True, which is why it is so easy to tell which one you are doing. :)

There is open source software to run a stream deck, OBS is native (as you mentioned), and my Scarlett audio interface Just Works™. I’m not some big streamer or anything, but I dabble and nothing I could do on Windows is missing in Linux. Even my wacom tablet just works by plugging it in.

When I made the switch, I spent the money on a new ssd and literally pulled the windows one out and had it stashed away something like an “in case of emergency, break glass” type of thing. I realized recently I hadn’t touched that in 4 years and decided to format it and install Cachy to try that out on my laptop; everyone just won’t shup up about how good it is so I figured I should give it a chance.

You’re just simping for a different billionaire out here regurgitating Tim Sweeney’s talking points verbatim…

Make it so I OWN my games if a dev isn’t okay with that they can sell somewhere else.

I feel like we might be more likely to be successful lobbying Valve to make this a thing than we are the government. Fingers still crossed as hard as they can be for Stop Killing Games going somewhere productive in the EU.

The interesting thing about Steam being a monopoly to me, is that the complaints are always that they charge too much… They aren’t undercutting all of the competition in order to maintain massive market share at all. The biggest complaint seems to be “they charge so much money, but I have to list my game on their platform or else I will get basically zero sales and visibility to my game!”

Yea, Steam is huge. The eventual total enshittification of Valve terrifies me, but not enough to just nuke them today and hope a better alternative materializes out of thin air tomorrow. From what I can see, their market share is purely a factor of offering a better product, so smashing them to bits just sounds like being forced to use even worse products.

I never said it was too big or too important to be broken up. I’m saying I don’t see how to split it up that actually solves the problem. I don’t think people are scared of Valve the Game Devs, maybe the hardware section but there were tons of other options on the market almost as soon as the Steam Deck took off. It’s the store that people take issue with, so how do you separate to make the store not a problem? Regionally? Have Steam NA, Steam EU, Steam Asia, etc. etc.? I suppose that is possible, but I’m unsure if I see how that actually solves the problem (even assuming you can get around people just buying from a different region’s Steam).

As for nationalizing it… I just don’t have any faith in the US government to not turn it to absolute shit on day one. Unfortunately, at this stage, I trust Valve and it’s Billionaire CEO more than I do the government. I hate to just resign myself to trying to make the most of the dystopia we’ve been given but… :(

What is and isn’t a Monopoly varies from country to country, and always turns into the same circular debate every time it comes up anyway. That’s why I was trying to avoid getting bogged down is “is it or isn’t it” and focus on “if it is, then what?” because I’m not sure a lot of people have thought that far ahead. Myself included.

Their policy is not that you aren’t allowed to sell your game cheaper on another platform, their policy is that you can’t sell Steam keys on other platforms cheaper than you are selling the game on Steam. Basically, you can’t use Steam’s infrastructure when undercutting “Steam customers”. Games that are on Steam go on sale on other platforms when they are not on sale on Steam all the time currently.

I mean, it definitely isn’t going to happen in the US anytime soon… We haven’t had any teeth behind our anti-trust laws in decades. In my lifetime we have basically seen Bell Telephone get rebuilt under AT&T.

What’s your point?

Are you saying that Microsoft being split up made no sense? If so, what would you suggest instead?

Or are you saying since they “almost” did it to MS, then they could do it to Steam? If so, where do you make the split that effects any change? You could split Valve the game dev company from the Steam platform, but I don’t think that makes Steam any less monolithic in their space - they don’t get their market share from the games Valve has made.

I’d be completely in agreement of what you are saying if it wasn’t for the fact that there are so many people acting like Steam is the worst platform in existence every time they get brought up. People are awfully quick to suck Tim Sweeney off for only charging 12% and fill up the comments with whatever the opposite of “fangirling” is.

Here’s what I don’t understand… Say we all agree they are a monopoly, what do you do about it?

It doesn’t seem feasible to break them up into smaller companies, how would that even work? What are the dividing lines between what portion of the company goes where? Does that even solve anything?

Force them to charge less money? Okay, now they charge the same as Epic (or even less). Basically every other store is now being undercut by the biggest player on the scene. There is now even less reason to use a storefront that isn’t Steam. It doesn’t feel like that solves the problem either.

It seems like all the courts have tried to do so far is charge them money for existing, not get them to change what they do, which seems a lot less like the government trying to stop the big bad monopoly and more like the government wanting to get their cut. What does “stopping the monopoly” even mean? Are we happier and better off as consumers if Valve is forced to shut down Steam entirely? Is that the goal?

in Our Daily Lives

Right… Most of us fly every day. That’s a daily occurrence for sure. It isn’t seeing them at diners or patrolling neighborhoods that affects our “daily lives”, it’s the airports. The place that has been a totalitarian dystopia where we all know we have no freedoms or rights and haven’t for 25 years.

I fucking hate grammarly. And the modern Outlook webmail suggestions can go eat a back of dicks as well.

does VoLTE work? Basically all carriers in the us use this and we knocked down all of the old tech towers. My understanding is the EU still has all the old towers up for just voice calls and don’t need VoLTE to work.

Quick web search suggests it is a “beta” feature at best currently :(

I’m kinda getting sick of these “news headlines” that keep soft-balling obviously true statements like 5 years too late.

They are pointing out that the instructions are “Answer all questions.”

Having watched the video of him shooting a gun, this still makes no sense. My brain cannot wrap itself around how any of this works. I’m looking for cracks, any indication this is just some AI-fuel mass hallucination fever-dream, but I can’t find it and that is somehow worse.

Won’t be surprised if the ISP provided hardware is going to be the only allowed stuff. For you and me, not for the gov’t or companies though. They specifically only mentioned “consumer grade” and also specifically state that products sold to or used by the federal gov’t are not restricted at all. Seems like that carve-out is backwards if these things are such big “security risks”…

Jumping in on this, if it is a survival crafty type of game, like minecraft or something, I REALLY want some way to sort my inventory. I don’t want to spend 10 minutes every time I get back to my base sorting stuff into chests, I want to dump it all into the “dump chest” and have something else sort it for me. I will happily spend the hour to do the initial setup telling whatever system what items go where, and the extra 30 seconds every time I add a new chest or item.

IMO an example of this done well is The Planet Crafter with drones. I wish they got unlocked a little sooner, but once they do it’s fantastic.