I like Wolfire. Their head (David Rosen) had a really good procedural animation talk at GDC about a decade ago, their games are pretty good, and they started up Humble before it spun off on its own.
Before tarnishing their reputation, I'd suggest reading up on the actual complaints put forth in the lawsuit. I've done so extensively, I think they have very solid grounds to go after Valve (Valve's behaviour is comparable to Amazon's in terms of anticompetitive practices).
I'm curious what issue you see with that? It seems like the project is only accepting unrestricted donations, but is there something suspicious about shopify that makes it's involvement concerning (I don't know much about them)?
It's only double counted in a situation where you're actually counting both sides. This is a Canadian study published by a Canadian outlet about the impacts of Canadian policy.
They're not trying to balance the books, so to speak, they're evaluating transactions on a single account.
404media is doing excellent work on tracking the non-consentual porn market and technology. Unfortunately, you don't really see the larger, more mainstream outlets giving it the same attention beyond its effect on Taylor Swift.
I first heard a full breakdown of the environmental regulatory aspects of SpaceX's operations in Tech Wont Save Us ep. 186 from September of last year. Definitely worth the listen (every episode of that show is worth the listen, in fact).
Right concept, except you're off in scale. A MULT instruction would exist in both RISC and CISC processors.
The big difference is that CISC tries to provide instructions to perform much more sophisticated subroutines. This video is a fun look at some of the most absurd ones, to give you an idea.
Okay, fair enough.
Basically valve do not stop other companies from competing
So is there something you didn't understand that I can clarify, or are we in agreement that Valve needs to discard the PMFN policy?
... but I want to acknowledge that at least for now there’s no actual evidence of it.
I wouldn't call a multi-year class action asserting that a clause exists "no evidence".
(I mostly continue on this point because I will continue to go around saying Valve uses a PMFN clause, and it's not unfounded for me to do so)
What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?
For games being the same price on different store fronts? Whatever the justification for selling digital games at the same price as physical games was back when digital purchases were becoming mainstream, or for the same reason that Nintendo games will rarely go on sale: because there are still people willing to pay.
Alright, if you're not convinced that there ought to naturally be differentiated pricing, and that the uniform pricing we see is artificial, I don't know where else to go.
Is it? Because I pulled the term from the complaint filed Apr 27, 2021 under the Price Veto Provision section. Where did you see a valve employee saying it?
Ah, I was thinking of the "TomG" quotes here. I see what you're referencing now, though that doesn't really make the language as less ambiguous.
Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion but I'm going to call it here. Cheers.
Valve also doesn’t use shopping platform monopoly methods such as artificially making process low by selling at a loss, which is the main problem with other monopolies like Amazon.
That isn't the only method. There is also the "[Platform] Most Favored Nation" clause, which eliminates the ability to undercut the platform elsewhere. This allows the platform to leverage it's market share and benefits to maintain dominance, raising the price floor of the market so nobody can compete on cost. Being the dominant platform, with better economies of scale and consumer intertia, this gives them an advantage in that competing platforms have a difficult time being the better choice.
Valve uses a PMFN clause. See my other comments for links to relevant court cases.
The moment steam starts enshittifing, it will be very easy to switch to another platform. Compared with other platforms, like any social media or YouTube.
Being familiar with "enshitify", you should go read more of Cory Doctorow's (who coined the term) writing over on pluralistic.net. He writes frequently about monopolies (his writing on Amazon's monopolistic practices (skip to the part about high fees and raising prices) are applicable to Valve's PMFN clause). He also has explicitly given social media platforms as examples of platforms prone to enshitification because of the high network effects.
We can go back and look at the historical prices for The Division 2 and see that Ubisoft didn’t have a lower baseline price on their own store compared to the epic store. So either Epic has an MFN policy as well, or Ubisoft would most likely want to keep their prices consistent across platforms and stores.
Thanks for digging that up, interesting to note. Epic might have an MFN, or maybe Ubisoft's internal publishing overhead is roughly 12%.
That’s the thing: you’re being given a random game every week and that’s still not enough to get people to stick around
I don't know what you envision when you say "stick around". Do people uninstall Steam when they install Epic? No, they don't. You just have both installed. The free game gimmic is for you to download the platform; that's the first hurdle, but it does little to change your preference between platforms when it comes time to make a purchase.
And looking at the store now, it seems they’re just giving back 5% of the money you spend, meaning if you opt into their ecosystem, all their games actually are cheaper.
Interesting point on the 5%, I was unaware of that.
We also don’t really know that they do. The source saying that the MFN policy exists at all is the CEO of Epic Games saying so on twitter. And I’m pretty sure the lawsuit says that it’s “selectively enforced”, so there aren’t any actual examples of Valve vetoing a game’s price based on the price in another store.
What evidence would be needed to convince you?
Clearly, there is a business case for listing a game for less on Epic (or a publisher's own site!). We can trust the MFN policy most likely exists. What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?
"Selectively enforced" is the wording used by Valve's own employee. That could mean anything from "only big, noteable games" to "only enforced when we noticed it" to "actually enforced consistently". Regardless, it can have a chilling effect that causes everyone to step in line.
I haven't read it either. There is however a If Books Could Kill episode about it that is very worth listening to.