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Find this episode of the daily show if you can. It’s the April 1st episode. It’s a fantastic double whammy of the reality of AI pushing workers out their jobs and how companies control the conversation on monopolies.

Good stuff, that this article only covers a small slice of.

Fair enough

Unpopular opinion incoming:

I don’t think we should ignore AI diagnosis just because they are wrong sometimes. The whole point of AI diagnosis is to catch things physicians don’t. No AI diagnosis comes without a physician double checking anyway.

For that reason, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that an AI got it wrong. Suspicion was still there and physicians double checked. To me, that means this tool is working as intended.

If the patient was insistent enough that something was wrong, they would have had them double check or would have gotten a second opinion anyway.

Flaming the AI for not being correct is missing the point of using it in the first place.

Supposedly they will be unlocking all the new heroes for anyone who doesn’t have them yet also. But brand new players will still have to unlock the roster of classic heroes in the same way they do now.

1. This move seems geared towards recovering players they lost when they started locking heroes behind the battlepass. I know two personally who took this news as an invitation to get back into Overwatch just today, so there’s substance there

2. Time spent on brand new accounts to unlock old heroes is most likely a measure to deter smurfs, which is why that’s probably not going to change.

Edit:

3. It also was probably done as a response to the drama they created in competitive modes by making the free tier grind for the new heroes. Not everyone had new or even recent heroes at their disposal, making for inherently unfair games

That’s true, but games exist already where people can host their own servers. Pc gaming is kind of like the sandbox of platforms. Other major consoles solved that problem by sunsetting their free services so that you can’t just go play an existing online game for free on their platform.

It would be a gargantuan task to sunset free online connectivity as it exists in pc gaming today.

greedy ass companies like valve who profit out of kids.

Again, and for the last time, you have a problem with the industry. Extreme statements like this reveal what your intentions actually are. If valve is to blame, then by the same logic you would have all but the smallest game devs and publishers not exist for the want of them doing things correctly according to you, and you’d call it a solution.

This conversation is going nowhere, you will not be satisfied.

Also, telling me I’m being doxxed anyway demonstrates pretty thoroughly that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Thanks for that.

EEE has nothing to do with what steam is. Other game stores exist that valve can’t affect on other platforms. You’re just pulling things out of your ass.

And finally, saying the government shouldn’t have to fix something that won’t fix itself, as evidenced by the fact that loot boxes have been an issue for a decade now, and just resorting to shaming people as a method of reprisal, has a name.

You are virtue signaling. And what you are doing here is about as effective as virtue signaling.

Anyway, blame whoever you want. The time you could have changed anyone’s mind here passed with your very first comment, as evidenced by the downvotes.

You’re yelling into the void. Enjoy that.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s that simple. Console online services get away with making you pay because the system is locked and you don’t have a choice. Pc gamers can host their own servers, and if steam ever becomes so anti consumer as to charge for access to your library, competitors will rise and the market will balance.

1. Loot boxes aren’t gambling if you earn them in game and don’t buy them. Personally, I believe that micro transactions for loot boxes should be outlawed altogether, but especially for kids. That doesn’t mean the practice of having those in games falls more on steam than the developers who push the practice in the first place.

2. No one is stopping indie devs from releasing their own games. Steam provides a service with tools and structure. Don’t pretend like steam just sells the game and takes a cut.

(3) Telling me to post my information is asking me for a show of good faith in an inquiry you are explicitly making in bad faith to bludgeon your point. There’s no good faith way to assert “well if it doesn’t matter than do it coward”. I don’t want to get doxxed. You don’t get doxxed when a company sells your info. There’s an extremely basic difference and you know it.

You’re just forcing your false equivalency to pretend your point has legitimacy, and in doing so have completely lost any credibility you might have had with me to begin with.

If your argument is in good faith, post yours. Otherwise don’t pretend like my not posting it proves anything except that you’re willing to stoop to bullying to push your point.

4. Why don’t you blame regulations on gambling that enable this behavior in the industry you so clearly despise. You’ll get further petitioning your government than yelling into the void about practices you don’t like.

Deciding that steam is the be-all end-all in the whole system is just asinine. You’ll argue that steam can be better and that’s the only reason you’re saying any of this, but the harsh truth is that steam could be quite a lot worse.

But seriously though, I am completely done with this conversation. You have shown multiple times in every single comment you have made so far that good faith isn’t really a thing for you.

I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish but it certainly isn’t changing my mind. I’m definitely not going to change yours. Someone who makes a comment like “Valve is abducting kids into gambling for greed and profit” isn’t looking to accept logic except in a way that confirms their own bias.

This is pointless.

To add one last thing, even if every part of your discussion lends to legitimate concerns, the statement as you originally made

Valve abducts kids into gambling, mine people data, promotes DRMs and proprietary software. All of that out of geed and seeking profits.

Is just alarmist bs, which is transparently and intentionally trying to make Steam look bad about things that are loosely related to that statement at best.

Valve abducts kids into gambling

Valve isn’t abducting anybody. Game devs are encouraging gambling like behaviors

mine people data

Data you either opt out of the collection of, give freely to everyone all the time, or is illegal to sell

promotes DRMs and proprietary software

“allows” does not equal “promotes”

All of that out of geed and seeking profits.

They exist to make money. Steam costs money to operate. This is not controversial. Every single game company and storefront does else they would release their products for free.

I didn’t mean for this to become another long comment. I think it’s absurd that you are nitpicking tiny aspects that are theoretical or ethical in origin, most of which steam doesn’t directly control anyway, and playing that off as steam being some evil big bad corporation. It’s dishonest, full stop

I can see the rationality of it. Once anything gets big enough there are always going to be people who look at the flaws and decide that the thing shouldn’t exist or are maybe just upset because they don’t face enough scrutiny.

But also covert marketing is definitely a thing. That is to say that people who may have an interest in seeing steam fail or lose market share one day definitely are a presence on social media that is as open as lemmy.

Steam might not be perfect, but despite what the critics would have you believe, steam is still better than a lot of alternatives.

1. Loot boxes may be similar to, but are not gambling. Compulsion loops in some form are part of pretty much any game. Micro transactions are awful, but they aren’t steams fault for existing. Looking at feedback loops that aren’t in the least steams decision to include, and concluding that steam supports gambling is a reach. You’re mad at game devs for using this tactic, not steam.

2. Being loosely affiliated with games that have DRM isn’t even promotion. Locking games to your library? Really? Are you going to say that steam shouldn’t do what every other digital store front does? Are you suggesting that they open themselves up to piracy by not enforcing that they keep their products confined to the users that bought them? So what, steam is supposed to just give their games away?

3. Most of that information can be discovered about you through a background check. Steam isn’t selling your credit card info. That’s nowhere close to legal. Hardware information and ip aren’t protected information. You blast that to the world every time you get on the internet unless you are explicitly using a browser that stops it. First of all, nobody is going to pay for information your browser gives for free. Secondly, just because they collect that information doesn’t mean they’re selling it in the first place. And thirdly, even if they were selling “chat logs and browser history”, if just being able to collect that data means that they must be selling it, you better not be using discord or lemmy or any other non-encrypted medium to talk to your friends, because they’re all selling your conversations for fractions of pennies. That doesn’t sound a little paranoid to you?

4. No, what I’m saying is that you aren’t mad at steam. You’re mad at the industry. If you’re trying to affect change, flaming steam on an almost unknown social media site for doing something that’s industry-standard like marketing to kids is missing the target so hard you might as well be talking to the moon.

5. Again, steam is hardly exploiting anyone. Every single point you made is an industry standard that steam isn’t explicity stopping.

Look, I made all my points. It’s abundantly clear that you’re just angry because of the state of the industry as a whole. That’s your right. But the more you try to dishonestly paint steam as actively malicious when it’s pretty obvious they’re just another company, and a less invasive one than most at that, the less inclined you are to change my mind.

I’m out.

Ok, let’s take this point by point:

1. Steam doesn’t allow actual gambling. It’s illegal in the US and they typically don’t sell games that are not legal in the US. Conflating other types of games as gambling when there is no actual money on the line is a dishonest and transparent attempt to make steam look bad

2. Valve has no control over the DRM policies of the games that they sell. Valve creates an anti-cheat and that’s about as involved as they get. DRM is a gaming company corporate decision not publisher or distributor. If simply allowing DRM is what you mean by “promoting” then that is another count of dishonesty.

3. What data can they possibly mine? They get an email address, some gameplay time, location data, and Hardware data. All of this stuff is pretty freely available and doesn’t really sell for anything, nor is it really violating any privacy. And besides that, you can directly opt out of Hardware surveys.

4. Asserting that video games are a problem for kids and that steam is evil or profit-driven because of that is also pretty dishonest given that there are basically no game distributors that keep kids from playing video games. What you are essentially saying is that we should start doing like China does and limit kids ability to gain at all. Even then that is a government regulation and not at all on steam.

I would like to just point out the absurdity of saying that kids should not be able to play video games because of steam. For the last 40 years video games have been marketed primarily to kids. Are you going to say the same about Nintendo or Atari? Are you now asserting that companies shouldn’t Market to kids at all? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?

5. To round it all off, literally everything you listed are things that every gaming company or distributor does in some capacity and does not make Steam different or worse. It sounds like you just have a problem with the industry in general

I’ll never understand why some people look at the fact that steam is popular because of their policies, and can’t help but make a comment like this equating that popularity to cock worship.

Like, we get it bro. You’re thinking about cocks and you’re mad about a half decent game store. What compelled you to combine those thoughts on a public forum?

The weird thing is that this isn’t even the first comment I’ve seen like this. Dudes that are mad about steam want everyone else to know about steam’s massive, throbbing cock for some reason. This guy alone has posted 3 of these.

I’ll never understand why some people look at the fact that steam is popular because of their policies, and can’t help but make a comment like this equating that popularity to cock worship.

Like, we get it bro. You’re thinking about cocks and you’re mad about a half decent game store. What compelled you to combine those thoughts on a public forum?

The weird thing is that this isn’t even the first comment I’ve seen like this. Dudes that are mad about steam want everyone else to know about steam’s massive, throbbing cock for some reason. This guy alone has posted 3 of these.

I’ve been on a rogue-like kick for awhile now. I have to say, Alina of the Arena is a pretty good one. Plays great on deck.

Guarantee that the line of reasoning here is

We can stop the inevitable fact that people aren’t going to buy our shares by pushing them on the most chronically addicted users of our platform and disguising it as a premium exclusive offer

I mean, who else is suseptible enough to the sunken cost fallacy that they would pour actual money into reddit? The answer is the demographic that’s already put in a substantial amount of investment in the form of time spent on content creation.

To those people, they might very well bite because it means their useless, time consuming hobby finally might become a source of income.

It’s honestly an intelligent business move by reddit, even if it’s scummy as fuck and ultimately setting up their own best content creators to spectacularly fail and lose a ton of money when the shares tank.

Reddit still goes public. Reddit still pays their CEOs obscenely before they jump ship. Only the creators lose.

I’m hoping we see some huge fines in the near future on them, as employees raise complaints and even sue them for their practices

Thays the best case scenario. I’m just hoping that our bought-and-paid-for SCOTUS doesn’t decide to rule in favor of the companies on a party line vote.

That would effectively transition companies in the US to be above the law with regards to workers rights. Unions would stop being a thing when companies can legally just fire everyone who tries. Pay discrepancies would always fall in favor of the payer. Forget about time off or Healthcare.

A ruling like that might set us back a century on worker’s rights, and I’m genuinely afraid that our courts are capable of it.

Dude had a chance to defend himself in the first trial and really thought “if I don’t go they can’t prosecute me” was going to work. Like an ostrich burying his head.

This is the man that held the presidency for 4 years.

All the likes of Zelda, Mario, Halo, Pokemon, etc. are going to get forgotten

I disagree. The reason being that video games and gaming of this caliber are completely unheard of in all of human history. We’ve come further in gaming tech over the last couple decades than the grand majority of all humans that have ever existed could even dream.

That being said, as long as emulation exists, there will be fans of big ips. The problem with saying “it’ll get forgotten as soon as the last person stops playing” is that the specific circumstance of modern gaming is unprecedented. People are still out there emulating games that came out in the 80’s. There’s really no rule saying this kind of technology won’t last hundreds or thousands of years like more classical games do.