Chebucto Regional Softball Club

The guy who used ai to make some technobabble lipsum for an asset was an artist hired by the company. You can see a huge list of the artists that worked on The Alters in the credits. They all got paid. This artist would take home the same wage for typing "gshsjajfkfksiwn" in that asset, or copy and pasting some numbers that were in a readout from a space telescope, or literally using lorem ipsum. If we're really micromanaging every art shortcut as "potential pay to hire *more* artists" now, why not start counting how many rock/plant/sky/water textures and models in The Alters (or FF7 Rebirth, or literally any UE5 game) are pre-baked assets included with the UE5 license? Game devs *actually* use those instead of billable hours / salaried hires.

The translation flub is the only part that mattered here. The Alters was getting a ton of praise and good press for its story, characters, mocap, VA, mechanics, visuals, you name it. Finding out that someone used GPT for some glorified lorem ipsum to paste on a random background object doesn't change the quality one iota. The art team for this game was paid and hired and they did a phenomenal job with the game, but one of those paid artists took a shortcut for some assets. It's not a "the ayy eye is letting corpo CEOs skip out on paying real human artists!!!" situation here. Do you know what else paid artists / game studios do other than pay a human to create an asset from scratch? They buy models and textures on the Unreal/etc asset store. The same exact boulder model is present in everything from ffviiR to Clair Obscur to Death Stranding, because it comes free with the engine and is "good enough" just like an AI generated rock texture would be. However, using machine translation without even a *proofreading pass* is hilarious. Using a conversational model for translation is double hilarious. Surely purpose-built translation tools exist and are more efficient than "asking" chatGPT to "translate this line into Brazilian Portuguese".

Yeah, there's less reason than ever before to play something like Stardew or Isaac or Hades on the Nintendo box where your save file is hostage to their system and you'll never be able to use mods and the developers have to outsource the patches to a third party so the game's always a couple months behind on the new features...

When the Switch 1 came out it was also the only console that had the "half-handheld" form factor. A lot of indie games like Isaac, Hades, and Slay the Spire got PC gamers like me to double dip (or in Hades' case, actually choose Switch over Steam) for the gameboy factor. The Switch (2) is no longer unique in that regard. I haven't touched my Switch 1 for anything but exclusives since the Steam Deck came out.

In 2025, a company that is just looking to make a shitload of money is enough to automatically "win". Valve: "What are you selling?" Video games, video game hardware without vendor lock-in, and in-app purchases. "Who are you selling it to?" PC gamers. Literally everyone else in the space except for Itch, which is decidedly focused on too-indie-for-indie games and is small enough to be acquired if it ever gets popular: "What are you selling?" The promise that we'll make more profit next year than this year. "Who are you selling it to?" Shareholders or a corp that'll buy the whole company. It's an absolute no-brainer. Until *anyone else* can answer these questions in the same way Valve does, Valve is automatically the best player in the space.

If there weren't enough people put off by Origin and uPlay to not install them or use them to buy games, Origin and uPlay would still exist. Steam didn't kill them, all it did was exist and be a better platform that people actually wanted to use. If there weren't enough people put off by the Epic Games Store, the EGS wouldn't still be paying developers to put their shit on the store. Steam hasn't killed it, and isn't even *attempting* to kill it. It's just existing and being a better platform that people actually want to use. If EGS can't compete with Steam while *giving shit away for free*, that's not a "Steam monopoly" it's an indicator of how dogshit the opinion of Epic as a corporation and storefront is. Origin failed because nobody wanted it. uPlay failed because nobody wanted it. The perks (being able to buy exclusives) weren't worth the downsides (literally just making another account and installing another program on your computer). I think that's beautiful. I hope it happens to Epic next. Steam's existence as an IPO/enshittification-proof platform has prevented the PC gaming storefront market from going the way of Netflix. Remember that? We had cable channels, pay-per-views, piracy, and DVDs/blu-rays as the only way to watch movies. Then a Blockbuster-over-mail company started getting licenses to let you pay to watch movies at home with one subscription, which was a massive success. Then every other IP holder went "hey wait, why are we paying Netflix when we could just eat the whole pie ourselves" and now we have Netflix Disney+ Max Peacock AppleTV+ Amazon Prime Video Fandango Paramount+ AMC+ Philo Hulu Tubi Fubo Dippy Weeno Poob all trying to be the new Netflix. And because Netflix itself is a shareholder-value-driven company, it's putting ads in its paid product and jacking up prices and paying for exclusivity.

For me, it failed because I wasn't willing to install some shareholder-driven company's storefront app on my computer just to play Mass Effect 3, so I pirated Mass Effect 3. Then I got to watch it fail because it turns out I wasn't the only one willing to skip/pirate games because they came with Origin attached to them. Epic's exclusives are the exact same. I get my PC games from four sources. Steam, GOG's *website*, Itch's website, standalone launchers (I'd probably be okay with a "store" of games as small as the Riot launcher, but I don't use that because I don't install rootkit anticheat), and piracy. Launcherless Itch and GOG have convenience parity with piracy with the added benefit of the devs getting paid (and the ease of acquiring updates), and I'll usually use them over Steam if available. Itch could easily get bought by a corp like Humble did and CDPR is already a shareholder value company, but they sell DRM-free products that I can use even after the stores die / sell out. A recent launch I paid for and didn't use Steam for is "The Bazaar" - it has a standalone launcher. The game went pay to win so I uninstalled it, but its lack of presence on Steam didn't keep me from playing it. I'll use stuff other than Steam no problem. But I'll always cheer when a platform owned and operated by a shareholder backed company dies in favor of one that isn't. My experience in the hobby space of PC gaming is better when there aren't exclusives locked on EA Origin or UPlay or Microsoft UWP store or Epic, because I might want to play those games without installing a stock-ticker company's adware on my computer. Having the space "capitalism free" is unrealistic, unless we're talking "pirate everything". I'll settle for "profit driven" over "YOY growth driven" leaders in the space any day of the week. Now, if Steam's position as the best distributor/launcher platform is a de facto "monopoly", what's the solution to that? Anecdotally I know plenty of people that play non-Steam games while not playing any Epic games. Epic tries to fight Steam by directly paying developers to *not* publish on Steam, and also effectively guaranteeing studios a financial success by cutting a deal to put their game up for "free" on the Epic storefront. Plenty of games have been "Free" on Epic while full price on Steam. Valve tries to fight Epic by... Acting like Epic doesn't exist. They don't chase exclusives or get into a price war with Epic. Steam is the most popular platform for PC game releases. A subset of users will not consider ever using other platforms. If we accept this as the definition of "monopoly" the way we'd say Windows has a monopoly on x64 PCs, how would changing the revenue split for devs (which appears to be the issue this company's suing Valve over) alleviate this "monopoly"? Sounds to me like forcing Steam to explicitly allow "the game is more expensive on Steam" tactics would just make Steam *even more* of a no-brainer for devs over stuff like Epic or their own platform. You could say that paying the devs/studios a better cut is the point, and I'd see the validity in the argument. But it's completely unrelated to whether or not Valve operates as a monopoly.

Ah yes. Massively unsuccessful games like... *checks notes* League of Legends. World of Warcraft. Fortnite: Battle Royale. The magic part of the PC is that if your independently distributed game *does* fail, you can still, after the fact, decide to slap it on someone's storefront in a desperate attempt for eyeballs - see Overwatch 2. Why *not* double dip? It only costs you hypothetical money you haven't made yet. Am I supposed to be *sad* that E fucking A failed to install their shareholder value store on my computer?

Valve will never IPO, yes! I don't care *why*. Platforms that IPO universally get worse and worse as they wring every drop of shareholder value from their users to feed the infinite growth machine. Platforms that have shareholders (which includes Epic and CDPR's GOG) have a primary motive of "being more profitable than last year". If, let's say, Epic made ten billion dollars in profit last year but *also* made ten billion dollars in profit in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, it'd be a *failed company*. I'll happily take the only company in the PC gaming space that's content with *one* money printer over every other option that's always thinking about how to make a second one, or reduce the ink costs, or blah blah blah. It's just a happy coincidence that in the PC gaming space (unlike pretty much every other space), the shareholder-free thing is *also* the most popular, and best thing. I'd use the worse less-popular thing if that thing were the only thing free from growth capitalism. If a game dev doesn't value their presence on the Steam store higher than the cost of Steam's service, they don't list on Steam. Simple as. It's just that a lot of dev studios consider "visible on the Steam store" to be very valuable indeed. That's what they're paying for, not the stuff about Steam that benefits the user (client features like Input, Workshop, Cloud, Community, etc).

CDPR judges that selling on Steam is enough of a boost that it's worth the cost. Riot (for example) doesn't. If you think every game company or indie studio feels *mandated* to use Steam, that's a hugely consolebrained take. Nintendo has a monopoly. Want your game on Switch? Follow Nintendo's terms and list on Nintendo's store. Apple has a monopoly, challenged recently. Want your app on iPhone? Follow Apple's terms and list on Apple's store. Want your game on Windows PC? Upload an EXE somewhere. Sell a disc. Run your own launcher. Or license out to Steam/Epic/whoever. The only reason you get more sales on Steam is because the PC gaming userbase overwhelmingly prefers Steam. Hell, I play Guild Wars 2, a 12 year old MMO that "launched" on Steam a couple years ago. You can still buy and play that game without any third parties getting involved at all, and always could. It doesn't have any Steam achievements, doesn't benefit from any Steam features, and has a decade old community in spaces other than Steam ones. ArenaNet decided that exposure via Steam recommendations was worth losing $x/player to list on Steam.

If tomorrow someone made a better Steam, how many years would you have to wait to be reasonably secure that it's not fueled by venture capital and serving as a loss leader foot-in-the-door scheme? It's not impossible that Steam itself would enshittify and open an IPO, but the fact that the option's been on the table for decades and Valve hasn't taken it is better evidence than *any* other platform could muster. Valve has proven that it's profitable and that it doesn't need to care about YoY growth. Let's overestimate their operations costs (CDN, R&D, employee salaries) at 5 billion a year. If they made ten billion in revenue last year and only make seven billion this year, *Valve is fine*. Think about that. Think about what a *sixty percent drop* in profits would do to literally any shareholder-backed company. It'd be apocalyptic. That's the main reason I'll use Steam happily but never install another storefront on my PC. I'll buy games on GOG or Itch as DRM-free installers, and store the installers locally, and I'll buy and play games that distribute without a storefront launcher, but the only "storefront platform" anyone's gonna get me to install in the next decade is Steam. If "better Steam" happens, it needs to demonstrate immunity to being bought out by Microsoft/Elon Musk for eighty morbillion dollars. And that can't be demonstrated in a day. That's without any mention of actual "features" like reviews or remote play or proton or steam input or anything that actually makes Steam as a program good/bad. It's all about the company's refusal to go shareholder-driven. If Gabe sells Valve or his successors do, I'm off the ship and scraping the DRM off of my library. What I won't do if that happens is go to someone else's shareholder-value-generating storefront.

The PC is an open platform. Even more so with Linux. Steam doesn't force exclusivity, you're free to host your game on Steam for discoverability while also self-distributing or using other storefronts. Valve's 30% is a price that a studio *chooses* to pay, because they know that a ton of PC gamers *like buying games on Steam*. If all you want out of a storefront is a payment processor, CDN, and possibly DRM, you can release on Steam, Epic, Itch, GOG, or all at once. You pick Steam (or Steam+others) instead of others because you know that enough PC gamers are *willing to pay for your game* on Steam, because *they like Steam*. Epic can tout its small cuts or exclusivity bonuses or "zero percent cuts on the first $x" deals, but game devs know that 100% of revenue on an Epic launch week is going to be a lower absolute number than 70% of revenue on a Steam one.

Yeah, all they need to rake in direct profits from the MS store and *especially* gamepass lock-in is to make it *easier* to do that than install software through other means. Don't forget though, even if it's possible to buy this WinXbox and completely remove Windows from it for SteamOS or Bazzite (unlikely), MS still gets to sell controllers and accessories for the thing. And also, just like installing Linux on a laptop, *most users* are going to use it out of the box. Anything that'll require plugging in a keyboard will immediately gate out any chance of a majority of users *not* using xbox storefront/gamepass/etc on this thing. It's also Microsoft. Their video games division is *tiny* compared to their business sector and other arms. Taking losses in video games just to push the concept of "windows is good and open!" harder to normies (you and i on *fucking lemmy* know that "more open than a nintendo switch" is a low bar to clear and Windows is far from "freedom") might be worth it to the shareholders. After all, they spend how many billions on advertising every year and *that's* a direct loss in exchange for more consumer awareness of their products.

So imagine an Xbox Series X that's also as open as a Steam Deck. Or, to put it simply, imagine a gaming PC with a comfortable couch layout, sold at a much cheaper price point than it'd be as a laptop/desktop because Microsoft can afford to sell it at (or below) cost of parts to push Gamepass subs. Mods, your existing Steam / Epic / GOG / *pirated* libraries. Assuming it's not locked down, it's the first time I've considered owning an Xbox product since the 360. Don't forget, an Xbox that's just a PC is an Xbox that gets all of Sony's cutscene hallways too. And all of Nintendo's games through emulation. And the entire Steam library, and hell since it's Windows (and thus plays nice with rootkit DRM) it's a console that runs League of Legends. A console that runs world of warcraft if you want. That's a console someone's gonna buy, unlike the XSX which is a console with no exclusives (vs PC) and also doesn't have the PC's multiple storefronts and compatibility with your existing libraries and mods.

The ideal outcome (that'll never happen) is a PS6 that *is* a PC. But shareholders would never go for tearing down a walled garden ecosystem.

The GAAS crashouts are the modern equivalent. Shareholders were sold the idea of "our own Fortnite! Infinite money forever!". What they got was Concord. Anthem. Marathon. There'll still be cash-grab GAAS out there, but eventually investors are going to put it together that it's not a safe gamble. But unlike the ET "moment", *video games* as an industry, product, and art medium are here to stay. Making the things is too accessible now for the entire concept to ever be at risk again. The ET moment didn't just threaten Atari, it threatened the concept of home consoles. Trying to imagine a single steaming pile of shit or even industry trend "threatening video games" now is like imagining a movie so bad that it kills cinema. Even if every single shareholder-backed games studio got rugpulled tomorrow, there are plenty of other studios out there to pick up the slack.