ClamDrinker
@ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
- Comment on I've been waiting for this for a long time. 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week ago:
Holy shit dude, go to bed and dont text your ex.
- Comment on 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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: 1 week 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" 1 week 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: 1 week 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: 1 week 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: 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Lutris now being built with Claude AI, developer decides to hide it after backlash 4 weeks ago:
This ten times. It’s why the online discourse around AI is often so one sided. Anyone walking into a room where people are all nodding along to the same shallow, unnuanced statements, and throwing stones at anyone that points that out or tries to share their own contradictory to the group’s experience, even doing so in complete good faith, isn’t going to engage for long. And so that discussion is never going to turn nuanced since all the people interested in that have been ousted.
And it sucks, because there are real harms in AI that must be guarded from for which we need widespread support. But the hostility and closed minded discussions just causes people to tune out and contrarily be more open minded towards AI as a response to the closed mindedness.
- Comment on Xbox as a platform is officially dead 5 weeks ago:
I mean, your post says “Forcing windows down Xbox gamers throats”. So people that are already in the locked down Xbox ecosystem, not people that already know that and avoid Xbox. Xbox is just Windows but locked down. It’s both Microsoft.
I completely agree people should just go for a PC, but if someone was buying Xbox already, they aren’t in the mindset. So if they’re going to buy Xbox anyways, having a device that’s not locked down to some console OS means they can switch at any time and rid themselves of Xbox, since it’s your device. To me that’s definitely an improvement over the status quo, even if other better options were already available.
- Comment on Xbox as a platform is officially dead 5 weeks ago:
The contracts for the Steam Machine were already locked in before RAM and GPU shortage even started, which means they will (like other consoles) be able to provide a reserved amount of devices at a fixed and lower price. But likewise, this also means that for any console that did not have contracts locked in before shit went down, will suffer massively from this. Thus looking at current prices for hardware isn’t indicative of how much prices will rise. Steam Machine could be the most affordable gaming device of the next decade.
But Valve also isn’t stupid. PC has the unique position where it has one of the longest backlogs of backwards compatible games and applications. Which means you don’t need top of the line hardware. People are still gaming on 10 year old PCs, so the hardware for those will be much more affordable and still be able to play most games. Especially indie games with their insane price to performance to quality ratios. If top line gaming on PC becomes economically unviable, it will simply move down a notch.
- Comment on Xbox as a platform is officially dead 5 weeks ago:
You realize PC != Windows, right? It’s Windows, Linux, Mac.
Windows might be the most used PC platform but game developer are well aware attaching their success to Windows is not the right move. And that’s exactly the kind of freedom PC gives that consoles do not.
- Comment on ..? 5 weeks ago:
At the end of the day the deeds define the word, not the other way around. Not everyone will use the word correctly or appropriately. It’s why only you yourself can truly categorize as such, but at that point you must come to terms with what that means, positively or negatively.
The bias thing is a real problem, but also sometimes not. It all depends on the context. Some people with unreasonable opinions will absolutely waste your time by never accepting difficult realities and talking around it, so identifying a mindset that’s immune to self reflection can be useful. But similarly if a label is all that’s needed to dismiss an opinion also is not very reasonable.
- Comment on Man posts his incorrect opinion online 2 months ago:
Yeah we are definitely not a country that takes it black and white. Did you walk through mud, snow, ice? Take it off, please. Your sweat is less of an issue than turning the floor into a dirt rally. But it also depends on the rules of the house. Someone who has carpet is going to ask you to take them off, while someone with an easily cleaned hardwood or plastic floor might not bother. Some people have shoe-proof ground floors, while going upstairs is entering the more private part of the house where shoes aren’t welcome.
Just ask, and you will find out. And at home, you’re the boss!
- Comment on What a great idea 2 months ago:
This isn’t a conspiracy, nor a secret, and nobody is claiming it is. It’s just psychology for the sake of profit maximization, which literally every company that likes to make a profit participates in. Why are you winding yourself up so much over something so uncontroversial?
You should go work in retail for a year or two, because then you will know this isn’t exactly uncommon knowledge and even the people stocking the shelves know about it. Hell people that understand psychology need to shop too, so they know it too as they move through the store. If it’s a conspiracy to you, that says more about you than anybody else.
- Comment on What a great idea 2 months ago:
You are not everyone. It doesnt have to work on everyone to be effective. And at the end if you want to reject it or not, it’s there, you can read up on it if you didnt already make up your mind. For grocery stores, it’s about large sums of money, so they do care.
- Comment on What a great idea 2 months ago:
You really should look into it more (it’s not a secret if you look for it) because OP is right. Yes, they’re selling thousands of things BUT they’re also designing that space to make you take as long as possible to get through it. The answer for why that is, is simple. People buy more. You don’t have to have an “issue” navigating with it, because you just don’t notice if you spend 5 minutes more walking through the place. If it was so egregious to be noticed easily by people, they would stop coming and the benefit evaporates. So it’s a balance.
It’s not even that, grocery stores bake bread and spread bread smell since it perks people up and makes them more willing to spend, play specific music that calms and soothes you so you’ll walk slower. When you walk into a grocery store, you are walking through a highly specialized environment to maximize profits.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 2 months ago:
Honestly, asset flips or pure ai slop are often not something you would consider a ‘real game’. They are closer to a scam than anything. And they certainly wouldn’t be published by a reputable publisher. I think that’s also what OP was referring to, a game that meets some minimal level of development and involvement.
- Comment on Tankie 2 months ago:
That’s pretty interesting. And I totally agree with your last part. One counterpoint I would have is that local models are often more efficient though, and there’s very little checking you can do on how much your query actually costs in the cloud, while using it at home you can monitor your GPU usage and your power bill. But yeah at the end of the day using it as little as possible is a good habit.
