I think the simple fact is that some of the people in this thread don’t understand is that the people they’re asking to vet the code don’t know how.

They may mean that the people who can vet code should do so before making a fuss about the AI written portions of it, but I don’t know that most of the people in opposition to their comments understand that context.

I haven’t coded anything since the 90’s. I know HTML and basic CSS and that’s it. I wouldn’t have known where to start without guides to explain what commands in Linux do and how they work together. Growing up with various versions of Windows and DOS, I’d still consider myself a novice computer user. I absolutely do know how to go into command line and make things happen. But I wouldn’t know where to start to make a program. It’s not part of my skill set.

Most users are like that. They engage with only parts of a thing. It’s why so many people these days are computer illiterate due to the rise of smartphone usage and apps for everything.

It’d be like me asking a frequent flyer to inspect a plane engine for damage or figure out why the landing gear doesn’t retract. A lot of people wouldn’t know where to start.

I fully agree that other coders on the internet who frequent places like GitHub and make it a point to vet the code of other devs who provide their code for free probably should vet the code before they make assumptions about its quality. And I fully agree that deliberately stirring shit without actually contributing anything meaningful to the community or the project is really just messed up behavior.

But the way I see it there’s two different groups and they have very different views of this situation.

The people who can’t code are consumers. Their contribution is to use the software if they want, and if it works for them to spread by word of mouth what they like about it. Maybe to donate if they can and the dev accepts donations.

If those people choose to boycott, it’ll be on the basis of their moral feelings about the use of AI or at the recommendation of the second group due to quality.

The second group are the peer reviewers so to speak and they can and should both vet the code and sound the alarm if there’s something wrong.

I suppose there’s a third subset of people in the case of FOSS work who can and often do help with projects and I wonder if that is better or worse for the reasons listed in the thread like poorly human written code and simple mistakes.

Humans certainly aren’t infallible. But at least they can tell you how they got the output they got or the reason why they did x. You can have a rational conversation with a human being and for the most part they aren’t going to make something up unless they have an ulterior motive.

Perhaps breaking things down into tiny chunks makes AI better or it’s outputs more usable. Maybe there’s a 'sweet spot".

But I think people also get worried that what happens a lot is people who use AI often start to offload their own thinking onto it and that’s dangerous for many reasons.

This person also admits to having depression. Depression can affect how you respond to information, how well you actually understand the information in front of you. It can make you forget things you know, or make things that much harder to recall.

I know that from experience. So in this case does the AI have more potential to help or do harm?

There’s a lot to this. I have not personally used Lutris, but before this happened I wouldn’t have thought twice about saying that I’ve heard good things about it if someone asked me for a Heroic launcher style software for Linux.

But just like the Ladybird fork of Firefox I don’t know that I feel comfortable suggesting it if this is the state of things. For the same reason I don’t currently feel comfortable recommending Windows 11 or Chrome.

There are so many sensitive things that OS’s, and web browsers handle that people take for granted. If nobody was sounding the alarm about those, I feel like nothing would get better. By contrast, Lutris isn’t swimming in a big pond of sensitive information but it is running on people’s hardware and they should have both the right to be informed and the right to choose.

There’s a problem with that. The vast majority of Linux users are probably more tech savvy than average but I’d wager not all of them or even the vast majority have the skills to vet the code.

Lots of the people in the gaming space who are having Lutris suggested/recommended to them are not going in to check that code for problems. They install the flatpak on move on with their lives.

It appears (from what I’ve read which isn’t necessarily the end all be all) that the people taking exception to the use of AI to code Lutris are doing so because they do decompile and vet code.

My understanding is that it’s harder to get AI code in general because when it hallucinates it may do so in ways that appear correct on the surface, and or do so in ways that don’t even give a significant indication of what that code is attempting to do. This is the problem with vibe coding in general from my understanding and it becomes harder and harder even for senior code engineers to check the output because of the lack of a frame of reference.

You’re asking people who don’t have the skills to ignore people who do have the skills who are sounding the alarm.

I get that this person is a single person writing code and disseminating it for free. I get that we should be thankful for free and open software. I fully understand why this person might use AI to help with coding.

I understand that they are upset about the backlash. But that was a very much foreseeable consequence of the credits they gave the AI (a choice they made), and honestly the use of AI (which might have been called out later on if they hadn’t credited it).

They shot themselves in the foot with the part of their response that was flippant and a “fuck you” to anyone who might find the use of AI concerning.

There’s also the fact that AI is something that a lot of people in the Linux community at large seem to already be boycotting and boycotting derivatives of it make sense.

Just because you create something for free doesn’t mean people have to use it. Or that people aren’t free to boycott it.

Because of the backlash from gamers/consumer/the general public, or because it was detrimental to the production of their product?

I’ve never thought of Roblox as being bad. I think it as being dangerous (for the reasons you state), but I also think of it as a “for us by us” kind of deal. Meaning it’s a place and a game(s) for kids.

My son isn’t allowed to play it in our house (if he goes to visit family or friends I don’t make restrictions on that), and I have the same rule for pretty much all online games including things like Fortnite. This is mostly because of voice chat.

I do think the benefits you list are an important part of the conversation that don’t get brought up much.

Cyberpunk platformer “Replaced”. . .

I know of a guy who had his driver’s license permanently revoked because he racked up so many DUI’s. He lived in rural Indiana, and bought a moped because they didn’t require a license to drive. Obviously he did not stop driving drunk.

But also, the moped did in fact make noise.

That’s wonderful. Would not that cost be better spent designing roads that deter speeding by design?

Buses cost money to run, and rural upstate New York (just like a lot of rural areas that are car dependant) do not necessarily have the infrastructure to implement them. Which is exactly why I said shuttles, not buses.

Public transit isn’t going to pop out of the ether to fix the problem so that we can just take away people’s personal property because they broke the law as if they no longer own it. Civil forfeiture is already a broken law without us making it worse for poor people while rich people continue to get a pass.

They’ll buy new vehicles. You can legally purchase a car without a driver’s license in most states. You just have to have someone who can legally drive it off the lot of deliver it. Which is simple for a rich person, but not for a poor person.

Like it could be if we were willing to spend the amount of money it would cost to build and upkeep that infrastructure. But that would also likely mean civil forfeiture of land. Because bus stops and side walks and depots don’t just show up because you want to take people’s cars away.

The cost of all that, plus the cost of implementing the ability to store or sell these vehicles is going to be problematic and more costly than the proposal, which is more fair than the alternative because it treats people regardless of the economic situation the same.

I don’t like the proposal, but I can certainly understand why it’s being proposed as a better way to fix the problem.

Is the plan to store these cars they’re seizing in your plan somewhere? To sell them?

How much is the cost of seizing and storing a vehicle? How much is the cost of building a place to house these seized vehicles?

Who pays that cost?

Where is such a facility going to be built?

Even if you did sell the vehicles, who gets the proceeds? What stops the person from suing the state or municipality for selling items that don’t belong to them?

That’s even before we think about the economic impact of these people living in a very car dependant place where that vehicle makes the difference between being able to have access to food and transportation to get to work.

Is the state going to provide shuttles to get these people groceries and to and from work? Who pays for that?

I have a lot of questions about why you’d want it to be okay to seize the property of a person just because they broke the law.

Police can and do already seize and sell assets whether you have committed a crime or not. Usually people want to end such overreach but now you’re all the sudden siding with the gestapo in order to seize people’s assets because you feel self righteous?

The math doesn’t math on this.

What if the car doesn’t belong to them? Are we going to suddenly start seizing the assets of someone who leant them the vehicle?

Much better to spend tax payer money to design and implement road features that inhibit speeding.

From what I read, that $4BN number could be taken two ways. I don’t know if that analyst excluded the games Valve developed, and that $4BN is games sales of everything else, or if that’s what they made from their own titles. I didn’t want to go through the rigamarole of Xitter to see the direct quote and I haven’t had a chance to find it in the internet archive.

I also kind of want a good run down of what steam offers to developers that makes their platform so attractive because my understanding is it’s more than just e-shop services and that’s one of the reasons I have seen touted as why people feel the service fee is reasonable.

I didn’t want to leave you on read, but I also am still looking up all kinds of random information to put together.

Also, my confusion is because there are two different lawsuits involving the 30% cut of game sales.

There’s a class action lawsuit in the UK involving all of steams consumers there, predicated on the idea that the 30% service fee makes games more expensive to the detriment if those consumers.

And there’s a different class action lawsuit brought by developers Wolfire and Dark Catt representing every developer who uses Steam as an E-Shop platform, also over the 30% service fee and alleged anti-competitve practices (Wolfire say that Steam told them they couldn’t sell their game anywhere else for less than it was available on Steam (even if they didn’t use steams license keys)).

I know I can come off as really terse, and tone is hard via text anyway. But thank you for addressing it.

Sorry about yet another wall of text.

By sold cheaper I meant MSRP price, not sale price.

You’re not being annoying. It’s probably because I lost track and for what it’s worth I am sorry, I’ll try to fix it but probably won’t catch all of them.

I can’t corroborate that Steam’s revenue for the e-shop was $16Bn. The best estimate that I have is that their game sales netted them $4Bn last year. I’m still trying to find a better source for that. However we may both be wrong here.

I’m not reading the Google summary. There is no Google summary for me. That shit is deep sixed. I don’t want it. I love it when people automatically assume that I must be using Generative AI to get some silly answer off the internet.

The fact is any game store front is a money printing machine mostly because of the rampant price fixing, hard to enter markets and abuse from those that hold the lion share of that market (Steam, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo).

If so then Epic should have caught up by now, no?

That money is being sucked out of the companies that are actually making games, and is leading to a reduction in quality, layoffs and bankruptcies.

Please back that up. The game developers seeing bankruptcies are seeing them because of gross mismanagement and a never ending attempt to deliver crap that their consumers don’t want. Pushing the “bleeding edge” of graphics while making games that sell poorly because they want to charge $60-70 for a game even 5 years after it came out.

And that’s with the proliferation of crap like in game micro transactions, season passes, DRM, and internet sanity checks to even play single player games.

Indie developers are caught in the lurch, but that’s generally the case with any small business, and on top of that the regulation will probably harm them more than it will help them because the percentage of sales pays for things that they use to market their game.

What is the limit on what store fronts can charge going to be? How much is too much? What does that 30% pay for? Do you know? Does it scale by user base?

Would other store fronts who charge less be more successful by a meaningful amount if they were charging the same?

It literally doesn’t matter where your products come from. I own more computer games on disc from physical stores than I do from steam. I have paid for more than one game on both steam, switch, PS4, or physical copy. I’m not trying to call Steam the good guy here.

But I do not trust the developer who originally brought the lawsuit because even now most of the other devs who have games for sale on steam have not attempted to make a statement, join the class action, or even make a complaint about what is alleged.

On top of that, why sue only steam if this is a problem. Nobody is suing Nintendo, PlayStation, or Microsoft over this.

I also never said “steam shouldn’t change”, or that steam shouldn’t take a smaller cut.

I feel like you scanned right over half of what I did say so you could be snotty in your response. You have a good day dude.

That’s false. They do not allow steam keys (free to generate steam licenses of games) to be sold cheaper anywhere else for less than the game is sold for on steam. And in exchange, the profits on those game licenses sold elsewhere the developer gets to keep 100% of.

It is alleged by one developer that steam told them they can’t sell their game for less on other stores even if they use a different company to generate the license keys. But that hasn’t been proven. And since only 2 other developers are backing the new class action lawsuit out of literally thousands of devs who would be effected this way if it were true, it logically doesn’t make sense. The dev who brought the first lawsuit that go thrown out? Their game is still up on Steam.

The fact is, Epic is making half the revenue Steam is with 11 times less market share, and not gaining market share because customers don’t want to use their store. Customers don’t want free games they want services that work.

You’re alleging that Valve is doing something anti-competitive to maintain their market share here and you still haven’t given me what I asked for.

What regulations are you expecting to be imposed, and how will that detrimentally or positively effect the consumers?

I never claimed steam was being sued by Sweeney. Sweeney made a statement about the steam lawsuit saying he agreed with it. https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/epic-games-boss-tim-sweeney-voices-support-for-usd900-million-steam-lawsuit-valve-is-the-only-major-store-still-holding-onto-the-payments-tie-and-30-percent-junk-fee/

I was quickly googling market share stuff on break so I misread the Epic e-shop market share vs Epic’s full market share outside that.

The fact that Steam only makes double what epic e-shop makes with literally 11 times the market influence?

What regulations are you expecting out of this? How will that have a positive effect on consumers?

I never said this was about good or bad. I pointed out pros and cons of using each service which extrapolated quite literally to why consumers choose Steam over Epic.

A monopolistic corp who uses anit-consumer/anti-competitve tactics to remain a market leader/? monopoly is illegal. And it’s regulated.

The only reason steam is being investigated at all is because 2 or 3 out of literal thousands of game developers have made a claim that steam is threatening to remove their game if they try to sell it on other game stores for cheaper than steam (not steam keys, but using another stores licensing keys).

That hasn’t been proven and if it is, a further investigation into how wide spread that behavior is would still be needed to prove that Valve or Steam came by their market share illegally.

Also the fact that you brought up Amazon as the foil to your argument at the end is laughable. For multiple reasons.

Why is Epic insignificant?

They launched with a 12% service fee, dropped that service fee to 10%, and then dropped the service fee entirely for the first $1Mn in sales per year.

In June 2025, they released a new feature enabling developers to launch their own webshops hosted by the Epic Games Store. These webshops could offer players out-of-app purchases, as a more “cost-effective” alternative to in-app purchases.

They provide developers with free to generate license keys, and keyless integration with other e-shop stores including GOG, Humble Bundle, and Prime gaming.

They offer a user review system.

They also added cloud saves in July of 2025.

The thing is, they offer none of the other features Steam offers:

• In-Home Streaming
• Remote Play with Friends
• Family Accounts
• Achievements
• Price Adjusted Bundles
• Gifting Games
• Shopping Cart
• TV/Big Screen Mode

Epic launched their service in 2018. It’s been 7 years. The only reason not to offer feature parity (for a company that makes $4.6Bn - 5.7Bn in revenue, and a shop that makes $1.09Bn, you’d think they would be enticing users with the services they want.

What they have done instead is exclusivity deals that plenty of consumers complain about but devs don’t seem to care about so long as they’re getting paid.

So, the excuse that Steam got there first (as if it’s just about that and the reason their market share is what it is is because they have refined, adapted, and improved their service offering over time) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when steam has a significant percent of the market share (79.5% to epic’s 42.3%) but is only making twice the revenue of their rival store.

It makes sense for GOG or Itch.io who’s market cap is smaller by quite a lot to not offer the same feature parity. Each of those platforms has figured out they can offer other things to devs and consumers to make themselves competitive over time.

Sweeny’s attack is basically just a pity party he’s throwing for himself because he doesn’t want to compete.

Edit This is a sanity check because I wasn’t correct with my numbers by mistake.

So, the excuse that Steam got there first (as if it’s just about that and the reason their market share is what it is is because they have refined, adapted, and improved their service offering over time) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when steam has a significant percent of the market share (79.5% to epic’s 42.3%) but is only making twice the revenue of their rival store.

These numbers are not correct and I was mistaken. In actuality Valve’s revenue is approximately 16 times that of Epic e-shop. It looks like an estimate of Steam’s game sales is that about $4Bn of their revenue last year was from Steam’s game sales. I am trying to corroborate that from other sources.

I’m still looking into and trying to parse out what percentage of steams sales last year were hardware (epic to my knowledge doesn’t have a hardware arm of their business), and it’s not immediately clear how much they made on the e-shop portion of their business alone so I can get more comparable numbers.

What I have been able to find so far I’ve posted below, and I’ll try to remember to come back and do some math on that after I focus on the first thing.

https://gamalytic.com/blog/steam-revenue-infographic

https://80.lv/articles/valve-earned-over-usd4-billion-on-steam-alone-in-2025-analysts-say

It’s crazy to me that when they sell a steam key on another store front, steam takes none of the profits from that at all, the key is free to generate for the dev, and the only stipulation is that they have to sell if for the same price it is on the steam store front.

Fair. I just chuckled at it. Don’t know why that’s a problem.

Apparently the comic creator doesn’t know there’s a comedian named “Josh Johnson” and I think that’s funny.