paultimate14

Republican governments never seen to have nice things.

I don't have much to say other than I like these a lot

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2553040199

But the store piece is the only problem.

For community, there's tons of different communities for every game and Steam is usually one of the least active anyways.

For mods, as far as I know there's no exclusivity there. In fact, it's kind of a pain to mod Bethesda games because they don't go through Steam. It's similar to DLC in that it's just a better experience to have mod support included in the launcher.

For the launcher, that seems like once again a huge blow to consumers to have a separate steam store vs steam launcher. You can already add non-Steam games to the steam launcher or launch games without the steam launcher.

The problems identified in the article, and what they are getting sued for, are solely related to the store. So I don't see how breaking out these supplemental features would solve that.

So what's your solution?

Break them up... How?

You can split off business units like their hardware sales or dev studios, but that isn't going to reduce their storefront market share at all.

Are you suggesting that they just split users up randomly? That would be probably worse for consumers- suddenly the friends and communities people have built up through Steam would be fractured, and users would look to find ways to get around it.

Split up by what publishers they have deals with? Well then those new companies would only be indirect competitors, not to mention that would also be worse for consumers as I'd have to suddenly make a new account with each new platform just to keep accessing my current library.

Like... How do you want to split them up in a way that doesn't hurt consumers and publishers more than it helps?

So what solution do you propose then?

Ideally I'd like to see media distribution be nationalized. Video streaming, audio streaming, videogames, e-books. There have been multiple cases of companies selling digital goods, then ceasing to provide those with consumers left holding the bag. Multiplayer games whose servers are gone. Movies "purchased" on Amazon that become unavailable when their agreement with the publisher expires. I am concerned about what Valve will look like when they inevitably get new leadership.

But I suffer no delusion that nationalizing that is realistic. Certainly not in the US where I live, where even libraries are under attack from conservatives. I'm doubtful that would happen anywhere else either. So what's the next-best thing?

Seems to me like the capitalist response would be to try to encourage competition. A lot of companies have tried and failed, so I'm not sure what else can be done on that front.

So... What do you suggest be done about it?

Monopolies are often great for consumers... When they're nationalized. Obviously that's not going to happen with Valve any time soon.

What would the benefit be to breaking up Valve? How would you even go about doing that? The obvious choice is to break out different business units- break things like the hardware sales and game development into separate companies. But that still doesn't address the issue of them having too much market share for software sales.

The next beat thing I can think of would be to have some sort of regulatory body just to place restrictions on the industry. Which, of course, would vary from country to country, and would probably have to include all of their competitors: Epic, GoG, and the various publisher-specific stores, maybe even other storefronts like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google, and Apple. It would be hard not to also hit the mobile games industry too (which, to be fair, might be a good thing). But this kind of thing is usually reserved for things like utilities, communications, financial markets, etc. Such an organization for a luxury recreationak market... I have to wonder how much political appetite there really would be for that? Is that really what people want their governments to be focusing on?

Do you have a better solution to propose?

I thought this meme didn't smell right so I looked for more information.

She has not even been accused of attempted murder. She was in jail without trial for 15 months, accused of assault. Italy seems to be think that she was being held (and in poor conditions) not to actually carry out justice, but as a piece of political propaganda. The Italian foreign minister even called the Hungarian ambassador to Rome, and has accused Hungary of violating EU laws. Italy has also pointed out that, per those pesky EU laws, Hungary should have allowed her to remain on house arrest in Italy while awaiting trial anyways.

She's actually accused of several counts of assault, but Hungary has not publicly released any evidence. The "assault" was related to the disruption of a Nazi demonstration, which the right-wing Hungarian government seems to like.

She was not released because of her election- Hungary finally caved and allowed her to enter house arrest like they should have 15 months ago.

Really terrible meme all around. Not even close to reality.

Out of curiosity, is the thumbnail at all related to the story? I tried to find any reference to Alex Jones in the article and I'm not seeing anything.

Maybe more than 2 when you add in the children!