Support us on Patreon
PayPalThink GPD are a trustworthy company to buy devices from? Well, with the Steam Deck now here, they appear desperate.
Recently, they started taking various Steam Deck videos from YouTube creators, sticking them together with a look at their own devices and not crediting any of the people who put the work into those videos. On top of that, GPD has been attaching a "Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)" license to the videos, again, without permission from the original creators.
It's not a good look, and some of those creators have started fighting back.
When pulling them up on it on Twitter, I expected some sort of reply (even a snarky one to my obvious bait) or just to do the honourable thing to correctly get permission for using videos from other people. At the very least slapping in a link to the channels they're pinching things from in the description / a pinned comment for people to see. Did any of that happen? No. Instead, here's the official response from GPD:
I've never personally used one of their devices, and would have happily taken a look at any point with Linux installed onto one. Even some direct Steam Deck comparisons. Now though? This is not painting a good picture of GPD as a company.
Here's my video explainer:
Direct Link
This is the same company that previously tried to steer people towards them instead of Valve, because the Steam Deck was going to be a "closed system" that would not allow third-party stuff and wouldn't play pirated games because of SteamOS — something that's just laughable really.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: subFirst time I've heard of that company.
they got mentioned in so many steam deck videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NK1I6S_vFs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR0b8fROHNk
And I can't help but feeling sad about it :/ The've pioneered the whole handheld gaming thing and made that a reality several years before valve came and announced the Deck. Their products *worked* as a steam gaming device way before Valve even thought this was a good idea, they basically did the market research for them. It's sad to see them now being run out of business by the bigger corporation. Valve is selling the deck at a loss because they can afford it, and that will take care of killing off the "competition". But such is the brutal world of business ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, I don't like people abusing copyright law to do stupid things. They are obviously in the wrong about this, but I don't think rehashing what everybody agrees with would contribute much to the discussion at this point.
Last edited by setzer22 on 6 April 2022 at 3:01 pm UTC
Quoting: setzer22Valve is selling the deck at a loss because they can afford it
Can you link to the info/BOM that has that regards costings?
Quoting: setzer22Valve is selling the deck at a loss because they can afford it,I honestly doubt that.
This isn't a console that can make up for selling at a loss with absurd stuff like costs-to-play-online or generally overpriced games.
Nor is it going to bring it tons of new customers - I'd bet that 99% of buyers are Steam customers anyway.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPI suspect that at the scale they're seeing, it probably isn't selling at a loss now because of economies of scale, but if demand had been more tepid (which it absolutely could have been) and they were only making them on the scale of any other niche small-run PC hardware then they'd have been selling at a loss - the cost of all of those is much higher than that of the Deck. But the product is a demonstration device of Linux gaming ("new ways for prospective users to get into Linux gaming and experience these improvements" as Valve described it) for strategic purposes - it doesn't have to make any money.Quoting: setzer22Valve is selling the deck at a loss because they can afford it,I honestly doubt that.
This isn't a console that can make up for selling at a loss with absurd stuff like costs-to-play-online or generally overpriced games.
Nor is it going to bring it tons of new customers - I'd bet that 99% of buyers are Steam customers anyway.
Last edited by CatKiller on 6 April 2022 at 5:28 pm UTC
Just keep in mind they're on a whole different legal framework than western countries in this regarding, for me is YouTube who should be providing proper mechanisms to report these things for content creators and not just for big corporations and their greedy interests.
Philadelphus Apr 6, 2022
Quoting: GuestReally? Huh. That seems…abusable. Like, could I get LTT (say) taken down just by filing 3 takedown requests? Clearly there's some context or nuance I'm missing here.Quoting: Liam DaweAnother YouTuber got in touch, they've also issued a takedown request.Nice one. All they need is 3 takedown requests within 90 days (they can all be from the same creator too) and GPD lose their whole youtube channel forever.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPMaybe not the high end versions, but I'd be highly surprised if they're making much if anything on the 64 GB model. Anyone putting down a few hundred dollars on a Deck is almost certainly going to generate far more in game sales over the next few years than any lost revenue on the Deck sale*. They don't need new customers, per se; existing ones willing to buy more games (i.e., the majority of existing Steam users) are plenty. I guess you could make the argument that people would likely buy those games even without a Deck (for their existing systems), but it's also possible people buy games they wouldn't have, especially if they're buying the Deck to replace a low-spec laptop or something.Quoting: setzer22Valve is selling the deck at a loss because they can afford it,I honestly doubt that.
This isn't a console that can make up for selling at a loss with absurd stuff like costs-to-play-online or generally overpriced games.
Nor is it going to bring it tons of new customers - I'd bet that 99% of buyers are Steam customers anyway.
*I've probably spent over a hundred dollars on Steam each year for the last several years (e.g., in 2020 I picked up roughly one new game or DLC a month, and even though I tend to go for cheaper games that's probably $10-$20 each). And I've got a comparatively small library of less than 150 games because I'm very picky.
See more from me