Even for urinalists this is a hilariously shaky article. Valve has a "don't deliberately rip us off" clause in their agreement somewhere and this constitutes a monopoly?
Between The Guardian and the BBC being involved I'm thinking this entire thing is just a further proof of how people who buy and play games are being misrepresented by those wanting power and control via illicit means.
I mean, if the largest distributor is even vaguely independent then that's a problem for "them".
The EU for example have long ago declared that they think they have the right to censor the entire Internet under the premise that their citizens might see it. Why wouldn't the corrupt eurocrats try to strongarm steam?
I'd wager there's several more attempts in the future.
We're already murders, rapists, racists and all sorts of other things apparently.
Why not just all-out remove the drip and make sure that it comes from an approved Big Pharma that pays dividends to the politicians looking after their peons all so well?
I'm somebody who does not like steam's back end and business practices and you know it's bad when I'm sticking my neck out to defend them from this retard who obviously didn't read the policy properly.
Ms Shotbolt says this has enabled Steam to charge an "excessive commission of up to 30%", making UK consumers pay too much for purchasing PC games and add-on content.
No, no, that's not how it works, this moron doesn't understand a thing about game pricing, how does she even justify what 'too much' is?
Ms Shotbolt - who accuses Valve of breaching UK competition law for at least six years - says she is bringing the claim "to stop this unlawful conduct and help people get back what they are owed."
It is going to be absolutely hilarious seeing her try and justify the maths on this and I'm sure what will happen instead of her actually getting it back to gamers as she pretends she's on side with she is almost certainly going to be running a grift. Fuck you leftists for making me defend business practices I don't like.
This article looks like it was written by an 8 year old, I love how she didn't even bring up the upload fee which is easily one of the most egregious things about steam I bet she has done zero research.
. Hideous UI with multiple tabs of 'required' ridiculous information you have to enter in which valve don't even check as seen by the kind of crap that they allow on the platform, you could probably write poopy poop as your company name and it would get accepted. This kind of lax attitude towards financial information about developers could potentially lead to real legal trouble in the future especially if Valve let a particularly disastrous project in that bricks peoples' computers
. Blatant scams or shady projects popping up and getting astroturfed by bots with Valve doing nothing
. Certain multiplayer games are being breached frequently by hackers and are leaking IP addresses of people on steam reviews and forums which is effectively a doxxing attempt and Valve aren't clamping down on the script kiddies doing this or the devs letting this go on
. Upfront fee is a ridiculous concept because as an indie dev especially you're £70 ( $100 ) in the hole just for uploading and it's done absolutely nothing to prevent trash projects going up, would much rather just the commission
. Botting is everywhere and it's pretty blatant now, it is looking like most positive reviews are by bots and don't seem to be real people giving feedback, ironically you have to go to the negative feedback to get anything real on a game by a human being
All of these are valid, valid complaints which makes the article writer all the more ludicrous for whining about valve's commission which they need to make money on otherwise they'd go out of business, that's just how they make their money per sale.
I'd point out that your complaint against the upfront fee clashes with the complaint against scams. The fee was implemented to try and dissuade fly by night assholes doing that.
Now what they ought to implement is a monetary floor for giving reviews.
Well that's the irony of it, even with the fee, the scammers aren't affected by this at all because they can make their money back bumping themselves up on the lists with bot reviews among other tricks and idiots will buy it because they look at the ratings and think nothing of it.
Hence my suggestion, to have a spending floor for reviews. You can't even friend people without spending five or six bucks so why are you allowed to review anything?
I personally think ratings systems should be done away with entirely, it's been a proven failure. Normal reviews with writing? Yes, that way low effort retards get quickly exposed among other things, but that's a whole other debate to have.
Oh! Oh! I did some autism on this retard because she annoyed me and she's exactly who you'd expect! She's a professional grifter using children as a weapon against the games industry and that's hilarious.
She seems to be Vicki Shotbolt, basically a karen with too much time on her hands starting shit with video games companies professionally. Hilariously she seems to be a military divorcee who is trying to flex her status on other women as part of her shtick even though she isn't married anymore.
Vicki Shotbolt, the Proposed Class Representative, is a prominent campaigner for children’s digital rights and is working with the leading consumer advocacy and disputes law firm Milberg London LLP, and barristers Robert Palmer KC, Julian Gregory, and Will Perry (all of Monckton Chambers), to bring this claim. She will represent a significant class of UK users of the Steam gaming platform. Ms Shotbolt intends to file a collective action in the Competition Appeal Tribunal in the coming weeks against Valve Corporation, one of the world’s largest digital distribution platforms for video games.
Looks like we've got another grifter coming after customers only too happy with how they spend their own money.
She should take on mobile phone game developers if she's wanting to stop children spending money credited to them. Not online outlets like Steam which have enough of an understanding of their customer base to have operated for over 20 years while these kid's parents were growing up.
The MSM is pissed that Steam allows so much free speech on their platform, since free speech is one of those dead white male racist colonizer concepts that no progressive society can tolerate.
Valve forces people. Meanwhile Microsoft and Epic agree to price AND store exclusivity deals. Or in Microsoft's case, buy the whole studio and deny competing platforms a version at all.
Even for urinalists this is a hilariously shaky article. Valve has a "don't deliberately rip us off" clause in their agreement somewhere and this constitutes a monopoly?
Between The Guardian and the BBC being involved I'm thinking this entire thing is just a further proof of how people who buy and play games are being misrepresented by those wanting power and control via illicit means.
I mean, if the largest distributor is even vaguely independent then that's a problem for "them".
The EU for example have long ago declared that they think they have the right to censor the entire Internet under the premise that their citizens might see it. Why wouldn't the corrupt eurocrats try to strongarm steam?
I'd wager there's several more attempts in the future.
We're already murders, rapists, racists and all sorts of other things apparently.
Why not just all-out remove the drip and make sure that it comes from an approved Big Pharma that pays dividends to the politicians looking after their peons all so well?
I'm somebody who does not like steam's back end and business practices and you know it's bad when I'm sticking my neck out to defend them from this retard who obviously didn't read the policy properly.
No, no, that's not how it works, this moron doesn't understand a thing about game pricing, how does she even justify what 'too much' is?
It is going to be absolutely hilarious seeing her try and justify the maths on this and I'm sure what will happen instead of her actually getting it back to gamers as she pretends she's on side with she is almost certainly going to be running a grift. Fuck you leftists for making me defend business practices I don't like.
This article looks like it was written by an 8 year old, I love how she didn't even bring up the upload fee which is easily one of the most egregious things about steam I bet she has done zero research.
Like what?
. Hideous UI with multiple tabs of 'required' ridiculous information you have to enter in which valve don't even check as seen by the kind of crap that they allow on the platform, you could probably write poopy poop as your company name and it would get accepted. This kind of lax attitude towards financial information about developers could potentially lead to real legal trouble in the future especially if Valve let a particularly disastrous project in that bricks peoples' computers
. Blatant scams or shady projects popping up and getting astroturfed by bots with Valve doing nothing
. Certain multiplayer games are being breached frequently by hackers and are leaking IP addresses of people on steam reviews and forums which is effectively a doxxing attempt and Valve aren't clamping down on the script kiddies doing this or the devs letting this go on
. Upfront fee is a ridiculous concept because as an indie dev especially you're £70 ( $100 ) in the hole just for uploading and it's done absolutely nothing to prevent trash projects going up, would much rather just the commission
. Botting is everywhere and it's pretty blatant now, it is looking like most positive reviews are by bots and don't seem to be real people giving feedback, ironically you have to go to the negative feedback to get anything real on a game by a human being
All of these are valid, valid complaints which makes the article writer all the more ludicrous for whining about valve's commission which they need to make money on otherwise they'd go out of business, that's just how they make their money per sale.
I'd point out that your complaint against the upfront fee clashes with the complaint against scams. The fee was implemented to try and dissuade fly by night assholes doing that.
Now what they ought to implement is a monetary floor for giving reviews.
Well that's the irony of it, even with the fee, the scammers aren't affected by this at all because they can make their money back bumping themselves up on the lists with bot reviews among other tricks and idiots will buy it because they look at the ratings and think nothing of it.
Hence my suggestion, to have a spending floor for reviews. You can't even friend people without spending five or six bucks so why are you allowed to review anything?
I personally think ratings systems should be done away with entirely, it's been a proven failure. Normal reviews with writing? Yes, that way low effort retards get quickly exposed among other things, but that's a whole other debate to have.
"urinalists"
stop doing that. it makes you sound like a child.
Nah.
Oh! Oh! I did some autism on this retard because she annoyed me and she's exactly who you'd expect! She's a professional grifter using children as a weapon against the games industry and that's hilarious.
She seems to be Vicki Shotbolt, basically a karen with too much time on her hands starting shit with video games companies professionally. Hilariously she seems to be a military divorcee who is trying to flex her status on other women as part of her shtick even though she isn't married anymore.
https://archive.is/Q4aFt
https://archive.is/pMI6I
https://archive.is/uPMTs
Found her website, I wonder if she filed a frivolous class action lawsuit in order to raise her profile.
https://archive.is/i11en
Looks like we've got another grifter coming after customers only too happy with how they spend their own money.
She should take on mobile phone game developers if she's wanting to stop children spending money credited to them. Not online outlets like Steam which have enough of an understanding of their customer base to have operated for over 20 years while these kid's parents were growing up.
Pays off money with change found in couch cushions. BBC acts like they're the BBC
I think this person is just another grifter and has no chance of winning (Thankfully!)
Steam is much better than any other distribution platform and plenty of games don't use it and so there's no monopoly.
The MSM is pissed that Steam allows so much free speech on their platform, since free speech is one of those dead white male racist colonizer concepts that no progressive society can tolerate.
Valve forces people. Meanwhile Microsoft and Epic agree to price AND store exclusivity deals. Or in Microsoft's case, buy the whole studio and deny competing platforms a version at all.
Yeah, but it is against the raising of game prices.