Not really no. Ubisoft agreed to these terms in order to sell their game on steam. If they sold their game on any third party platform, they would agree to the same or even more severe terms. They even made their own storefront specifically so they would have the option to not sell on a third party platform.
They now cry foul because they got all the benefits from selling on steam, but they don’t want to pay for any of those benefits.
There is nothing illegal being done by steam kiddo. And ‘good faith’ is defending themselves against sabotage, which is what ubisoft is suing for the ability to do here.
You are conflating very different things here, I’m afraid.
I’m really not. You want a neutral marketplace that just provides a service without a profit motive. That’s what it comes down to. Because any service that requires a profit will naturally protect that profit, and that includes excluding suppliers that are actively sabotaging it.
Except what’s the alternative? They’ve wedged themselves in that space, and bought out any other competitor.
Aliexpress, walmart.com, ebay.com, wayfair.com, any manufacturer’s website. Or the actual global leader in the space, Alibaba which dwarfs Amazon’s entire marketplace with over twice the users and easily a thousand times the suppliers.
So either they get forced to compete with themselves (by breaking the company apart) or they adhere to anti-monopoly laws where they’re not allowed to influence other prices as part of their agreement.
Or, if people think private companies should be neutral, like a public service… PEOPLE SHOULD FUCKING ADVOCATE AND ORDER THEIR GOVERNMENTS TO PROVIDE A PUBLIC SERVICE.
It is infinitely easier and better to get the government to do things for you than it is to force a private company to do things for you.
That’s insanity. Under those terms, most suppliers would be at the whims of platform owners.
Congrats, you found one of the many problems with the concept of capitalism.
Microsoft asking Valve for a 50% cut? Sure. Google delisting a website because the owner criticized their CEO? Absolutely. Amazon telling you to sell at a loss or not sell at all? Why not.
Yes. That is how all that works. Because they are all private companies and it is voluntary to use their services.
If you think those services should be neutral, congrats, you’re advocating for communism. I think communism is pretty cool and there should be a state-run online marketplace that is entirely non-profit. But you seem to think you should or could force companies to be that public entity. That’s not only not realistic and not how the world has ever worked under capitalism, but it’s just simply a bad idea. Look at the USPS for why you should not have a private entity perform a public service.
Every store has price parity to some extent. Every store you will ever sell a product in has a non-compete agreement built into your contract. Not only is this not controversial there’s no actual reason it should be.
It is common sense that you, as a product producer, shouldn’t intentionally sabotage someone you’re selling your product to. It doesn’t matter who you’re selling your product to. It is optional to sell your product to a third-party intermediary in the modern era.
This isn’t defense of gaben or whatever weird fucking fantasy you people have come up with, this is just how private trade works.
If you have a problem with this, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE CONCEPT OF PRIVATE SERVICES AND CAPITALISM.
It’s the same product. Ubisoft, at any point, can just stop selling on steam and redirect users to their own store and then have full pricing control. Epic did this with Rocket League. This is fully an option a multi-billion dollar company owned by a billionaire can do at any point. Being on steam is voluntary for all parties, because there are alternate streams.
If you want to sell your product in walmart, you will be signing a similar non-compete agreement. If you want to sell your product at any competent store, you will be signing a non-compete agreement.
Because there is no reason for a store to LET you use their platform otherwise. Your product isn’t that good. There’s 3k games released per month. You aren’t that important individually, or even as a developer. If you want to go the easy route, then like literally ALL PRODUCTS SOLD, you will need to sign an agreement like this.
For the same thing sold on their marketplace, yes. Literally you are voluntarily agreeing to use a private marketplace, you should agree to all their rules or just stop using that marketplace.
Amazon isn’t a public service. They aren’t a Farmer’s market run by the city. They aren’t a sidewalk. If you would like a public version of Amazon that doesn’t have those restrictions and would be cheaper for literally everyone, advocate for that. But until a public alternative exists then yes, Amazon can and should impose whatever rules it wants. Alternatives will appear if it becomes too restrictive and the platform will die.
No, because ubisoft is a shit company with a shit product.
They aren’t. If Ubisoft wants to release a game on their own platform steam can do nothing about it.
Both games have steam integration, as all games do on steam. They can be run without it, like most games, but that doesn’t change the fact these developers want steam’s audience and integration (since users want steam integration) and thus they voluntarily agreed to this stipulation.
Ubisoft has their own store, if R6S is so good, it should be able to drive traffic and users to that store and they could just set their own price without worrying about what steam is doing. Fortnite proves you don’t need steam integration to make a good game that people want to play. So does minecraft.
So steam isn’t a monopoly, as proven by those two examples, Ubisoft just wants more money without the restriction that comes with that money.
Genuinely why? Why do you think you have the right to any specific marketplace?
You realize how much you’re robbing yourself when you do that, right?
KDE wayland has global hotkeys, so does hyprland. seems like a skill issue for Wayfire.
All LLMs are neural nets, not all neural nets are llms, but they’re similar enough to have the same general flaws. 'Neural Networks" are misnomers, at best; especially given the designs were first being implemented before we had any real idea how neurons actually worked. It’s why Brain Organoid interfaces still completely destroy entire simulated interfaces in pretty much any task we’ve managed to actually train them on.
It’s also how we know we’re not close to the software or hardware capability to actually do anything complex. The best that we’ve been able to do is simulate a fly’s brain with a super computer.
Real answer:
Depends on who manages your 401k. Some servicers do allow ‘custom’ or otherwise ‘alternative’ management options, with some allowing you to focus on specific companies or industries.
Others might take your call at least and if you raise enough of a stink you might get shoved into an alternative plan out of spite, but that’s what you want, so you win.
Take out all your money, pay off the fee, use the money to buy a used Komatsu D355A crawler tractor and at least a half pallet each of of concrete bags and rebar as well as an extra diesel tank and a decent amount of diesel. Then just find your local senator’s personal home and
It’s not any of that, and Americans don’t get to have opinions on slurs, for obvious reasons.
Well given that’s the only possible relevant “AI” you could possibly be talking about, as we don’t even have an inkling about true general AI and have no technologies that even look like they could produce anything close to it, forgive me for making the obvious assumption.
No, in 20 years no version of any technology currently in use will be replacing human employees or would have the capability of doing so. AI Bros jumped the gun and tried starting to do that with current tech, and now most companies are desperately hoping just throwing more compute power at the dead ends will make it magically work before the money runs out.
Because AI bros are incredibly deluded about both the capability of AI, and by extension their own capabilities using AI>
They did in the 1980s with walmart, kiddo.
Incorrect, this is an ‘exercise’ of explaining a very basic fact of capitalism that has been happening longer than the word ‘capitalism’ has existed. This policy is the default for all stores on Earth.