If you think Amazon’s cut should be lower, you’re free to make your own marketplace and compete.

The market is already captured.

The conversation is longer then two comments. It’s highly debatable if valve has a monopoly per the FTC definition, not being sued by them isn’t the bar. You don’t need to have 100% market share. You can have legal monopolies, but that wouldn’t make the gross hoarding of wealth (which is the underlining thread) defendable.

There is no doubt in my mind that they have, in common talk, a soft monopoly at minimum and are colluding and keeping the percentage taken high. If they were actually competing, he wouldn’t be able to afford all the boats.

There is a difference in the problematic being caused, not the ethics. The soft monopoly they all enjoy together as a group (Valve, Microsoft, etc) is having an effect on the industry. We as consumers get worst quality games in the end, because 30% of profits go directly to a few hosting companies. A lot of indie companies would still be around if the game store club wasn’t insanely greedy and artificially keeping such a huge part of the pie.

If it wasn’t the same, Gaben wouldn’t own a handful of boats worth a combined 1 000 000 000 $. That is 9 zeros for boats.

Valve has lawsuits in the work, although not from the FTC. The fact is Valve is just slightly above the other companies, but it’s a very low bar and that doesn’t negate their very real effect on the industry.

I bring up Amazon because your arguments apply to them. If I told you Bezos deserves all his wealth because he has a better platform then his competitors (all three of them) and offers an easy to use website with cheap delivery, you would probably call me a bootlicker.

All billionaires and their profit making machines are bad, no exceptions imo.

Amazon doesn’t either. Most of the arguments defending Steam can easily apply to every other “bad” company.

The only thing that differentiates steam is their marketing budget targeting small forums and Reddit.

You could defend Amazon with that logic. the fact that the barrier of entry is high is exactly what let’s Steam, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo abuse of their soft monopoly.

Nothing justifies owning a billion dollars worth of of boats.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.11553

Here is the pre-print. Awesome stuff.

I’m planning on getting a Rii Bluetooth controller for the computer on my tv. It seems well thought out, with a keyboard and mousepad on it. It’s not a simple few buttons though.

Bro, read. It’s literally in his comment.

If the data is intercepted, the receiver knowns. It’s a huge advantage.

If the bubble pops though, it means the market is going to get flooded.

I think there’s a difference between letting it do somethings and letting it finish something.

It shouldn’t be the one clicking the send button because everything needs to be verified, but it’s fine to have it surf the internet or turn a request into a set number of tasks with a to-do list.

Writing an email with it is a no-go for me though, I avoid it the moment it comes to actually communicating with someone. Using AI strikes me as patronizing.

I think the main problem is since the steam machine is relatively open and, if it is sold at a loss, then companies will bulk buy them to replace their infrastructure. A bit like what happened to one of the PlayStation releases.

Link to the paper? Seems interesting and google isn’t giving me much.

An AGI is just a software that can do anything a human can (more or less). Something that could use blender for example or do proper research.

Llms can already already understand images and other data formats, they might be a pathway to agi but most think they have too many constraints for it to reach that far.

https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/story/news/2005/02/16/violent-video-game-blamed-for-deaths/27880706007/

I consider open source already won. Gpt 5 was supposed to be a big step forward but it got smoked in the space of a month. The only thing I’m worried about is the music models.

Meta basically stabbed all the big for profit companies in the back, and now China is walking towards what is left with a revolver. I feel like we got lucky tbh.

It doesn’t matter how the monopoly forms, Gaben is still one of the rat fucks profiting from it. He wouldn’t have been able to spend a billion dollars on boats if he wasn’t.

Whatever arguments you think you have, ask yourself first if they apply to Musk or Bezos. They probably do.

Every company in a soft monopoly charges the industry standard, that is how soft monopolies work.

They all stop charging what it’s worth and pick a number together that equals maximum profits.

And collusion with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

He charges 30% like the rest of them, he isn’t trying to compete.

Valve encourages and keeps the system broken just as much as Microsoft or Nintendo does. They all try really hard not to compete.

They do have high salaries, but it’s also a ridiculously small company for the money they make. Gaben is still making money hand over fist, and the employees making big money are all on the admin team.

Steam could charge a 5% fee and give the rest to developers. The services and salaries would still stay the same. It would give Gaben enough money to cover his billion dollar boats fleets maintenance cost, just not enough to buy himself a new yacht every two years.