Sparking

Should probably just filter them out by default, and then have a sort by funny or something.

Isn’t the main issue not so much what they will show, but what gets monetized or not? There is always going to be a disconnect with this stuff because twitch wants the content that goes viral to be advertiser friendly.

My advice: only forward ports 8080 and 443, then make sure that you have fail2ban or crossed properly set up on your reverse proxy. After that, you are pretty much fine as long as you keep on top of updating your containers.

I would be careful about which apps you proxy. Idk why you need to access the admin portal for pi hole worldwide. If you really want to do that, you should set up a vpn.

It will be interesting to watch the suit unfold. David is claiming that Valve de-facto forces the pricing through the threat of de-listing on steam. So he will need to prove it. We don’t see many games sell below steam price, but I do think that there is kind of an incentive for devs to have one consistent price across all retailers. At the end of the day, there is a price customers are willing to pay for a given game, and you don’t want to lower it on the platform that give you a higher cut of revenue. It’s why it would kind of be silly for Valve to engage in this price fixing behavior, but there are plenty of instances where for-profit companies and employees do silly (and illegal) things, so we will see as this case plays out.

The only way steam falls off is if another store beats them on volume, which also means provides a better customer experience than steam. It’s a really tall order - how do you get people to move to your game libary management sytem? The only real way is to have an exclusive game that players can’t get on steam. That is the core of EGS - the place where you play fortnite. EGS actually makes a lot of sense as long as epic making the hottest game on earth. Half Life 2 was essentially why Valve was able to launch Steam. The issue is that Fortnite is on the decline and EGS just loses money. I don’t know how you make enough money to outdo Valve in the near term.

I have no idea. We will see in court right?

What devs would like to do is push gamers to buy their games on platforms where they get a higher revenue cut. The logic is that 15 dollar game could be 12 dollars on GoG and a dev makes the same amount of money. The issue with this approach is the game theory doesn’t work out for the customer - if a customer is willing to buy a game on steam for more money, than the dev has no reason to offer it on another store for less money when they actually have a higher cut of the revenue, and a higher incentive to price higher. There are non-price reasons a customer would like to buy on steam. Cloud syncing, integrity verification, easy steam deck client, and most importantly parity with the rest of their library. So it is very favorable to Valve as long as its the preferred place to buy games.

The issue is that while it is fair for steam to compete on service, it definitely is unfair for them to try to dictate to devs and publishers where they can sell their games and how they price them, especially if it isn’t a part of their ToS. You don’t get a steam key from GoG, and you aren’t using Steam’s servers. If Devs get more of the revenue, AND they were theoretically able to achieve more volume on GoG, why would you ever sell your game on steam and give up more revenue? Steam has to compete - which they claim they do, and David is alleging they don’t in their suit.

The suit isn’t about key reselling.

Right. Valve is claiming they didn’t, and that they only demand price parity for steam keys. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Honestly, I am not sure what game valve would play to do this. Devs could just make a red and green version of their game to sell on different platforms and price them differently. Meanwhile, to customers, a games price is a games price and developer publisher and distributor are always incentivized to find the highest price a customer is willing to pay through game theory. The market has definitely proven that customers don’t care about what percentage of the cut goes to devs. So there is no incentive for anyone to post a game at a lower price than what a customer is wiling to pay on steam as long as steam retains the highest volume. Telling devs to not price the way they want seems very counter productive to being a good retailer, so who knows.

You have to remember that allot of these sales are from key retailers that will do stuff like buy keys wholesale. I’m not completely sure how that market works honestly, but that generates a lot of sales.

The case is really going to depend on David proving that Valve engaged in the alleged behavior. Games go on sale all the time, so there is a difference between a game being temporarily cheaper on one site because of a sale or key resell market demand, and valve using their influence to fix prices.

In his blog, David claimed that steam reps were threatening to pull his game if he listed lower on other stores.

It doesn’t matter. The suit is alleging that valve threatened to ban games if they were cheaper on other stores. Thats monopolistic price manipulation, and it’s illegal. Valve even pro.ises not to do this in its terms of service - their price parity policy is only supposed to apply to steam keys. That would be fair, because otherwise they couldn’t give out keys in the first place. But you can’t force devs to list games at the same price and then decide on the cut you will take if you are a monopoly. They will have to prove Valve violated its ToS.

Yeah yeah, I do think even like windows 11 these days. I’m a debian with KDE guy.

16 gb optiplexes on sale for 85 dollars on eBay. Dont come with windows, but neither do macs :P

Apple probably just lets it happen.

I mean yeah. Idk why people pre-ordered it, but they did, that’s their whole funding. Now they owe a copy to all their “backers”, and it’s hard to see how releasing this game will bring in revenue. They are in a very big hole.

Thats part of it because everyone interested already doesn’t like them and is getting this game for free. If it doesn’t have legs outside of everyone who has effectively ore-ordered, its going to be a real issue for CIG

I think it is very unlikely. But you are going “what about in the future?” Well, I still think it is unlikely. And then you can go “What about after that?” Well okay, I still think it is unlikely, even then. “How about after that though?”

Damn, okay, they are going to go public, all their developers will go on strike, make everyone buy all their steam library all over again and start selling GLaDOS NFTs. Is that what you want to hear? It’s just a very funny comment. Yes, I don’t think they will ever go public, till the end of time. The world will be a burnt out husk before Valve goes public.

I think it is a little more complicated than that. You go to public markets to raise cash. Sometimes you can get the cash you want, sometimes not. The issue is when you are incentivized to make the stock price go up at all costs. If you don’t need the cash, there is no point to having a higher stock price - lower is somewhat better.

Now, if you are a CEO, and you are paid in stock options, you are going to do whatever you can to maximize the stock price. Even if it is bad for thebling term health of the company. I don’t think the public markets care either way.

To be a little more serious, I think there us a lot less risk that anything could happen. It is too profitable. I think of valve more like a company like Rolex, where they are crazy profitable and can do whatever they want.

No one can predict the future, and someone can always screw it all up with bad management. But I would predict that it is more likely that they would get bought out by Berkshire or something before going public or getting acquired by some VC firm.

There was just an article about this. Its not paid - its curated. There is supposedly a soft revenue requirement for the studio/publisher to be considered.

Valve really has it made. They say, you can “buy” these spots by selling a lot of games, which they take 30% of. Idk why you would mess that up.

But you can say that about anything. No one can predict the future.

Hopefully, if GabeN leaves, the next manager will be smart and manage steam well. Or they will be not smart and make bad decisions.