Lots of people on Steam giving it negative reviews because the servers are overloaded today... F2P gamers really are the smartest bunch /s

View this comment - View article - View full comments

On the other hand... the way they pre-announced it was a clear reference to the Occulus Rift S so they must consider it the same market...

My guess is that it will be a bit more expensive than the Rift S, but not Vive Pro territory.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Julius

Quoting: F.UltraNow you are spreading the myth that EU is undemocratic which is blatantly false.

The EU Comission consists of people assigned by the government of each member state, so by definition fully democratic since they are appointed by the government that we the EU citizens have voted for in our national elections.
The EU Council consists of the heads of state of each member state, so people that we EU citizens vote on in our national elections.
The EU parliament consists of people that we as EU citizens vote on in the EU elections, again fully democratic.

While I agree that the EU is somewhat democratic, that is sadly a gross misrepresentation of the actual very limited democratic process involved :(

The EU commissioners are selected by the commission's president, who in turn is appointed by the governments of the EU countries, basically the heads of states in this case... which may or may not have been voted for. The actually democratically elected parliaments of the member states do not play a role in this at all. However the EU parliament has to agree to the complete team (yes or no, not individuals).
Regarding the council, again representation of governments, not actually elected members of parliament, which is at most a indirect form of democracy.
And the EU parliament, probably the most democratic of these three, is both largely powerless and also not truly democratic as not every persons vote counts the same in the elections.

Representative democracy is already how all of the member states operate nationally so if the EU Commission and Council is defined as "somewhat democratic" than the exact same applies to every single democratic country in the world.

True, but also very much a matter of degree. Switzerland is clearly more democratic than Germany. And Germany is clearly more democratic than the EU. As Germany is already a very indirect democracy, the EU can rightfully be called quite undemocratic (despite not being a totalitarian regime). Edit: In the EU's case that's maybe a bit like Homeopathy... the democracy is diluted to the point of practical non-existence :p

But I disagree with the "EU lobbycracy" statement someone else did... largely the same which happens in the national governments and even more so dirty "EU washing" happens by national lobby driven governments (=pointing the blame to the EU when in fact it is a unpopular but national decision).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: F.UltraNow you are spreading the myth that EU is undemocratic which is blatantly false.

The EU Comission consists of people assigned by the government of each member state, so by definition fully democratic since they are appointed by the government that we the EU citizens have voted for in our national elections.
The EU Council consists of the heads of state of each member state, so people that we EU citizens vote on in our national elections.
The EU parliament consists of people that we as EU citizens vote on in the EU elections, again fully democratic.

While I agree that the EU is somewhat democratic, that is sadly a gross misrepresentation of the actual very limited democratic process involved :(

The EU commissioners are selected by the commission's president, who in turn is appointed by the governments of the EU countries, basically the heads of states in this case... which may or may not have been voted for. The actually democratically elected parliaments of the member states do not play a role in this at all. However the EU parliament has to agree to the complete team (yes or no, not individuals).
Regarding the council, again representation of governments, not actually elected members of parliament, which is at most a very indirect form of democracy.
And the EU parliament, probably the most democratic of these three, is both largely powerless and also not truly democratic as not every EU citizens vote counts the same in the elections.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: F.UltraSo the main problem can be that Valve and these 5 companies have colluded to introduce geo-blocking, and not that Valve in itself enforces geo-blocking of activation keys.

Yeah, that is an interesting part of it, but if I understood correctly we are talking about Steam activation keys, so how could they not have discussed with the Valve beforehand? Again, I think this is someone trying to apply rules for physical goods to digital ones, but you are of course right that this conclusion might very well also be the outcome of this EU investigation.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: F.UltraThe EU is not a single country but the whole idea behind the EU is to create a single market, and that is the whole crux here. If you sell items in one EU country then you cannot deny the purchaser from reselling that item in another EU country since the whole of EU is one large single market.

This is not about prohibiting Valve from having different prices in different EU countries, this is to prevent geo-locking on cross-border resells, nothing more, nothing less.

Exactly, but this is one of the cases where a digital economy doesn't quite work as the regular physical goods/items one.

Being allowed to freely resell cross-border will lead game companies to abolish (lower) regional pricing most likely unless they find another (probably even less customer friendly) way to prevent large scale key "smuggling".

View this comment - View article - View full comments

However, we are talking about positive price discrimination towards poorer countries here... almost like development aid for poor gamers ;)
And it is not really evil companies price discriminating against rich countries, but rather an attempt by them to cut down on key "smuggling", which you would probably also want if you would lets say buy & donate cloths to a poor country, just for some not so poor people to take those cloth and sell them in your own country for a slightly lower price than what you bought it for.

Anyways, its unrealistic to believe such "anti-discriminatory" EU regulation will result in anything but higher prices in those poorer places and ultimately also higher prices for everyone as overall less units are sold.

Edit: I think the EU is a great idea, but run by economic idiots. The last guy who actually knew what he was doing was Yanis Varoufakis :( (who btw worked as an economist with Valve for some time!)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: FirearmsUnitedYou're all doing it wrong. Let me explain this from a very simple economist point of view:
(...)
So everyone who is defending geo blocking in this thread does either not know or understand about the concepts of globalisation or should ask themselves why they are willingly accepting all the downsides of globalisation without demanding at least a tiny bit of fairness in their own favour by being allowed to participate in the same global market like the companies that try to deny them this right.

This EU regulation attempt actually seems to be about reselling "physical copies" that happen to be only access-codes these days. And for these I tend to somewhat agree with you and the EU stance, as it is a minor market and is a customer's right.

But your "simple economist" view when expanded to general regional pricing is indeed too simple, as other's tried to explain already. In the end you need to also consider supply and demand curves VS. investment costs, and in the current market the price equilibrium seems to tend towards not lowering the prices for everyone (like you suggest), but rather asking the same high price everywhere if regional pricing is not possible (Edit: mainly because of rampant software piracy and "key smuggling" in poorer countries, which obviously isn't included in your simple economic view developed based on physical goods).

But high prices everywhere are IMHO in the greater view of things not a desirable outcome for anyone involved, nor is optimal from a pure business perspective.

P.S.: You can easily benefit from cheaper regional pricing yourself if you get a local SIM card during holidays and switch your store setting temporarily (you need a local IP and for most places a valid local telephone number). You can actually recover quite a bit of the holiday costs if you plan to buy a few AAA titles ;) You can not gift them to others, but in your own library or via Family sharing they work just fine even after setting the store back to our high price home country. Oh and don't try this via a VPN from home... that will get your account suspended!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

A graphical presentation like Intralism (fun, cheap rhythm game that runs on Linux) would go a long way to induce that trance like feeling though that is necessary to really play these games well :)

Oh and I wish there was a Crypt of the Necrodancer sequel or similar game :(
Edit: actually, a sequel called "Cadence of Hyrule" is coming, but apparently only to the Nintendo Switch :(

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Probably a screw-up... but brightening the image confirms what previous leaks have shown: there is a strange modular part below the face-plate that can probably be replaced and seems to be / might be connected via a USB port.

View this comment - View article - View full comments