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While he's there under oath, can they get some HL3 info out of him?
"Objection, this has nothing to do with the case."
"Overruled, the public needs to hear this"
“It has already been released. It has been released for thousands of years. Humanity simply needs to reach a point of true understanding to see it.”
Gabe disappears in a flash of light.
I don't know whether valve has violated anti-trust law or not, and I certainly don't think gaben deserves any more protection from covid than the general public but;
this is a stupid ruling. Why on earth can't he appear remotely, as he requested? They can't "adequately assess his credibility"? Are they gonna have an FBI body language expert on hand? Check his forehead for sweat droplets? There's nothing they can ask him in person that they can't ask him over a camera.
Feels like the plaintiffs are doing some kind of lowkey spite thing here, and I'm surprised the judge played along.
Most courtroom bullshit like this boil down to people who probably shouldn't be in power powertripping.
don't think gaben deserves any more protection from covid than the general public
I think gaben deserves the world’s sickest powered respirator with RGB lights and holographic Team Fortress 2 unusual hat visual effects.
Glad to hear the court will require N95s at least.
I appreciate requiring everyone wearing a good mask while he's in the courtroom, but I don't understand how having him in the room to testify would be substantially different from an online appearance.
Same energy as CEOs demanding workers return to the office
They get him on the stand and the judge says " so Mr Newell, remembering you are under oath, when is Half Life 3 being released?"
*Gabe starts gesturing to his lawyer to do something*
"Just answer the question."
I mean the simple response from the lawyer is, "Objection, relevance," and the question gets tossed out.
I demand accuracy in my jokes, even if it kills them.
"Objection, relevance?"
"Public interest."
(Though in my joke I meant his lawyer, instead of objecting, would entreat his client to answer the question)
Gaben will then slowly drop his head and whisper into the microphone with a wry chuckle - "You fool. You have just activated my trap card."
Immediately, the Half Life 3 release will drop. Gaben has been holding it back, continuously updating for decades, awaiting exactly this moment. The judge, completely flabbergasted at the proceedings will immediately declare a mistrial. Legal scholars will then study the "Gaben defense" for decades.
So is the allegation just that Steam is too successful?
Legit, I've never heard of anti-competetive practices from Valve. Anti-consumer? Sometimes, yeah, though they do a lot more right than most
The argument seems to be that "30% cut is too high" but it's not like there aren't other options if you think that's too high. Epic loves to pay for games to be exclusive there, humble and gog exist, one could even go the retro route and set up their own website (though that's prolly the dumb idea), itch.io comes to mind...
If Valve HAS done some shady shit to ensure their major market share I'd be down to hear it, but to me as a PC gamer since '10ish (and had PC gamer friends since 06) it seems they got there through being a not complete garbage heap of a company that actually improved over the years on user feedback, which is supposed to be the good example of capitalism innit?
Taking a high cut is the opposite of anti-competitive, that makes it easier for competitors to offer a better deal
If 30% we're too high, surely just by offering a competitor that takes a lot less if a cut (say, 12,%), developers would flock to thst competitor because it saves them so much money, right?
Right, Sweeney?
yeah, i think the 30% is fair enough, given the amount of stuff you get as a user by using steam, like
i honestly feel like while they're a monopoly, they don't do anything other companies can't do, their cut goes to fund features others simply don't provide, so it's entierly fair for them to be more expensive than the competition
Hah if 30% is deemed too much the apple app store and pretty much any retail is going to be next. Steam is popular because they don't pull this nonsense. At 70% growth p/a why bother too
As a consumer, the worst days of Steam were in its early years. It took hours to download the HL2 day 1 patch. But those days are long behind us.
Yes. They sued Valve with allegation that they are too successful by providing good service. Sure 30% is too much for some developers, but solution is quite simple... don't sell on Steam. Problem solved. Go to Epic, GoG, bunch of others. Hell every company now has its own launcher and store.
Lmao Valve made a service so good at what it does, it's fucking over all these other business ghouls like Tim Sweemey who are actively trying to dominate the market without actually competing; just look at Epic's store, it's d o g s h i t. They give out free games and still no one I know wants to use it. It's the same across the board, these companies do not want to make good services, they want to legally strongarm the consumer.
So there is an anti-trust lawsuit against steam, but not apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft.... Etc of those giant companies who literally destroy everything in their way? Please tell me they're next?
Good. Thank you for sharing.
DoJ is currently in a lawsuit against Google for search monopoly. Been going on for a while now.
EDIT: If it's true that Valve is also refusing to sell games that are sold for a lower price in other stores where steam keys are not being sold then I think there's definitely a case here. I didn't understand that was their policy but if so it sucks and I take back anything good I said about them being permissive. Thanks to this comment for finding the exact language in the lawsuit that alleges this.
I'd be interested to see what Wolfire's case is, if there's more to it that I don't know about I'd love to understand, but if the article is characterising their case accurately...
claiming that Valve suppresses competition in the PC gaming market through the dominance of Steam, while using it to extract "an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its store."
...then I don't think this will work out because Valve hasn't engaged in monopolistic behaviour.
This is mainly because of their extremely permissive approach to game keys. The way it works is, a developer can generate as many keys as they want, give them out for free, sell them on other stores or their own site, for any discount, whatever, and Steam will honour those keys and serve up the data to all customers no questions asked. The only real stipulation for all of this is that the game must also be available for sale on the Steam storefront where a 30% cut is taken for any sale. That's it.
Whilst they might theoretically have a monopoly based on market share, as long as they continue to allow other parties to trade in their keys, they aren't suppressing competition. I think this policy is largely responsible for the existence of storefronts like Humble, Fanatical, Green Man Gaming and quite a number of others. If they changed this policy or started to enshittify things, the game distribution landscape would change overnight. The reason they haven't enshittified for so long is probably because they don't have public shareholders.
To be clear I'm against capitalism and capitalists, even the non-publicly-traded non-corporate type like Valve. I am in fact a bit embarrassed of my take on reddit about 7 or 8 years ago that they were special because they were "private and not public". Ew, I mean even if Gabe is some special perfect unicorn billionaire that would never do any wrong, when he's gone Valve will go to someone who might cave to the temptation to go public. I honestly think copyright in general should be abolished. As long as copyright exists I'd love to see better laws around digital copies that allow people to truly own and trade their copies for instance, and not just perpetually rent them. I just don't see this case achieving much.
Just don't expect him a 3rd time.
For those being happy that valve is in this position, don't. Any company that gets into a monopoly position, accidentally or not, will turn. Google too had "do no evil" in their manifest, until they didn't
While I agree, it is important to note that Valve is a private company. When you don't have to please shareholders and do absolutely everything to increase revenue, there is possibility for a level-headed leader that keeps the company customer friendly.
But if anything changes (greed takes over or leadership changes), it could still turn.
Valve is a private company right now. But Gaben is 61 and it goes without saying that Valve is at the top of every predatory tech capitalist's wishlist. Can you even imagine what Microsoft or Google or Meta would pay for Valve? Steam is great, but that probably won't last forever. GOG is waiting in the wings if Steam ever becomes enshittified, but most of your library cannot be transferred over.
Come on, not every guy with a beard is--
"Hi this is Gaben"
OOOOOOHHHH MA GAWD
I'm out of the loop, can someone reply what's going on? I'll leave this comment for those like me who curious what happened
David Rosen of Wolfire Games (Receiver, Overgrowth, Lugaru) is alleging that steam reps have threatened to de-list his game if he lists it as less expensive on other platforms. Specifically not just steam keys but other distribution platforms.
Which is hard to believe, considering how many times I've bought steam games on other (legitimate) platforms that were cheaper than on steam, that are still on steam today and werent removed for being cheaper on another platform.
Valve is trying to escape Microsoft's monopolistic practices with Linux while out performing their competition in a fair market. I like competition but I don't get what advantage steam has that their competition doesn't. Even with the steam deck they're using standardized hardware and open source software to make a competitive product leaving room for competition to create their own versions.
Really? Steam? With all those EGS, GOG and Origins? Is it Apple's trolling?