Pokemon doesn’t have direct control of the mechanical system by which pokemon cards are traded. They also don’t get a percentage cut whenever a pokemon card is bought/sold on their storefront, and they don’t take pokemon cards as payment for games, software, and computer hardware. Valve facilitates, profits from, controls, and could ultimately shut down, these online casino spaces. They actively choose not to, and participate in using loopholes (see the xray scanner). Ideally, yes, the government fixes this. Realistically, any solution that isn’t going to take years, and be easily bypassed with a VPN, or just having your company be based in a “sanctuary” country, is going to lie with Valve. Either self enforced or forced by the US govt, they have the means to kill gambling easily because they control the accounts involved, the systems used to trade said items, and the virtual currency players earn. Even something as simple as adding age verification would help. They don’t have to stop, just accept responsibility for having an in game slot machine that spits out items that have real world value, and follow laws and measures to protect minors.

So yes. i hold Valve, a massively profitable company directly facilitating and profiting from its illegal gambling industry to the point where the casinos openly sponsor pro teams to a higher standard than the company that prints pokemon cards, which can be bought and sold and gambled with like any physical good in a physical game of chance.

He did say govt should be involved, and I’d agree generally. Gambling and gambling lite like lootboxes need regulation to die, but Valve is also a massive company running the biggest game storefront in the world, and they don’t need the money from the lootboxes and cuts from selling and trading. They aren’t in direct competition with most game creators, they compete with other storefronts, and it isn’t even close. They could fix this relatively easily and it would barely make a dent in their finances.

They could also leave the lootboxes and gambling up, and just implement an age verification system, one that locks you out of trading until the account is verified 18 or older, and add other tools like locking yourself out of trading or opening boxes similar to how casinos allow you to blacklist yourself for your own good.

In terms of a relatively quick, relatively painless, realistic fix, with a decent timeframe, valve makes the most sense, and they can fix this extremely easily compared to getting every government in the world to agree, implement, and enforce regulations. Ideally, yes, governments fix it. Realistically, kids are getting addicted to gambling and having their lives ruined right now, and valve has the power to stop it. I think it’s fair to ask, and expect a real answer, yes or no.

Tldr: they like the new mew token, it looks sorta like the physical one that already exists, some want to use it for memes.

Plz gaben I want steamOS official so bad ;-;

I prefer steam, I’d like to be able to choose what platform I buy a game on. Outside of just not wanting a 5th launcher because I hate having a billion launchers, Steam has many features the EGS doesn’t have. Free cloud save backups and screenshot backups, steam workshop for mods, remote play together, game streaming, etc. I also really like steam having player reviews too.

-Valve didn’t kill ownership it was already dead. DLC has been pulled, and games delisted, as well as games made unplayable by server shutdowns. They just happened to be the platform who told you to your face what you were getting into while everyone else lied and said the game was yours until it wasn’t. They also say they’ll provide downloads for a time if they ever shut down, but if you want that long term guarantee you’re probably better off looking at GOG and some kind of data storage for the installers.

-Origin is shit and I hate EA/Origin exclusives too, but it’s basically a launcher for their own games which I understand, but still prefer steam to be included too, so much of the time I avoid EA games (i avoid them for a lot of reasons tbh)

-Battle.net started as a unified launcher for blizzard games, which sort of made sense as they never worked with or were involved with steam, and many of their games were disc based or had its own installer. Subscriptions specifically I don’t think existed with steam for a while so that was sort of a complicating factor. Still wish their games were on steam, but it sort of made sense at its inception.

-I don’t even use the microsoft store unless forced to, I find it annoying and bleh. They’re forcing more games to it and it’s shitty too.

-Epic is annoying, but it’s a special kind of annoying because for many games early on, they would announce steam as a supported platform, some even sold the game on steam, until they changed to Epic exclusives. I think Fall Guys was one example. The bait and switch really lost them trust with a lot of gamers and you’ll find the attitude towards them can be pretty bad because of that history.

Add in that many of the games aren’t published by them, they just threw money at the publisher or devs to make their games epic exclusive. This can be good for developers, like an upfront investment, but sucks for gamers who like to keep things somewhat unified in terms of a game library. Especially when you already have to deal with 5 other launchers, another arbitrary one is pretty annoying.

If you’re wondering why people want their games on steam, look at the features. Free cloud save backups, a decent amount of free screenshot backups, in game recording is new and pretty neat, achievements, community marketplaces, frequent sales, family sharing, steam workshop for easy integrated modding, discussions and guides for all your games, early access games, built in friends, text chat, voice chat, remote play together, game streaming, etc.

TLDR: It isn’t an “oh epic stinky just because” situation. The Epic game store simply doesn’t have feature parity, bait and switched gamers multiple times with exclusives after games were advertised as being on steam, and basically survived on throwing money at devs to put their games exclusively on EGS, at the expense of the people who want to play those games on their chosen platform. Doesn’t shock me that they don’t have a lot of positive PR in the community.

Send me your steam friend code, as far as I can tell I can invite any steam friend, with no limits on numbers. Dunno how long the playtest is running, but they usually do half the day live, and half with matchmaking shut down for patching stuff.

Yeah that’s a fair point. I was mistaken thinking it was an actual eula they bypassed because valve didn’t make it so you couldn’t just close it, but it’s not in any way legally enforceable. I thought at least it was one of those grey “technically correct but obviously an unintended loophole” kind of things, but they literally just said “pls don’t tell”. I’m mostly thinking that risking the connections you might have to valve aren’t worth a scoop on a game still in what seems to be alpha or closed beta, but if I were valve I really don’t think they can be that mad, everything the verge did was basically fair game if they were fine with a game ban.

I guess when I think of public interest I think of stuff like reddit selling user data without consent, or games using manipulative tactics. It’s hard to feel like it makes sense to be aggressive with something as benign as “game we don’t know much about yet, smells of dota/moba” But then again I’m not a game journalist, and I stand corrected.

Yeah, gaylord_fartmaster let me know. I thought the message was one of those “scroll down and click agree on this eula” things but its just a pop up box, so it’s def not enforceable.

Oh ok, I must’ve misread the article, thanks for clarifying :)

A bit of the eula says not to share info about the game, but you can literally back out without accepting the eula, and still play. So I don’t know if I’d call it intentional, but there’s definitely no legal reason they can’t post whatever they want. They just got banned for it and might have damaged their relationship with valve somewhat. Depends on how much valve cares tho.

Edit: it wasnt even a eula apparently, just a “pls dont tell people ok?” Pop up. Thanks to the folks clarifying <3

This isn’t some grand conspiracy it’s a closed beta for a video game. It’s pretty normal to have an NDA or embargo agreement to get access. It sounds like valve just goofed the implementation. So yeah it’s totally legal for them to post it, valve just might avoid giving them early copies in the future.

So apparently they had a bit asking players to not share info about the game, but you could technically back out of it without agreeing so legally they can post whatever they want. It feels like a case of “this is legal to do but maybe kinda shitty and valve might be upset”. Basically the agreement was informal and not enforceable and the verge just said fuck it. They did get banned afterwards, but I think that and not working with them in the future is all valve can do.

Edit: didn’t even require agreement, so honestly it’s kinda fair game. I was a bit hostile calling it shitty, I felt like it was a loophole or something but it’s more Valve just saying “hey pls don’t” and the verge replying “no thanks”, and eating the game ban since that’s all valve can really do.

I played this with some friends. I’d say if you want to try it, get it on sale and mod it. Mods add a bunch of stuff like balance changes, new skills, etc.

Just be aware what the shortcomings are and understand that the devs have a history of overpromising and under delivering. If you like the game as is, nice. If you’re buying for future features then you do so at what I consider great risk.

Yeah main thing is Ventoy and images for windows 10 and 11. I also have some basic tools, and some portable versions of some games I like (OoT, Warcraft 3, etc).

Is that related to Goemon’s Great Adventure? I played that a ton but I never really understood if it was a franchise, a one off, etc. I think I was just too young at the time to understand much beyond smacking monsters with a pipe lol

Helped my dad do tech support for a doc office. Even simple stuff like glucose meters barely worked on windows 7, and broke with windows 10. The web portal they used required a specific version of internet explorer to function. I think the biggest issue is always going to be how slowly these devices work in terms of drivers and software compatibility. For security and cost reasons, I’d guess.

Does Gustave take requests?