Just a dorky trans woman on the internet.
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Yeah, it should not be part of the text just like line numbers shouldn’t be part of the code on a code hosting site, yet it can be visible, no? Later it does recommend using to distinguish command and output. Is it now okay for a beginner to be confused about what it means?
Is providing a number of commands to use that require user input really that bad? When people start tinkering with the command line, first of all they shouldn’t trust just anything on the website blindly, which at the very least requires a basic understanding of how to enter commands, and respond to the terminal asking for input. The following “bad” example…
sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt install python3.9
…is instead turned into this single command with even more confusing syntax for beginners:
sudo apt update && \
sudo apt install --yes software-properties-common && \
sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:deadsnakes/ppa && \
sudo apt install --yes python3.9
Sure, it’s convenient, but if you just throw blocks of code at people to run, are they really learning anything?
A better approach would be to have a quick tutorial on how to use the terminal and what the and # symbols mean (though they could be CSS decorators that can’t be copied), what sudo is and warning people about running untrusted commands on their system. Then you just link to that at the top saying something along the lines of “if you’re unfamiliar with running commands, and the following seems confusing, check this quick summary”, behind a question mark icon connected to each block of commands, or similar.
I’d say start with Apple’s and Google’s app stores.
I don’t think I disagree with you, I just think Valve should be the last company that should be under fire for the 30% cut. As in, it should come after plenty of other companies, because they actually do offer many valuable services in return. I’m all for lowering the cut Valve takes, just make sure every other storefront that does objectively less is required to do the same.
It also feels like complaining about the food from one store being expensive, while you get larger potion sizes than other places for the same price. Yes, food should be affordable. Shouldn’t the complaint be made towards the industry as a whole rather than the store that is (for now) objectively better than the alternatives?
It matters because they are not forced by law to maximize profit. They can and do make decisions that are good for the future health of the company, such as making sure developers and customers are happy, and unlike other companies they put that 30% cut toward at least some things.
Regarding worker coöps, I wanted to respond to the other commenter and didn’t know how to phrase it. I’m currently leaning towards describing myself as an anarcho-communist, though I’m not well-read at all. However I question a coöp could grow to a size comparable to Valve. From some things I’ve read about the company, their internal structure might not even be THAT far off from that, allowing employees to choose what to work on and such, even if it’s far from ideal.
Finally, Valve has done much more than any other company considering they push gaming on Linux. Also their handheld is dope.
They’re a capitalist company trying to make as much money as they can.
Unlike publicly traded companies, Valve is not beholden to shareholders, so they, unlike most others, are in a unique position to not JUST maximize profits. I think it’s okay to point at Valve as an example for other companies to be more like, because most are still worse. But obviously we can always strive for better, as well.
(Also, out of curiosity: Under a capitalist system, can you have anything BUT a capitalist company?)
I’ve looked into Wolfire’s claims multiple times in the past, but it was never confirmed elsewhere, so I don’t know what to think. Maybe this was a thing Valve did in the past (in which case, yes, boo!), but they couldn’t get away with it anymore, with the volume of developers that are now on their platform.
As a counter example, Vintage Story seems to be doing okay regardless.
They delibarately decided to not be on Steam.
edit 2: They do run their own store, but it’s a bit janky, has less payment options if I recall, and no regional pricing.
edit: Besides, one of the reasons indies like to be on Steam is because Steam basically does free advertising for you, with Discovery Queue and just generally pushing games that do well to more people (beneficial for Steam also, of course). But that’s a service that’s paid for by that 30% cut (among other things).
Valve is not publicly traded. We don’t know. (Unless it became public information through a lawsuit or was leaked. In which case: Source pls.)
Why are you making it my responsibility to explain why companies are not passing on their savings to consumers?
Because that’s not beneficial for companies. They want to make (more) money.
The only option most developers and publishers would have is to move to another store, where the cut is usually the same, with the exception of Epic Games Store. And as pointed out elsewhere, setting up and managing your own store ends up being more expensive than a 30% cut. And then you still don’t have the same features as Steam.
That requirement only exists when you also offer a Steam key for the game that’s being sold. So Valve is actually the good guy here: You can sell on another store, where Steam doesn’t get any money, and give the user a Steam key, provided by Steam for free, and the only thing they ask is to match the price on Steam.
Don’t offer a Steam key, and you can pick any price.
That is my understanding of the issue.
There is a claim by some developers that Valve was pressuring them behind the scenes (“don’t offer your game for cheaper elsewhere or else we’ll take it down from our store”) a while ago, but I’ve never seen appropriate proof of it, and that was part of (an earlier?) lawsuit.
30% is the industry standard across the board, with the exception of Epic which takes 12%. However, Epic has already shown that it’s ready to dump loads of money into store exclusivity deals and tons of free games, so I will argue it’s for the sake of growing the number of users and developers using their platform.
But do they, or any other competitor or similar store, offer the same functionality as Steam? rtxn already mentioned some. And there’s more. And then there’s the fact that Valve is using all that money not only to stuff the pockets of alread rich people (not that Gabe isn’t a multi-millionaire if not billionaire, idk), but actually puts it back into the industry: Their own store, Linux/Proton (you may not care, but Microsoft becoming a monopoly in PC gaming is no good), and hardware (with their Steam Deck handheld, and VR stuffs).
Steam might be the biggest player when it comes to storefronts, but it’s because they’ve actually earned it. And they’re not actively preventing other competitors from entering the scene (other than existing). In fact, they keep trying, and keep failing, and then going back to Steam.
I’m not opposed to more money going to developers, but let’s not single out Steam, who (perhaps besides GOG? I am not familiar enough with it) is doing the most for users and develpers.
I understand Steam not wanting to moderate the absolute flood of user-created content of its thousands of games (on their own), but then, it probably shouldn’t force community forums on every single one of its games when the developers can’t or don’t want to moderate them.
(Also, the ADL doesn’t recognize the ongoing genocide of Palestinians so maybe we should just ignore what they think.)
The idea is that “roguelike” = a game like Rogue, which according to some people, requires checking most if not all of the boxes including ASCII, proc-gen, perma-death, turn-based, … while the term “rougelite” is less strict. But I think we’re past the point of that distinction being adopted into mainstream.
Taming animals so you can ride them, or let them pull carriages? Building roads for vehicles? Train tracks with functional trains? Cool airships? All made obsolete with this one-kills-all glider feature! Don’t let good game design get in the way of convenience! /s
ECS already makes it a hundred times easier for me to conceptualize game mechanics, modify and extend them. Giving AI the ability the ability to create data separate from systems that use them will make it much easier for it to build a game. I don’t believe for a second it will be able to write functioning object-oriented game code for example. It will likely be best if it avoided coding via a text-based language altogether, and use visual scripting or another system based on chaining logic blocks together. But that still counts as the “system” part of ECS.
There is a possibility something like this will be possible in the future, but it’s not going to be an achievement of AI, it’s largely going to be the achievement of regular developers creating a general-purpose game engine that can be used to put together a game block by block, which can be utilized by both human game designers and AI. (Likely to better effect by the former.) I can imagine Entity Component Systems will play a big part of that.
One of the biggest blockers for AI making games is going to be testing it to select for better performance. With text it’s relatively easy to see if some text an AI produced is plausible. Images are also plentiful, but that’s a lot more subjective. With both of these it would also not take a massive amount of time to add a human element. It’s quick to check if a paragraph or image looks like it is a good response to the input promt. A game, however? How long do you need to play it to see if it’s fun? At best, perhaps, you can write an AI to control a bot character to see if it’s technically playable.
I don’t want to even think about the electricity that wlll be wasted training such models.
Could you please provide some sources for that? I’d like to know more.
First of all though, there is no such thing as a “hostile fork”. Being able to fork a project, for any reason, is the entire point of open source. And to be fair, not wanting to continue working for a for-profit company for free is a very good reason.
And yeah, when you suddenly turn a FOSS project that’s been developed with the help of a bunch of contributors, into a for-profit company, without making a big fuss about it beforehand and allow the contributors and community to weigh in, then yeah, that’s a hostile takeover of sorts, at least in my opinion. Developers gotta make money, but they could’ve done that by creating a new brand instead of taking over that of a previously completely FOSS project. Forgejo is preventing that exact thing from happening by joining Codeberg (a non-profit).
Presumably this is because a block is different from the content being removed. It simply means the servers stop communicating with each other regarding new communities, posts and comments. This could allow the instance to be unblocked and the old content to continue existing – say for example when an instance has been acting badly, but it gets fixed some time later.
Blocked instances should probably not show up in search, but if you have a direct link to an old post, perhaps this should still be available? Not being able to block a community when its instance is already blocked makes sense, and probably doesn’t matter if you mostly check for new content, but I can see it being a bother when its shows up in other situations. One could call this a bug, or an oversight, but I suppose it depends on what the intended result is.