wishes would be. If you’re thinking big and long term then someone could really go all in on capturing the console crowd with an entirely new console ecosystem. You could definitely simplify an OS like Linux to be a lot more to be more console oriented, such as what SteamOS is already trying to do for Steamdeck and the Steam machine. Even though that will be a balancing act with the openness of the system, since ‘making sure you can’t easily break this’ also makes it hard or impossible to break out of it in case of a change of heart.
But the whole thing with open systems is that they can do very similar things to other open systems. Which is why Linux and Windows (and sometimes Mac) are packed together under the same umbrella. So it would have to content with those three and provide clear upsides to developers, businesses, or players over those, which is hard. That’s part of the reason why the big businesses love consoles, because the freedom they take from players, double as tools for them to earn more money.
Most realistically in that route, would be for either Sony, Xbox, or Nintendo, to change their tune and go down that route instead. But that would require immense force from the players to offset the profit lost from changing the status quo. So it really isn’t that realistic sadly. Xbox wouldn’t do it anyways because it’s essentially already even more locked down Windows. Nintendo relies on their exclusives to sell their consoles. Sony would be least unlikely to do it but they recently stopped selling their exclusives on PC because (almost) nobody jumped ship back to Playstation.
The closest and ‘easiest’ jump in the short term is probably to small formfactor PC hooked up to your TV. Controller support is pretty widely supported nowadays. And since most console game developers also develop for PC, you won’t have any issue missing out on your games unless it’s Nintendo or exclusives (but that’s probably another reason to jump too). With some technical knowledge you could do it without spending a single cent on Steam / Valve if that’s your concern. Since you could just run a Linux based system on a mini-PC or console formfactor with eg. Brazzite or another console OS lookalike.
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 1 week ago:
That’s fair. I just think like your second part, most people have their reasons like that. But you’re correct the culture does also simultaneously allow people that pirate just for free stuff to have it easy. But If the companies don’t like it, they can fix that. Currently to them it’s just the cost of doing business their way. People drove to Netflix and Steam in hordes when they made a service that was easier and better than pirating. Netflix regressed since then, but Steam still shows it’s possible. It just takes an industry as a whole willing to avoid the dark patterns that lead people to piracy.
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 1 week ago:
Not lots sadly. There are certainly some that have a big enough public profile to demand a share, but those are few and far between, and are often doing pretty well for themselves already. To 99% of the people in the industry the response to “I want to get a cut of the game’s profits” is “you can find another place to work then.”
I don’t entirely disagree with your bigger point. At some point you have to just step away from companies that are set on abusing you. But I don’t agree that it’s immature or skinflinty. That seems to be a rather uncharitable take perhaps lacking in understanding and perspective of why people pirate. There are pirates that take for the sake of it, but that’s not mostly the case. Piracy is trackable to a certain degree, and so it is feedback that people want to give you money, but are protesting your decisions. As has been said, piracy is a service problem. People tend to have no problem parting with their money in a fair exchange, and so they often don’t, even if they could.
Wanting to be treated fairly and not taking abuse is the opposite of immature in my opinion, how much it costs doesn’t even factor into it. Some fights you fight on principle. Too many people accept being taken advantage of in this world, making it worse for everyone else. And without those people piracy would also have been unneeded, because these companies often opt to not fix their issues and instead enshittify harder to squeeze more out of the people that keep paying.
There’s also a huge psychological aspect to it. Pirates often still bond with friends over games and those friends can end up buying, and pirates often still contribute to fan communities. Both of these are hard to let go of. They also happen to still help the original game stay relevant despite pirating, so yes, quitting entirely is more effective of a boycott. But also not being able to sell the experience to someone that has already experienced it is also more permanent, and allows that person to remain in their respective communities. Piracy just hits the sweet spot between quitting and no longer directly supporting, which is why people often end up there. And for creators that have to live under the thumb of executives that sabotage their success with hostile business practices, they would much rather you be there than somewhere else, while they try to improve the situation from the inside.
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 1 week ago:
A bonus is not the same as a percentage cut of sales. Yes, bonuses exist and they can correlate with the success of a game in the best case, but they can (and also often) completely do not, plenty of stories of people getting laid off even if the game does well. These companies are so big they do not hold onto their staff as valuable assets, but as replaceable cogs. And it’s also why a lot of artists work on a contract basis and just don’t get any bonus to begin with.
And ‘to make up for extremely poor baseline salaries’… That’s not a thing as far as I know, and if it is where you are, it shouldn’t be a thing. It would be the game industry equivalent of tipping culture. Steal from workers ahead of time so you can punish them if the suits’ stupid business decisions don’t work out, awesome.
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 1 week ago:
I kinda hate to say it, but consoles are designed with these companies in mind. The whole idea of locking the ecosystem to only companies Sony / Microsoft / Nintendo approves of and making the process to get in expensive, time consuming, and often hostile to creative autonomy, incentivizes exactly these kinds of companies to go all in, since they have plenty of money and know with a captive audience they will get more out of it.
Prices kind of suck right now, so there’s no easy solution. But the only real long term solution is to move to an open platform where you have the control, not them. And that’s going to require sacrifice, because the deck is stacked against you. Or if you have enough faith, for enough people to stand up when they need to. Because the power for you yourself to resist was intentionally already taken from you.
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 1 week ago:
Your two statements have nothing to do with each other. Artists don’t get paid for the amount of copies sold, that’s executives and shareholders. Unless you’re talking about an indie company with shared ownership, which the companies in the post decidedly are not. Artists just care about their game being played and enjoyed, something the scummy practices of these suits actively prevents.
- Comment on .ml has got to be the only place on earth where I'd get downvoted for a comment like this 1 month ago:
But if you understood what they were trying to say as you said you did, you would understand they’re not claiming that is de facto what NK is. They’re just saying what NK is on paper. Even sham governments frequently live in the shadow of legitimacy cast by what their system does on paper and still follow protocol even if parameters are tightly controlled for a certain outcome. So a lot of this could have been avoided by not fighting that premise and reiterating your point differently. Such as with Xi, you did not mean to deny he wasn’t elected by the NPC instead of the people, but you wanted to deny the legitimacy of the entire process including the NPC. So say that instead of denying the former. “Even if he’s indirectly elected, the process as a whole is a sham.” or “You’re right, he is indirectly elected. But that doesn’t change my point, the legitimacy of that election is also a sham.”, and none of this would have been necessary.
- Comment on .ml has got to be the only place on earth where I'd get downvoted for a comment like this 1 month ago:
You say that, but you also claimed out of nowhere that they said NK holds fair elections. Which they clearly didn’t. So if you aren’t misunderstanding what they’re trying to tell you - why are you putting words into their mouth and being combative for no reason? You’re basically admitting you’re intentionally baiting them.
- Comment on .ml has got to be the only place on earth where I'd get downvoted for a comment like this 1 month ago:
You really should know how silly this makes you look, even to someone sharing your judgement of how democratic those processes are in NK or China. They’re just explaining how things work in the political systems of those countries objectively.
If you’re from the US - someone can explain to you how the electoral college works without making a judgement on whether or not that’s democratic or not. If you’re not from the US, many democratic systems have such mechanics like indirect appointments or indirect voting, whether good or bad.
Objective knowledge gives you the power to form better opinions and take action, including for those systems of power that you are a part of. Rejecting such knowledge carte blanche because it’s about a country you don’t like is incredibly self defeating in the long term. It makes you easy to manipulate.
- Comment on I've been waiting for this for a long time. 3 months ago:
There’s some key details to not forget.
Factorio essentially kickstarted the genre. Satisfactory was inspired by it. I totally dig what Satisfactory has done but having a blueprint that is proven to work is skipping a lot of risk.
There is an inherent tradeoff between graphics and gameplay. Both have good reasons to focus on. Factorio has optimized it’s graphics and logic to an insane degree. Far beyond what is typically expected of an AAA game. You just don’t see that directly, since it provides value by absence. The game doesn’t even start to slow down until you are hundreds or thousands of hours in.
There is a reason AAA games frequently run badly even on top tier hardware, it’s because they prioritize graphical fidelity over all else. Optimization is often an afterthought, while for Factorio that the risk had to be taken because the game would not be fun if it couldn’t scale past the first ten hours.
Highly detailed graphics are very skillfully produced as well, but it’s a misunderstanding that a game’s code cannot be of similar quality and depth. A sort of graphical AAA vs functional AAA. Factorio took a lot of highly skilled programmers to pull off, while a graphically intensive game put those resources into their artists.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
You are right, when Gabe dies, that will be a huge point of uncertainty where people’s trust into Steam will need to be re-established to keep going as it currently is. But that’s a point aside.
Companies do not have to indicate when they are going to enshitify. It can and has happened over night.
It can happen, but it’s not the norm by far. Reputation is still to some companies their key indicator of profitability, and Steam is certainly one of those. By that logic you should at any time be expecting loot boxes instead of products in your supermarket tomorrow, but that’s kind of ridiculous because everyone would hop to a competitor immediately, assuming no foul play. As I mentioned in this comment, paying customers hold a firm grasp of the value of Steam. If the people stop coming to Steam, they companies do too, and Steam dies.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Kinda presumptuous to call it naive when I never said Steam couldn’t ever die, nor do I believe so. I’m saying that unlike other platforms that enshittify, paying customers hold the final say for Steam. Paying customers are why companies come to Steam, paying customers will not spend money on Steam if they even get close to enshittifying. There is no multi billion dollar ad industry in between that pays the bills, that dictates the enshittification because it demands advertisements be shoved down people’s throats.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
I agree, though this was in the time when he wasn’t really crazy. But two things can be true at the same time, and I wasn’t trying to make a point in that direction. I could’ve picked other examples of developers that kept a level head, they would just be much less known.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
(Not the previous poster) The real issue is that pretty much as always when this comes up, nobody is really defending Gaben. But to some people, just pointing out that something isn’t quite logical or true, is the same as “giving them the benefit of the doubt”, because it’s doesn’t meet their sky high criteria of negativity for the subject.
The truth doesn’t matter to them, but how negative you are about it. If you’re not personally crafting the guillotine for Gaben, you are a fanboy. It’s frustrating, since I do think we all agree at the end of the day that Gabe should be held to high standards due to his wealth, and he should face incredibly scrutiny if he should tilt.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Holy shit dude, go to bed and dont text your ex.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
You really need to take a good look in the mirror, because you are reading things that aren’t there and embarrassing yourself and the industry you claim to care about.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Unfortunately for your bad faith argument, I make games myself. And this kind of behaviour is absolutely detestable if you ask me. Engaging with people like this is actively doing damage to game developers. You aren’t automatically right for having been part in making a game once.
PC developers don’t work for Steam, they work for themselves or for a publisher. And the same massive studios that make games for consoles make them for PC too. Feel free to provide some actual stats that aren’t just your personal feeling on the topic rather than just saying “nuh-uh” while running off with the goalpost.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Challenging biased views, half truths, or having your own opinions isn’t kissing some billionaire’s ass. I don’t want billionaire’s to exist. Gabe shouldn’t need to be a billionaire. But all of this is absofuckinglutely irrelevant to whether or not Steam is a good platform, unless Gabe was wielding Steam in a way that would promote a billionaire class, which he isn’t.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Exactly. And unlike many other companies there isn’t even any indication they would want to enshittify anyways. Why would they destroy the foundation of their platform? They have actual paying customers paying the bills, not some force-feed ad slop machine.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Epic made it very clear from the start they were trying to undercut Steam, not by being better, but by paying out developers to create exclusive games for the Epic store, something extremely hated on PC. Even on Steam you can still sell your games elsewhere too.
Steam also controls the larger markets share of PC gaming. Of course they’re going to have to price themselves competitively. Because why would you pay more for a platform that has way less users and a bad reputation?
You can actually just pay an almost 0% cut by delivering directly to your customers, but that’s exactly why you use a storefront to sell your game. You go where the customers are, and they are at Steam.
BTW, Sony, MS and Nintendo all suck, but at least they create jobs for devs.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
It doesn’t really seem to be publicly verifiable, but if this article is to be believed, then yes. Would be kind of weird if they wouldn’t either, since selling games is their business too, and they have to compete with PC.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
This isn’t really a problem though, more a consideration or trade off. If Valve’s services are worth that 30% cut, because you reach more people or don’t have to make other costs that would dwarf the cut, it’s worth it. Nobody’s forcing companies to sign up with Steam, other than indirectly because it turns out doing so is a sensible deal.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
Exactly, this is the clear sign that Steam is providing actual value to both developers and players. The PC ecosystem has always had the guaranteed threat of an open platform, so you could cut out any middleman. Which is why it’s such a hostile platform to predatory middlemen. The fact this isn’t being done to Steam demonstrates them as an example of a (relatively) good middleman.
Best example of Steam being left out and still succeeding on PC - Minecraft launched in a time when Steam was already around and just said “nah, we’re good” (citing the 30% cut and concerns over monopoly status) and just went it’s own way. There are still plenty of games being created on PC without Steam in the mix, itch.io, self publishing. Steam just makes it a lot easier so many people legitimately want to use them, others don’t and can do so. And that’s how it should be!
- Comment on Me watching someone on Lemmy getting cooked for having the same opinion as me: 3 months ago:
For a video serving platform in a vacuum, maybe it would be the best financing model. But Youtube doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And supporting them as it stands means rewarding them for their malicious practices, even if you yourself can work around them. Youtube isn’t going to magically become decent and friendly by getting more money. Rewarding them anyways is how you get companies that feel empowered to put their own profits before the common good and the good of the customers. It is enabling yourself and others to be squeezed hard should enough people pay for premium and they suddenly close down yt-dlp and free tier viewing in general. Youtube is a near monopoly already, and treating it as if it’s just some small company trying it’s best is extremely dangerous and objectionable. Again, not saying having premium is necessarily bad, but it very clearly is not a safe or recommendable deal that most people should take unless Youtube changes their tune drastically to show they can be trusted with more power than they already have.
You’re missing my point on the distribution of the donations. If 5 people watch the same 5 creators 20% of the time, then the outcome is the same if everyone pays a dollar to every creator, or if each person pays 5 dollar to one of the 5 creators. Online platforms operate at scale, not at the individual level, so having superfans that donate to you directly and are more likely to keep supporting you over longer periods is much better and financially secure than getting a few pennies from someone. It’s as you said, sometimes people provide way more value to you than your watch history would reveal, in which case a direct donation is superior to make sure they get what they deserve.
- Comment on PS6 and Xbox Project Helix "will start at a 50% higher price" than PS5 and Xbox Series X, predict analysts following Sony price hike – and $999 "is not impossible" 3 months ago:
Let alone the massive backlog of previous generation games and emulators that you don’t need a top line PC for.
- Comment on Me watching someone on Lemmy getting cooked for having the same opinion as me: 3 months ago:
I mean, if you use yt-dlp, you kinda get why the premium ‘feature’ is a bit of a scam, right? Since yt-dlp actually gives you the video file, not a locked down version you can only play on the app or video (and only when you connect to the internet). So if youtube shut yt-dlp down, would you be happy paying for that ‘feature’ now that you can’t bypass it? Because yt-dlp is also just as against Youtube’s ToS as adblocking is, since you also avoid watching ads and Youtube’s DRM on the video. And they try plenty to shut yt-dlp down.
Of course creators want to diversify, even if YouTube was perfect they don’t want to be dependent on one revenue stream.
Yes, but there is a distinct difference between diversifying and cutting off an unreliable partner. One is built on entrepreneurship, the other on broken trust. And for smaller creators, those often are much more tied to Youtube and have no real reason to diversify yet at their growth. Yet they still pretty much have to do it, since they cannot rely on Youtube to help them if things go south. Something that would not happen if Youtube was a ‘good’ host.
About payments: Square charges 30c fixed fee per payment (+%). PayPal charges 49c. Stripe 30c. Ayden 37c. Klarna 30c. Please enlighten me how flat fees are not a thing.
These are payment processors, not the donation platforms people use (which would be the stand in for Youtube’s 45% cut), like Ko-fi. If that’s what you meant, fair enough, yes for those flat fees still exist without any exception afaik, and indeed if you use the wrong one the fees might be too much for a monthly payment. But that’s hardly the case everywhere. Where I live, the payment processor takes much, much less than Stripe and Paypal, max a cent or two.
But even with that cut, that doesn’t change a lot though, it’s just a matter of making payments efficiently. Like paying yearly or making a large single donation. Premium might be less payment to processors overall, but 45% is such a large cut that it’s hard to overcome that. And youtube being an unreliable partner, there is also an invisible cut on every payment that makes you less able to detach from them.
With yearly donations, the math still doesn’t really cut it:
spoiler
Lets say premium costs 14 dollars, and you watch 50 creators and every transaction costs 30c flat cut + 3%. >168 dollar a year paid yearly -> 162.66 dollar sent to Youtube for cut -> 89.46 dollar to creators after 45% cut >50 creators -> 1.79 dollar per creator per year vs >168 dollar a year -> 3.36 dollar per creator per year >50 payments of 3.36 dollars with 30c flat cut + 3% -> 2.96 dollar sent to donation platform for cut -> 5% donation platform cut -> 2.81 dollar per creator per year
But more realistically, you might send 30 dollars to their top 5 creators for a year, which is 150 dollars a year, and at those amounts the % cut overtakes the flat cut by a long shot.
- Comment on Me watching someone on Lemmy getting cooked for having the same opinion as me: 3 months ago:
Nobody denies Youtube provides value. It’s the most used video platform in the world. Hence why they called them semi-parastic.
But the tooling gets neglected. The legal protection at times screws over the very creators you say you stand by. Some premium features are literal scams (eg. downloading videos). Some ads they allow on their platform promote literal scams. They censor comments, videos, and dislikes, often in deceitful ways like pretending nothing is being blocked to the poster. I could go on.
For a multi-billion dollar company, they provide ample enough reasons to cut them out of the equation as a form of economic protest, and their disloyalty to their creators in many of their decisions is a forever stain on their trust relationship with the public and creators. Which is why Youtube creators routinely try to detach themselves, like streaming on other sites, and why many of them ask you donate directly instead, so that if Youtube should screw them over (which they have done many times), they can still afford to pay rent.
Plus donating to 50+ creators would be more money in payment fees alone than what I pay for YouTube. That’s just wrong. Flat fees aren’t really a thing anymore. Different donation systems have different fees and most charge a percentage of 5% to 12% compared to the 45% of Youtube.
Look, nobody is saying that it’s bad to have Youtube Premium. I used to have it for years, until I found out they were scamming me on a feature I found important. If none of those things are a concern to you, then go ahead. Premium is a convenient option for sure, but it’s not the greatest option either.
- Comment on Me watching someone on Lemmy getting cooked for having the same opinion as me: 3 months ago:
That’s kind of half the picture though. Adblocking and piracy are not done in a vacuum. You typically block ads in response to the unethical practice of hostile design and the abuse of human psychology to be conditioned positively to something through exposure rather than just making a good product. Piracy is often in response to unethical business practices as well.
If none of those unethical forces existed, you can be sure there would be a lot less pirates and adblockers. But in our current world piracy and adblocking are often straight up ethical in relative terms.
