Disagree. TotK was absolutely worth it’s pricepoint. Not even going to argue about it, the game was phenomenal.

I can just play one of the many other very good jump’n’run games that do not cost that much money.

Unless a game is on a qualitative excellent level, as BotW and TotK were, I’m not paying 80 bucks for it.

the owner’s personal funds and the company’s funds are supposed to be separate

True for larger companies, not true for smaller start-ups without large funding backing them - at least not in most european countries I’ve been to.

And even for larger private companies - it’s still the owners money. He can take money from the company at any time or just outright liquidate it.

The value and utility of the company come from them as much as from the owner–or more, in many cases. That’s literally why a company would want to employ multiple people.

True, but the actual question is, could the individual employee produce the same output without the companies resources? For most people, this would be a no, because if they could, they’d all be freelancers and make three times the money they make as employee - that’s what happens in IT.

A dude operating a machine for 8 hours a day is not entitled to the profit he makes since he could not do said work without the machine.

It would be unusual, at least in the US, for an owner/CEO to be funding company projects out of their own pocket

??? Bruh what. Of course many owners have to fund projects themselves. You’re thinking only of huge stock traded corpos, but there’s a lot more businesses than those lmao.

The company’s money comes from the employees’ efforts.

Yes, and the employee receives a monthly monetary compensation that was previously agreed on. The employee has 0 risk involved - if the company goes bankrupt, the employee just looks for a new job. The owner of said company might face life-long debt.

I’m gladly willing to criticize CEO pay and the stock market in general because those things are fucked up, but this tankie clowning “MIMIMI MEANS OF PRODUCTION” is so fucking cringe. Businesses are more than that, and pretending otherwise is stupid at best and dishonest at worst.

If they were born into the same wealth that their master was then sure they would.

If they were, they wouldn’t work for anyone but enjoy their life. So no, it would not be funded by anyone and there would be no product at all.

I don’t think buisness owners being lucky enough to own things

Owning things isn’t lucky. There’s countless businesses that do not inherit an emerald mine. Pretending like every business is founded because of wealth parents is stupid at best and dishonest and manipulative at worst.

Are the employees also funding the next project out of their own pockets?

Valhalla combat was very fun. Raiding a place with your viking troop did feel really good.

Yes, I agree that most people are just throwing made up nonsense at ubisoft, no doubt there.

However, the sengoku period is one of the most interesting periods of japanese history, and ubisoft could’ve EASIELY chosen an actual japanese samurai from that time, like hattori hanzo or sanado yukimura, both extremely well known throughout japanese history. Ubisoft choosing the only (recorded) black person in japan during that time just leaves a bad aftertaste in my opinion. The main character of the AC series always represented the area where he’s from - ezio for italy, connor for america, etc, you get the point.

Maybe a bodyguard could be called a samurai depending on how important and trusted he was, and Yasuke was trusted by Nobunaga

Maybe, however, personally, I don’t think so. I obviously have no solid proof, but an “outsider” earning the highest title a normal person can earn in feudal japan seems very outlandish. Public pressure would’ve probably prevented nobunaga from gifting him that title. No doubt he trusted him and received a lot of stuff, but putting him near the top of the social order … nah. I don’t think that happened. But then again, no proof.

Oh yeah, should’ve said that. AC wasn’t a good AC, but a great game, unlike everything that followed it except valhalla.

Yasuke was a professional warrior (almost certainly more than just a regular ashigaru) who fought as a retainer of the Oda clan, that’s a samurai

Not necessarily - not everyone who fought was a samurai, just as not everyone who fought in medieval europe was a knight. However, I do agree that the definition is not entirely strict. He might’ve been a bodyguard, which is the most likely what happened here, which would also explain his loyalty to nobunaga.

And we’re pretty sure he did actual fighting

He was doing actual fighting, there are records of this happening, at least one confirmed battle happened in 1582 when nobunaga was betrayed by mitsuhide. There’s no doubt about that.

I don’t know about other people in his exact position. I do know, however, that in historical records, he was referred to as “suke” which means retainer, not “bushi”.

Ever AC since black flag was terrible in my opinion, with the exception of Valhalla, which was a shit AC, but a damn fun brawler. So I don’t put a lot of faith into this one.

To be fair, yasuke never was a samurai. He was a bodyguard of a jesuit monk (I think?) and was sold to obu nobunaga because he thought he looked “funny”. He was a trusted retainer under nobunaga, but never owned land or was a samurai.

And yet consoles still have physical game copies available all these years later. Why is PC so much different?

It isn’t. You can still buy physical copies of PC games, mostly AAA tho, but nobody does it anymore. Also, there are consoles that are delivered without a cd drive, so they are digital only.

And I’m not saying to be happy that Epic is competition, I’m saying that if GOG dies, you’ll only really have Steam and Epic

To be fair, steam is my platform of choice now anyways because of their awesome linux support.

I 100% believe Valve will go full on enshitification mode. I wouldn’t have to worry as much if I could still buy physical fucking copies of modern PC games

Certainly a worry, however, in case they do become shitty, I’ll just download a bunch of cracks for my games and leave the platform.

Steam didn’t start off where they’re at now, they’ve had 20 years with an entire company dedicated to developing it.

I don’t care tho?

Seriously, this is the worst argument to me. Why should I as a consumer care about that? If someone sells a flip phone now, you’re not going to say: “Oh man samsung had such a big headstart obviously their phones are better”. If a company enters a new space, they have to compete on the same level, not on the level of 20 years ago.

Fuck Epic for buying exclusive rights for third party games, but in this specific context, it is their game, so it is what it is

Ye agree, it is their game rn so they can do that. But a majority of games weren’t.

Why is no one mad at them?

People are mad at them. However, Epic is the one enabling this shitty behavior so they are the ones getting most of the hate.

they have had like a 10+ year headstart on cornering the PC marketplace

So Epic had like 10 years of learning from steam and doing it better, offering a competitive platform and experience. However, they didn’t do that because that actually takes time, money and effort so they just artificially tried to limit the amount of titles for sale on steam, which is basically trying to strongarm consumers into using their platform. Which is quite the same practice you see from any big players in any industry, from apple to john deere - and all are getting hate for it.

you’ll be glad there’s still some competition left

Competition like the EGS? No, I’m definitely not happy about that.

Steam is a huge reason why PC games went fully digital almost two decades ago

Not really. Games would’ve gone digital either way, it was the obvious path to go. Steam might’ve sped up that process by a few years, but pretending that without steam, digitalization of the games industry would’ve never happened is naive at best and dishonest at worst.

Not really comparable IMO. Epic has paid devs/publishers in the past for not releasing on steam. Gearbox, Ubisoft etc

Nobody is mad that fortnite isn’t on steam.

Because there are no games made for the PSP anymore.

If we compare the prices of two devices, we compare the prices of two devices, not the original factory price and a refurbished price.

No but what’s the dumbass comparison lmao

Not an argument, you can also buy refurbished switch for 150 - 200

So counter strike was not gambling before they started to sell hardware?

Nuclear options rarely are the best ones, especially in a case where the harm caused doesn’t even remotely warrant it.

Parents should keep an eye on their kids so this can’t happen. That’s what parents are supposed to do. Removing a good feature because “MUUUH THINK OF THE KIDS” is wrong.

I think more responsibility should be on the individual and responsibility on the parents for minors.

At least we can agree on that.

I do think that we should expect easier parental controls with more granular settings to be able to allow parents to protect their kids from risky trades

Steam has an entire parental control setup with family view where you can completely restrict your children from purchasing or selling anything without your consent.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/4149575031735702628

Yes eBay and Amazon is responsible for not vetting sellers and buyers on their platforms

Guess we fundamentally disagree on this point then.

But if you put all the necessary systems in place to be a casino

I don’t even see that.

What I see is valve offering random items in chests and third party sites gambling your skins away. But these things are not linked in the slightest. I just don’t see how valve is responsible for third parties misusing their platform.

In general, I much prefer the valve system because if I pull an item from a chest that I don’t like I can sell it and potentially get something I need instead of having a dead skin lying around (and therefore literally losing money).

But you can buy products and then sell yhose if you wanted to for legal tender.

In league of legends, I can get random essence from the chests. If I get enough of those, I can buy stuff from the store I could also buy for real money.

The only difference with valve is that they just show the outright amount instead of hiding it behind vbucks or some other fictional currency.

you could sell enough skins to buy Valve’s products, including hardware such as the Steam Deck and their VR headset

Yes, but to me, this is even an upside. Playing CS:GO for years and being able to sell all the skins you collected and converting them into enough money for a steamdeck seems to be a great deal and awesome functionality. If I stop league of legends, all the skins I earned in the game are basically lost.

Is your critique solely because of loot boxes or something else? Because I feel we mess up two topics: Lootboxes being immoral (something I would agree with, but with much worse offenders) and third-party sites offering an illegal casino on valves platform. I just don’t see valve responsible for that but rather the third party sites.

Idk if you unironically think that csgo is built like a casino you either never touched csgo or never set foot in a casino ngl.

But why would they? Trading skins is a big part of the game. I enjoy trading/selling/buying skins every now and then. There is nothing bad about being able to trade stuff.

The problem occurs when third party sellers abuse your platform - but why you would be mad at valve instead of those sellers is beyond me.

So amazon or ebay are responsible for a merchant scamming you?

Wüsthof is responsible for people being stabbed with their knives?

Ferrari is responsible for people driving too fast and crashing with their cars?

Or if we extend it into absurdity: Are you responsible for paying taxes that your country uses for bad purposes?

First of all, you don’t really get “real life money” - you get steam credits. There is no way to convert skins into real money without somehow using a third party sites which is already circumventing steams market. In a casino, if you gamble, you get either money directly or you get credits that you can exchange back to money after you leave.

So yes, I do call him stupid or dishonest for considering it gambling. Valves system is in no way, shape or form worse than stuff like yugioh, magic the gathering or pokemon TCGs that have been available for over 20 years now and much more easiely available aswell to children or even specifically marketed to them.

Which is ironic because fortnite is specifically tailored to children/teens and has had lootboxes until they got sued, had to remove it and were like: “Oh actually we always though lootboxes were stupid :( so we removed them :( pls like us :(.”

Now they’re probably trying to harm valve this way, which is dumb because counter strike is rated 18+.

And yeeees, no kid gives a shit about age rating - well aware of that. But I’m not sueing porn sites because kids can access porn with just clicking “Yes” on the popup.

Sorry to say but I’m not sure if you’re just dishonest as fuck right now or really stupid.

You pull random items out of cases and can sell these items - if you feel like it, you can buy specific items on the market. I don’t see the casino functionality.

No, there’s companies that abuse valves market for their underground casinos.

I honestly don’t get why you are mad at valve when they are not even in the slighest involved in that process apart from offering the market system. That’s like being mad at cloudflare or AWS because a website that scams you uses it.

Lets hope your cousin learned his lesson then.

Ah yes, lets blame an unrelated platform instead of the ones that are abusing it.

Bold of you to call me simplistic lmaooo.

So we take away the market functionality from all players because 3rd party sites misuse it for gambling?

What a dumbshit take, sorry to say.

I don’t see why valve is responsible tho? Blame the gambling sites.

Rimworld

I just keep coming back.

Indie games are the only games worth buying.

AAA is dead in the water for the most part, maybe exept the occasional fromsoft banger

I am well aware of that. But AGAIN, no dev that is self-published complains about the 30% cut because if he did all of the stuff steam does by himself he’d be paying WAY more than the 30% steam charges.