Games

Well, at the risk of repeating the obvious, what do you pay a legal expert for? As in, what did you hire them to do?

If you hired them to do research on current laws and regulations to see what you must abide by / can get away with, then you've paid them for information, even if its information you don't want to hear.

If you hired them to represent your interests, to argue your case in court for you as their client, then yeah you can't really have a lawyer that's wishy washy on your position. As stupid as they sound, that's what Trump's DOJ is doing at great risk to their own careers. Which is why more and more of them are resigning.

To be fair, their job is also to recommend the course of action least likely to get Valve sued.

Dont be too hard on this lawyer, though, as his advice has saved Valve big time in the past.

(If you're not familiar, there is a small amount of info about it in the article.)

He should at least have a proper American given name like Bront or Firehose.

I'm definitely writing that down for my next super scrabble with proper nouns at grandma's.

So what are you doing about steam?

1. Are you contributing to wine? Probably not
2. Are you helping develop good gaming hardware.. nope
3. Are you writing an alternative store? Nope
4. Are you providing gaming libraries.. Nope
5. Are you lobbying to defend gamers rights? Nope
6. Are you testing games for Wine to maintain the AppDB? Probably nope
7. Are you making it easy to distribute games on multiple platforms? Nope
8. Are you helping small gaming developers add major features to their app with a few lines of code (such as multiplayer)? Nope

The reality is, Linux mainly at this time on the desktop is only succeeding still thanks to steam. If any other store were in charge (including GOG), we'd be still stuck in windows, or worse (a console like nintendo). If Steam wasn't available, I wouldn't feel comfortable using Linux for my main desktop (even though, I play all my games on a rog ally X)

Those of us who played games on Linux before Steam was available will tell you how painful it was. Steam changed things completely, and offered an experience that just works (tm). Steam will also no doubt be one of the single biggest driving forces to get ARM on Linux up to snuff (thanks to Steam Frame) with X86 compatibility, in particular performance

Even for those who have been on steam for a decade or longer, old games are STILL working, because they've maintained runtime libraries and such to assist with that.

Gabe didn't get to where he was by dodgy tactics. He got there by providing a service gamers want, and by running a tight ship. He also stays out of politics and from my understanding, is actually known for being a good guy too and is transparent (other than about HL3). Unlike other billionaires, he's also not booking out whole islands intrusively either for a wedding, to flaunt their money.

He's a billionaire sure.. but, the average pay at Steam is also far above average, so its not like he's exploiting labor. And unlike companies like Oracle, the working conditions seem to be far better too. And unlike modern Apple, Steam is about creating products which are good, not simply seem good (which I respect a lot).

Because it is. It's social engineering.

Something I want Valve to work on is a “blocklist” feature like Bluesky.

Valve themselves are libertarian and don’t want to quash any voices they don’t need to, including negative ones. However, community members could decide “We are tired of anti-woke trolls whining about inclusion, and creating their own enemies for rage farming”; and then write a blocklist of said trolls, that many players choose to subscribe to, making those posts invisible.

Could even configure a blocklist to remove any players with a Steam level of 1, just to remove factory-made bot accounts.

The forums are moderated (or in many cases not moderated) by the game publisher, not Steam. If they don't want to moderate they could technically close the forum for their game but very few publishers do so.

It's complicated I guess. People often use the "Nazi bar" analogy and I kinda get it. But I am also conflicted. Yes I disagree with their opinions and wish they will stop having those opinions. But on the other hand moderating them will just make them move to somewhere else, and they will still be having those opinions, and arguably in a worse environment. Because it would be more of a bubble with nobody countering them.

This kind of "moderation" (read: censoring adult content) is something he doesn't want.

Amex hasn't actually done any censoring so far as I'm aware. Its actually entirely just sorta sat out. Along with diner/discover.

Its just Visa and MasterCard.