Valve is not your friend
Added 2024-08-30 19:09:28 +0000 UTCMy newest video is out. This is early access just to paid members. It's also a longer cut than the YouTube upload will be.
Comments
Hey! Thanks for your super awesome feedback! This video is unfortunately performing absolutely terribly! It's in the gutter. Also one of the most disliked ones recently. I did enjoy making it and burned way too much on the research. I am gonna consider the Linux move in my second video. I have to explain the concept of rent seeking first in order for that to make sense. I like your philosophical point too. Although, people do pay a lot of money for streaming to Spotify, Apple Music/Podcasts and also digital video (Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, etc.). Pirating games is still a thing that many people are willing to accept the risks of doing. But you are generally right that is far more insecure and unreliable compared to pirating movies and music. All of this deserves so much discussion and attention. Will probably make more future on this whole meme "if buying isn't owning"
The Hated One
2024-09-03 14:20:29 +0000 UTCI'm glad that you have the courage to talk about this. I used to listen to a podcast called This Week in Linux for a long time and it always astonished me how people who know so much about technology can be such blind fanboys of valve. While they would take any chance to criticize tech companies, Valve is their blind spot. And it is really important to talk about this. There is however, one thing that you completely missed out on which is pretty important to understand WHY people are Valve fanboys. A lot of the support for Valve I've seen comes from the fact that they're basically the company responsible for our ability to run almost any game on Linux today. No other platform has ever done something like them. Even when a game developer doesn't officially support linux, Valve has gone out of their way to make it possible to play almost all of these games with their Proton compatibility layer. And this is huge, and a move which is very ANTI-MONOPOLISTIC. Window's dominance over gaming really sucks and is undeserved, and it is really refreshing to have a company like valve come in and turn this on it's head. Linux gaming is very important because at least this enables us to play proprietary software on open operating systems, instead of closed source software on closed source operating systems. Of course this is not ideal, but it is a step in the right direction and we should praise valve for that. By leaving this point out in your video you are making your video less convincing in my opinion, because you state that people are crazy about valve, but don't admit that there are valid reasons for that. But of course, all other points of criticism you raised are totally valid. It really sucks that they implement DRM, online key verification and shit like that. And of course a 30 % cut for running a few servers to distribute games is ridiculous and unjustified. We have torrenting technology which enables us to distribute games with a 0% cut. Some General Feedback on the Video: Your voice sounded a lot brighter in this Video than usual which i really appreciate. Your early videos sometimes sounded quite dark and i think that it it is not just more comfortable to listen to you now, but it is also good for new audience discovering you to listen to an energetic voice, this will make them feel a lot more welcome. Also loved how you commented "before DRM banned happiness", that was very on point. One a bit more philosophical point i'd like to make is that PC gaming is currently one of the only markets where people are still willing to pay for their content. Mobile games, Music, Movies and Videos have all started to transition or already trasitioned to making money with ads. Even Netflix and Disney + are starting to introduce ads now. Most people now prefer and accept companies just shoving tons of ads down their throat (or eyeballs) to get free content. I recently became a lot more aware of how our entire culture is being completely destroyed by ads (look at Mr. Beast videos, they are the perfect example of the type of content that an ad-supported business model produce). PC games are one of the few places left that are almost entirely free of advertising. Sure they have other shit going on like lootboxes and other exploitative measures to extract more money from people, but at least people pay for a game with money and not with their attention. And i believe that at least one of the reasons is that with games it is actually possible to enforce users to pay. Movies and Music are very easy to rip and distribute for free. I know many people who are willing to "pirate" movies and music but not Games, because this poses the risk of getting banned with online games and security risks because cracked games could include malware. I definitely don't think it's good to achieve this with DRM, but I just wanted to point out that there is some legitimate interest in companies like valve enforcing people to be online and pay for their games. Doesn't mean we should accept that but i think at least we should acknowledge that, otherwise it will be difficult to create a better system. We definitely gotta push back on the idea that customers are just subscribers though. If people do pay for digital content with their hard-earned money, they should absolutely at the very least own the copy they bought and it is inacceptable that this can be taken away from them at any time.
CopyCat
2024-09-01 16:21:54 +0000 UTCIn terms of keeping games forever - for the cases that I know off (for old games from the 90s and 2000s), only community maintained cracked versions worked with moderate success. But I don't know about modern games. Digital distribution platforms need to be pressured to change, otherwise DRM rules and the IP regime is gonna be hell for ownership and preservation of media.
The Hated One
2024-08-31 12:17:38 +0000 UTCApple is gonna charge 30% on iOS. You can still continue your support as long you don't pay through Apple. Use the website or the Android app.
The Hated One
2024-08-31 12:14:29 +0000 UTCWhat are our alternatives? For example, is there any way I could play Black Myth:Wukong locally ‘forever’? Maybe, after buying downloading it once? I haven’t cracked a game in over a decade, is that still a thing? I stopped buying digital games on my Nintendo Switch - only physical games now. But obviously, that’s only good for my Switch games.
Chuck8541
2024-08-31 02:46:44 +0000 UTCIsn’t Patreon on iOS about to change? How else do you accept support?
Chuck8541
2024-08-31 02:32:50 +0000 UTC
