TwilightVulpine

Apparently this isn’t standard anymore, and I can see how developers don’t like it, but an antitrust lawsuit over this just seems poorly justified. For whoever doesn’t want to sell on Steam under their conditions, there is Epic, GOG, Humble and ItchIO. Maybe those don’t sell as well, but that’s the choice the company is making.

I don’t think being the largest store by itself is grounds for this sort of legal action. Especially not when they became the biggest store simply by providing good services for a good price, rather than any sort of restrictions at companies publishing in it.

It shows that companies are regarded above customers when every console is a closed ecosystem with a single store, no sideloading support, but nobody challenges that.

They did release Receiver 2 a couple years ago

Is anyone believing they would not have layoffs anyway? They are likely just trying to pin their cost-cutting plans on game devs who protested against their ridiculous scheme. Comes to mind that the money their clients were already paying is the money that would have paid for those employees’ wages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4

We don’t know how they are measuring it. If it’s baked into the engine and not removed by cracking groups, it just might cost more for the devs.

Indies are the ones who deserve to die the least.

I know and thank goodness for that… but there will be projects that simply won’t be able to afford to move to entirely different engines. It’s a lot of work that might have to be redone.

This might kill entire indie projects.

How many reinstalls? Because I have games I have bought 4 PCs/laptops ago, not counting some few more when I installed them in family members’ computers to play with them. What about OS updates? Windows keeps insisting to move to 11.

Frankly, this doesn’t sound reasonable at all. It’s not even like Unity is doing any of the hosting to justify squeezing devs like this.

edit: Now it has been confirmed it’s not measured on an unique hardware basis, any reinstall counts. It’s just madness.

Charging “per install” as opposed to “per sale” will be goddamn awful. At best it might lead to DRM where you’ll have a limited number of installs before you lose the game you bought.

Tech companies badly need to get their shit kicked in to stop with this “I have the right to change the terms unilaterally anytime”

I am extremely skeptical of 2 and 3, because it means people who already decided to drop mainstream social media platforms will go back on their decision, and it suggests that people want instances to be more like Meta, rather than for it to function in a user driven way that provides things that Meta will never be willing to offer.

If people can be tempted off of the Fediverse so easily, the problem is not Meta. Keep in mind that right now people are already choosing not to engage with Facebook. I’m not naive to assume that they won’t have appeal and influence and dirty tricks. but seems to me like such a complete lack of faith in the Fediverse to assume that if Meta merely exists alongside the ecosystem, it’s inevitable that everyone will jump ship. That sounds like what they wanted was a Big Tech-driven platform all along.

I don’t think that’s right.

Comes to mind also that Mastodon has had many years of headstart. How much of a slow growth does it still need?

In the Fediverse it’s easier to escape that than it would in any other platform.

I don’t think it’s possible to take down decentralized social media unless it fails by itself, unless the ecosystem here is so completely unappealing people decide to get back to all the well known ills and dullness of Facebook.

Even compared to XMPP, it’s not the same. Chat programs are a communication tool. Social platforms are communities.

I am not underestimating them, I don’t know why this insistence that I must be. I think people are catastrophizing and spelling doom forgetting that we are seeing tech companies fucking up time after another, and also not giving enough credit to the advantages and potential that we have here.

If you think all it takes is peeking over the fence and the Fediverse will fall apart, the maybe it could never be. But I think the interest in something different will only grow now. I believe we can take users out of Meta instead.

That’s my point though. There are things that will never find a home under Meta’s umbrella, so it cannot just take it all over.

I’m wondering what they could possibly even Extend in a way that the Fediverse can’t keep up? The most they can do is to gatekeep people who are only in their ecosystem, but… they already do that. Whoever is only on Facebook and Instagram is only on Facebook and Instagram, and it didn’t stop the Fediverse from existing.

Nah, I know they are evil, but I also know that there are things people want that they will never provide because they want full control and an advertiser friendly environment.

Like say, where would NSFW artists be more at ease? The Fediverse or an Instagram offshoot? Especially in the wake of Twitter falling apart.

Let’s also not overestimate the scheming of tech tycoons are either. I believe Meta is making a blunder and I don’t think we should stop them.

People are fearful then meta will retract it/ defederate and take the majority of content with it (EEE). This would effectively kill the fediverse.

I don’t see how that could possibly happen. It’s not like they can buy the Fediverse. Seems to me far more likely that the Fediverse will be gain interest from people wishing to follow/interact with Meta users without being beholden to Meta and if/when Meta decouples from it again the Fediverse will be larger than before. Sure, some may come and go, but others will find interests outside of Meta.

Like everyone is pointing out, they already will be the largest instance. They are not going to gain that much by trying to trying to absorb the rest of people who are likely in the Fediverse from dissatisfaction with Big Tech and wanting to break free from their algorithms and restrictions.

Some of that definitely exists, if even karma score is something that gets some egos inflated, but I think this is a very cynical and uncharitable way to describe it when care for a community plays at least as much of a role.

At the end of the day, even being the mod of a big sub is not much to brag about, nevermind the smaller ones. They are not celebrities, not even to the extent social media influencers are. Most users might not even recognize their usernames without that little tag or looking up the mod list. It’s most of all, voluntary work.