Oh, that? I pointed that out in the next reply. But to reiterate.

Valve give you AAA games. For free. No material restrictions on game-play or competitive advantage. They pay for the server hosting, anti-cheat and matchmaking.

The provide a storefront that anyone can sell their games on. And they don’t contract you into exclusivity periods like others do.

You dismiss decades of anti consumer bullshit and exploration of workers because “valve give you AAA games for free”

Which, AGAIN(!!!), is something those other shitty companies do, but you don’t dismiss their anti-consumer bullshit because of it. Which is pretty clear evidence you are caught up in the Valve circlejerk.

So since it’s clear you don’t give a shit about anything and just want to justify your own world view. And you dontn have the mental capacity or the humility to change your opinion, I’m done here, you can only waste more of my time and make me more depressed at the lack of awareness.

I will acknowledge that if and when you make a position with actual nuance. “You can’t compare Valce to Activision because valve makes free games” isn’t nuanced and is just ignorant.

I asked you to point out where I made the claims you attributed to me, you did not.

??? No you didn’t? I even just re read this whole thread. You literally never asked that???

I think you also need to give up the idea that everyone on a given platform will be as ‘enlightened’ as you are.

Clearly.

Everyone has their own thoughts and opinions.

Yep, some people have class consciousness and actually want to talk about the failures of capitalism and the atrocity of people having billions of dollars while others starve and live on the streets. And others want to defend those billionaires because they run a company that made a video game they liked 20 years ago.

one of the two companies you listed have one free-to-play game. If you want to focus on that and ignore the decades of anti-consumer, money-grubbing behavior, I don’t think I can help you.

That’s my point to you exactly. You’re ignoring all of valves anti-consumer bullshit because they made a video game you like.

Are you referring to Steam: Greenlight?

No, I’m just referring to the steam store itself, that just allows all that shit to this day.

Sure, Valve make money off it, but there IS a consumer-friendly reason for it to exist.

So what’s the “consumer friendly” reason they don’t let you actually own your games?

Try this yourself.

I did. I used to be on the “omg Gaben so cool! Steam sale take my money you XD” circlejerk too. Then one day I heard about his fleet of luxury mega-yatchs and that made me look at things properly, that he was again just another billionaire leaching off the work of others.

Also, don’t pigeon-hole people who disagree you into GABEN4LYEF RIDE OR DIE fanatics, and we might just have a constructive conversation.

I’m not. That’s what you are doing to yourself by just completely disregarding decades of anti-consumer bullshit because they made a couple games you like.

You’re just outright dismissing undeniable shitty behaviour from Valve for entirely superficial reasons, then when I show you you’re justifications can be used with other gaming companies that get hate, you dismiss that without reason too.

You will probably consider this over dramatic but this interaction has 100% genuinely killed my last remaining scrap of hope for humanity. If people on Lemmy who are generally both left wing and intelligent, can’t even acknowledge that billionaires that push anti-consumer bullshit are bad (even when they make a bideo game you like) then what hope is there of the general public understanding that? We’re truly never going to change anything and we’re just going to let the billionaires destroy us.

Thank you, goodnight.

I knew comments like this would turn up. But it still saddens me that even Lemmy users, who ar in general much more cognizant of these things and less likely to get caught up in the circlejerk, can’t acknowledge that Gabe Newell isn’t your best freind, he is in fact just another money hungry corporate CEO.

You say comparing valve to say, blizzard is incredible, but the points you use to defend valve can also be made of them.

Is Overwatch 2 not free? With no pay 2 win features? Does Blizzard not pay for the server hosting anti cheat and matchmaking? Do they not also support there game for years? ( also I find that funny given the fact the TF2 community is going ballistic right now over the fact valve isn’t doing shit to support it against cheaters and bots)

Yes they provide a store front anyone can sell on. Including shitty asset flips, early access pump and dumps, predatory spyware etc. And are very reluctant to do litersly anything about it when those scams are called to attention.

And again, that storefront isn’t some altruistic endeavour Gabe took on out the kindness of his heart. No he’s made BILLIONS by exploiting the worl of others, just like every other billionaire. And if providing a basic service makes up for your predatory bullshit, well we might as well let literally every other CEO off the hook then right?

It’s not a bad in to admit you got sucked in my propaganda or marketing or just general Internet circlejerks, what is a bad thing is to vehemently refuse any introspection on your current beliefs and defend them to the death simply because they are what you currently believe. I really hope I can reach out to people on Lemmy and that you guys can actually take a step and try to look at things objectively instead of doubling down.

Nah people need to stop jerking off Gabe and valve I general.

They started predatory lootboxes, ridiculously expensive cosmetics, early access, owning a licence instead of the actual game, had to be sued just to get refund policy and the vast vast majority of his wealth has come from just skimming a bit off from people who actually make games he distributes.

If you look at valve without the “omg steams sale XXXDDD”" mentality, then they are no better than ea or Activision.

https://youtu.be/lWFwasZnivw

1. That’s kind of the point. The UK typically doesn’t feel the need to demand back it’s artifacts

2. Some of those artifacts are contested

3. My entire series of comments is about the fact that these are not clear cut, but as is the case with every random chucklefuck on the internet that thinks they are an expert or an authority on something they have a surface level, at best, understanding of, you’re taking an extreme position, arguing it’s clearly the correct one and the situation is obvious and without nuance and then staunchly and irrationally refusing to anything that challenges your simple minded binary world view.

4. Imagine you bought something from someone fairly, then a day later they claim it has a lot of significance to them and demand you give it back without compensation. Are you going to give it to them? Does it still “belong” to them? Any rational person would say no.

5. Well basically every prominent historian who’s weighed in on the matter thinks they hold water, so I’m not going to give much credence to random angry person on lemmy with little knowledge on the subject.

Bye

Do you the UK would ever tolerate another country doing that with their cultural artifacts?

Yes, because do. The bayuex tapestry held by france. Henry VIII letters to Anne Boleyn held by the Vatican, the Vercelli book held In Italy, parts of old British warships kept by the Dutch, French and Spanish, The Codex Amiatinus, in Florence, most of Shakespeare’s originals are in the US, Charles I art collection, several entire buildings like Agecroft hall and James Cook’s house, even old London Bridge could fall under this category. And countless (and I really do mean countless) less import ones that have ended up in other countries, primarily the US, in state museums.

And a lot of those were acquired with much less legality than the Elgin marbles.

why should the UK hold onto them today and not Greece? What right do they have?

The fact that they were acquired legally with permission of the government of the time, now have history outside of their original ones in Greece, allow the teaching of its history to be spread to more people and be viewed in the wider context of global history.

And as I said before, if I was forced to chose, I would err on the side of them being returned. My point is to point out it isn’t a simple and black and white case of the eeeeeevil British blatantly stealing things and refusing to give them back just to be cunts.

True, yeah

I mean, it’s one thing for random citizens like us to celebrate this, but a prominent politicians acting like that would be highly inappropriate honestly.

What?

Cool, many dont, and many that do dont give public access to their collections.

While I would say the Elgin marbles are a case that err on the side of they should be returned, again reality is not as simple and black and white as people like you want it to be.

When Elgin took the marbles the entire area was, by all accounts, in shambles and people were burning pieces of these statues to aquire lime to build with. And that was one of the reasons Elgin decided to remove the marbles, so they are preserved today because they were removed.

Then there’s also the argument that they do in fact legally belong to the UK, Elgin got permission from both the ottoman empire and local authorities in Athens to remove the sculptures. Then the actions were also ratified when Elgin was twice given permissions by the ottomans to ship the statues out of Athens. No historian worth there salt will tell you they are stolen. That is a position held by Greeks, people pressured by them and people that have seen a tumble post or reddit article about the marbles and gone full dunning-kruger, thinking they know the intricacies of the whole situation.

If it doesn’t belong to them, they should relinquish it. Simple as that

Ignoring the rest of your comme to focus on this part because I love it when people declare complex issues “simple” and give 1 dimensional solutions to it.

How do you determine if it doesn’t belong to them?

For example I think most people would say if they bought the artifacts legitimately, then they belong to them right?

What about cases when they legitimately buy artifacts from people who themselves acquired them I legitimately? Or how do you even determine legitimacey? Is someone finding a historical object mean it belongs to them and they can do what they like with it? What if it’s on public land? What if it’s private land and they are working on it and find it? What about when ownership of the land is disputed?

What about cases like the rosetta stone, that was found ina rubble heap by French forces and eventually given to Britain as part of war confessions. Should that frenchman have left it in a pile, doomed to be destroyed because it doesn’t belong to him?

It’s not British museum but the koh-i-noor diamond that’s part of the crown jewels, often claimed that the UK should give it back. Who do you give it back to?

Do you give it to India as the successor state of the kingdom of Punjab who handed over to the British after they lost a war? Do you give it back to Kashmir as the successor of Jammu who the Punabs stole it from? Do you give it to Pakistan as it was once the property of the Sikh empire? Or do you give it to Iran as it was first record in the possession of Nader Shah?

What’s wrong with AI?

There are so many channels that produce creative visuals for their videos, even if they don’t have deep skills, like plenty of people draw stick people in paint and it’s miles more creative than the guys that just put vaguely relevant stock footage in the background

Not to commit a high crime of having a nuanced take on a circle-jerked to death issue. But many of the “stolen” artifacts only exist today because they were safe guarded by the musuem. Many more would be at best, kept in complete private collections away from the public and historians. And plenty more don’t have a direct modern day counterpart, or have split modern ancestry, so don’t have a clear place to return them to if they wanted to return them.

And yes, there are some artifacts where none of that applies and they should be returned, but I would believe those to be the minority.

Honestly that whole joke is getting a bit overused now.

Personally I think there’s a big difference between being perceived as a man and being directly told “no it’s not “shitty people”, it’s men”

You can’t really do much about people’s perception, but you can absolutely change whether you’re directly a dick to someone because of how they were born.

So what is your point?

What is your smug, dismissive attitude achieving?

I know this statement doesn’t apply to me, but it still hurts me. Just the same as any generalisation.

I’m sure you’ll say something about privilege, and I somewhat agree, but someone having privilege does not make it okay to completely dismiss them and group them in with shitty people for things out of their control.

And again, rhetoric like this is one of the reason that young men are moving away from progressives into the hands of the alt-right. If you want things to get better and want men to be better, the first step is to not be an asshole to them for no reason.