What is ownership?

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Darn. Now I can't comment anything in the Steam Deck posts anymore.

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Pretty cool to see ZOOM doing something similar to Steam and itch. See, GOG—it's not hard...now you're the odd one out!

Quoting: amataiThat does not seem safe at all.

Wait until you see rustup does the exact same thing: https://rustup.rs

I would trust rustup far more though.

Quoting: ContainerRunnerCorrect me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know Flatpaks are used for GUI applications.

Sure, they generally are! But you can use them for CLI tools just the same so long as they don't need privileged access to certain things some CLI system admin tools expect. In the end it's really just a long-lived container, after all.

Quoting: ContainerRunnerAlthough I have seen projects like Sunshine (Remote Game streaming) use it too, but that project distributes it only over GitHub released .flatpakref files and seems to be an exception.

I created a Flatpak for my own Python download script and for a CLI news feed reader, and there's one for the MakeMKV CLI tool, and there's one for Neovim on Flathub, so there's plenty out there!

Flathub hides most CLI tools from its interface so you need to download/search them via the flatpak CLI tool.

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I'm back on GNOME now, but it's great to see more drawing tablet features.

They're working through these issues: https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Known_Significant_Issues#Graphics_Tablet_Support

And also great to see...whatever's happening with colour management.

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There was a time where I'd play Halo for hours every day after I came home from school, sometimes into the early morning, sometimes not going to school at all. Crazy to think about now.

But I haven't even bought Halo Infinite, so I don't think there's much chance of me playing this one...but still, it's nice to read news about Halo now and again.

Interesting to see they're now using the same engine as Installation 01.

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Quoting: CatKillerWhat Valve have said is that they want their customers to get a fair deal, and if it looks like they aren't they would like to find out why and if there's anything they can do to change that. Is that "getting a good deal for your customers" or is that "monopolistic price-fixing"? Given that it's publishers that set their own prices, and you can find games cheaper than on Steam, is there any actual harm from Valve's actions even if their intent was super nefarious? Those are the kinds of questions that the court would have to find answers for.

For sure, it's up to the courts and not armchair lawyer P.R.T Manual. My opinion is this:

Threatening to de-list a publisher's game from Steam if they do not bring the price down to match the game's price on other stores has a direct impact on other stores—namely, Epic Games Store (EGS). EGS takes a smaller cut than Steam, which means publishers would be able to price their games lower on EGS to get more sales. But because of Steam's price parity policy, publishers can't take advantage of this. We can argue whether Steam's cut is fair or not (I think it is), but it's that royalty split that is responsible for EGS customers getting a better deal than Steam customers. If Valve is really so concerned about making sure Steam customers get a better deal, they should match EGS' royalty split. If not, they shouldn't threaten publishers with de-listing because EGS has a more attractive deal.

I mentioned EGS because of its obvious relevance to the case, but this applies equally to smaller stores like itch.io. Wolfire is an indie publisher, and Valve is not above threatening smaller publishers. If Valve didn't enforce price parity, itch.io could rightfully be much more relevant because of its ridiculously good royalty deals for publishers. And I think that's kind of sad.

There's also the fact that Valve has said, for years, that there is no such price parity policy when in reality they actively enforce it, so clearly they think they're doing something wrong too by attempting to hide it.

Quoting: CatKillerIt's the first two attachments (reports from two expert witnesses) on the motion to exclude testimony of Dr Schwarz, as I recall. The first one is about 300 pages. It's a while since I read it. Um... these two, I think: Attachment 1 and Attachment 2

Thanks! This should make for some exciting bedtime reading.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI won't pretend to understand the specifics here (and there are a lot of documents to sift through), but my understanding is that these are direct quotes from emails. I think the only way Valve could come out of this cleanly is if the emails were completely fabricated.

But it does seem early to conclude whether that is evidence or not.

Oh, I'm sure they were excerpts of actual emails sent from actual people at Valve. Discovery dredges up a tonne of stuff - from other companies, too, as you noted. The court will look at the context of the documents, and both sides will make their arguments, and the court will decide whether it shows a policy or pattern of wrongdoing, or whether it's just perfectly fine course of business stuff.

Plaintiffs have to throw every accusation they can, since they can't generally add them afterwards, and then they have to dig around to find something that might support their position; the court case is what determines whether there's any validity to it.

Media and commentators love to look at accusations of the plaintiff, since they get to go first and they necessarily have to throw in the most salacious stuff, whereas actual court cases are really long and kinda boring.

I agree with all of this, though assuming all of these emails are factual, I don't think any amount of context will change my opinion. But we'll see.

Do you have a link to Valve's rebuttal? I'd be interested in reading it.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualIn the Exhibit 85 document on Aug 23, 2024, there is some reference to emails from Valve about price parity that is being submitted as evidence.

For context, the plaintiff's expert witness produced a report saying what the plaintiff wanted; Valve's expert witness (compellingly, IMO) said that plaintiff's report was terrible and shouldn't be allowed in the case, and the document you're looking at is plaintiffs arguing that their export report should totally be allowed. None of it's actually in the case as evidence yet. Both sides are still in the "what is this case actually about" stage. Although, to be fair, once "what a case is actually about" is decided in anti-trust cases, the outcome tends to follow directly - hence the years of haggling before that point.

I won't pretend to understand the specifics here (and there are a lot of documents to sift through), but my understanding is that these are direct quotes from emails. I think the only way Valve could come out of this cleanly is if the emails were completely fabricated.

But it does seem early to conclude whether that is evidence or not.

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Quoting: fenglengshunDesktop. I mainly used Rustdesk + TeamViewer + AnyDesk, for redundancy in case of connectivity weirdness. Last I tested, unattended access is wonky on KDE and unattended login doesn't work on Wayland at all.

Oh, well, you're probably screwed for unattended login on anything except GNOME when it comes to Wayland. There's wayvnc for Sway but there's no real unattended login for that.

I can say GNOME RDP works very well for servers on Wayland.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the anti-trust stuff

What about the price parity enforcement Valve has been doing?

There's been no evidence that that's a thing that they've done.

Maybe some evidence of that will turn up, but it hasn't yet.

I was looking through the court documents for the case the other day: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59859024/wolfire-games-llc-v-valve-corporation/

In the Exhibit 85 document on Aug 23, 2024, there is some reference to emails from Valve about price parity that is being submitted as evidence.

For example:

QuoteTom Giardino, a Steam Business Team member, described Valve’s pricing padty requirement as "a platform goal that goes beyond Steam keys[.]" See: Valve, Emails Regarding Game Pricing, 7/23/2018-7/25/2018 (VALVE_ANT_0605887-89, at VALVE_ANT_0605887).

For example, Valve withholding promotion unless the publisher prices the game the same as they do on other platforms:

QuoteWhen publisher XXX asked Valve if it could leave XXX out of a discount it was planning to run, Valve told the publisher that "we didn't want to be known as the store where XXX prices are unfair. We’ve pursued this same policy with other partners and in other regions, to make sure Steam customers aren't put at an unfair disadvantage to customers shopping at retail or online at other stores." See: Valve, Emails Regarding XXX Game Promotion, 1/21/2015-2/5/2015 (VALVE_ANT_0809427-434, at VALVE_ANT_0809428-429). (Emphasis in original.)

Valve explicitly asking that prices for games not be cheaper anywhere else, even if only by a dollar:

QuoteA drafted Valve announcement regarding new currencies on Steam asks publishers that "Just make sure that you're not disadvantaging Steam customers; if you sell your game for £8.99 on another store, it shouldn’t be £9.99 on Steam." See: Valve, Emails Regarding New Currencies on Steam, 7/9/2015-7/24/2015 (VALVE_ANT_0114214-20, at VALVE_ANT_0114215), available at Tom Giardino, Dep. Tr., 11/2/2023, Exhibit 187 (Emphasis added.)

Valve suggesting that publishers should stop selling their games on Steam if they refuse to price their games on Steam at parity elsewhere, and then saying they've de-listed games for this behaviour before:

QuoteValve remarked in another email that "if you wanted to sell a non-Steam version of your game for $10 at retail and $20 on Steam, we’d ask to get that same lower price or just stop selling the game on Steam if we couldn’t treat our customers fairly[,]" and went on to confirm that this was not a new policy: "we’ve always asked that partners treat our customers fairly, and we've often opted not to promote games or stop selling them altogether if we aren’t able to get fair treatment for our users." See: Valve, Emails Regarding Steam Key Guidelines, 6/28/2018-7/3/2018 (VALVE_ANT_0605087-89, at VALVE_ANT_0605087)0 available at Gabe Newell0 Dep. Tr., 11/21/2023, Exhibit 349.

Valve talking about how important price parity is and referencing a game they de-listed for refusing to tow the line:

QuoteValve, Emails Between XXX and Valve, 6/6/2013-6/7/2013 (VALVE_ANT_1216044-45, VALVE_ANT_1216044). ("[T]his
presents a problem for us on Steam. We want to make sure that our price on Steam is competitive with retail and other
digital stores in XXX so that we do not teach customers that Steam is always the expensive option.")

QuoteValve, Emails Between XXX and Valve, 8/15/2014 (VALVE_ANT_2576464). (Valve tells XXX that it "[j]ust saw today that the pricing for XXX on Steam is uncompetitive with other retailers, similar to the issue we’re having with XXX and XXX.... We’ve made the choice to take the game down until we can reach price parity.")

I recommend reading through some of the documents in courtlistener. There seem to be several publishers involved in this case willing to enter email correspondence from Valve as evidence.

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