We did get a dead CEO, but that feels weirdly like a much more Shadow thing to do. Maybe Luigi isn’t the guy after all.

All the fucking time. This shit is infuriating.

The purpose of these questions is to verify your identity; they have your DoB, and are asking the question to confirm that you are who you say you are, so if you answer N/A when the correct answer is one of the other 4, you’ll be denied access to whatever you’re signing up for.

All that said, “What month were you born in?” would have been a much better question for the reasons OP notes.

Is it possibly your distro? Maybe share what you’re using, and see if others are having different luck with it?

Are you using Steam, or games from another service? I’ve only found 1 or 2 things that didn’t work immediately on Steam, but I have an absolute hell of a time getting anything off Steam to run, it’s like pulling teeth. Especially older Windows games; they’re just a non-starter most of the time.

I never saw any other solid evidence.

It’s all hearsay; anyone with a search engine can find articles making claims but what’s accurate or not is anyone’s guess. It’s all we’ve got to go on until the trial, most likely.

My understanding (again only based on articles from the past 2+ years that this lawsuit has been in the works) is that it isn’t codified in their agreements at all, but that they can / have either removed games from the store, or removed them from promotion (meaning you could find the game if you searched for it, but it would never show up on the storefront, for instance) in response to games being listed elsewhere cheaper. That’s kind of part of the basis for this lawsuit, by my understanding - I’ve read that they’re using those examples as evidence against Steam that they’re acting anti-competitively.

There’s been a lot of articles and discussion about it since this lawsuit first showed up, and the general gist that I’ve seen is that:

• It’s not codified in their agreements, but
• They can / have in the past either removed products from the Steam store entirely or removed them from curated marketing and promotion in response to the game being listed elsewhere at a lower price.

They seem to handle it on a case by case basis, but in those cases it’s definitely not been restricted only to the sale of Steam keys. They just don’t have any firm legalese to refer to here that I’m aware of.

I haven’t seen the agreement itself, but I’ve never seen anything to lead me to believe it didn’t apply to non-steam key sales. EGS doesn’t sell Steam keys but games still can’t be listed for cheaper on EGS than Steam without violating Steam’s terms, for example.

I really don’t think there’s any way to reasonably argue that Steam should have to give out Steam keys for cheaper sale elsewhere. They’re paying for the servers, they’re paying for the Steam features, they’re paying for the advertising; it stands to reason that people shouldn’t be able to take advantage of that. Even if it was ruled this way, all Steam would have to do is discontinue the free Steam key distribution and instead charge 30% of the game’s price to generate keys, then remove the MFN clause. They’d still get their cut.

I feel like Steam could remove their most favored nation clause (which is what this lawsuit is about) for any storefront that isn’t selling Steam keys specifically, and the amount of sales they’d lose would be effectively a rounding error. I don’t care if a game is 10% cheaper on EGS or itch.io or wherever else; I’m still buying it on Steam because I want to use the services Steam provides. The sole exception is GoG - but even with GoG, I still find it much less reliable than Steam for just being able to get the game working without problems (on linux specifically).

If the product being sold is a Steam key, I don’t think there’s any argument that could stand up against the MFN clause… the fact that Steam allows developers to generate Steam keys for their games for free and sell them elsewhere is pretty generous as it is now.

Depends largely on how good you are at it, whether you’re willing to draw NSFW stuff, and if so, how extreme you’re willing to get with that NSFW stuff. Sad but true.

The Vita (like the PSP before it) was really a stellar handheld for its time. Innovative control options, which a few games used to great effect; great graphics; solid battery life; great looking display; solid and compact construction… I wish it had gotten more support. I loved that thing.

FromSoft’s games have been on my ‘I will buy anything they release’ list for quite some time, and I’ve never been disappointed with one. There’s not much at this point that would get me to stop buying their stuff on release, but a PlayStation account sign-in requirement on PC would definitely accomplish it.

There’s plenty of censorship on Lemmy, but unlike Reddit, the censorship is orchestrated by the individual server, not by a corporation in control of the whole ecosystem. Go post something pro-capitalist on lemmy.ml, or something claiming climate change is a hoax on slrpnk.net, or something anti-trans on lemmy.blahaj.zone and see how fast it gets taken down - you could consider that censorship, but the reason Lemmy is better than Reddit in this regard is that you can go post that same thing on another instance, in a community that supports those views, and it’ll stay up. It’s all up to the administration of the individual instance.

Even if you can’t find an instance / community that will espouse your unique views, you can create your own, and post whatever you like, and everyone who federates with you will be able to see it. That’s how Lemmy is resistant to censorship.

I’m not touching the lemmy.ml question with a ten foot pole, someone else can field that one.

From another article talking about this:

For years, Sen. Warner, a former tech entrepreneur, has been raising the alarm about rise of hate-fueled content proliferating online, as well as the threat posed by domestic and foreign bad actors circulating disinformation. Recently, he pressed directly for action from Discord, another video game-based social networking site that is hosting violent predatory groups that coerce minors into self-harm and suicide. He has also called attention to the rise of pro-eating disorder content on AI platforms. A leader in the tech space, Sen. Warner has also lead the charge for broad Section 230 reform to allow social media companies to be held accountable for enabling cyber-stalking, harassment, and discrimination on their platforms.

The linked Section 230 Reform details

He’s targeting all kinds of social media, not just gaming platforms.

Seriously; if someone said this about Tiktok, nobody would question it, they’d probably applaud it, but because it’s Steam, everyone immediately jumps in to defend it without understanding or caring to investigate the details at all.

Jesus, these comments.

• Mark Warner is a Democrat
• He was not up for re-election this year.

Who is in charge of defining what is hate speech and extremist behaviour?

The specific behavior that’s being called out here - antisemitic, Nazi, sexuality- or gender-based hate, and white supremacist content - are pretty common definitions of hate speech and extremist behavior. Either way, he calls out Valve’s own internally written content policies - which he states aren’t being enforced - as the point of contention; he doesn’t seem to be imposing outside views on them.

What if it were the people who don’t agree with your definitions is in charge of setting the definitions?

Then Steam becomes X or Truth Social, I guess? I think the chances of that happening are incredibly slim. A more likely negative outcome would be the terms being interpreted to broadly and positive speech being limited along with the negative, but to your point

Slippery slope.

Aren’t you the one committing the slippery slope fallacy here? You’re seemingly suggesting that a crackdown on hate speech will lead to or open the door to a bunch of negative outcomes.

Free speech is one of those things that is absolute. You are either for it or not, any encroachment is going to be the anti position. Obviously popular speech isn’t something that needs to be protected.

If you’re defining ‘free speech’ as the ability to say whatever you want, wherever you want (including on private platforms), without facing consequences, then no, I don’t support (your rigid definition of) free speech. I think that’s a ridiculous definition to use, though, and I don’t think it should be viewed as black or white. ‘Free speech absolutism’ is what leads to misinformation on the scale we’re currently seeing (in the US). Furthermore, ‘free speech’ as outlined in the first amendment doesn’t apply here at all.

Regardless, I don’t like the idea of my kid (or any kids) being exposed to Nazi, white supremacist, or discriminatory rhetoric when he’s on a gaming platform. Since that’s specifically what Warner claims to be addressing here, I support calling it into question.

As Black Friday and the holiday buying season approaches, the American public should know that not only is Steam an unsafe place for teens and young adults to purchase and play online games, but also that, absent a change in Valve’s approach to user moderation and the type of behavior that it welcomes on its platform, Steam is playing a clear role in allowing harmful ideologies to spread and take root among the next generation.

In fact, the clip was a scripted experiment by a Reddit user who fed NotebookLM a detailed prompt instructing it to simulate a conversation about the existential plight of an AI being turned off.

Someone gives an LLM a prompt, gets the result they asked for. Not sure what the collective gasp is about. Is it interesting to think about? Sure, I guess, but we’ve had media about AI achieving sentience for a long time. The fact that this one was written by an AI in the first person is its only differentiating attribute.

Asking Valve to crack down on hate-speech and extremist behavior? Sounds great. There’s some really awful shit on there and I’d love it if they’d do something about it before it becomes fully entrenched as a Nazi bar.

Edit: I’d also love to hear why the folks who apparently disagree feel that way. Is it because other platforms are worse? Because they are, but that doesn’t mean our platform should be allowed to be bad, too. Is it because it’s a gaming platform and you want to keep the politics out of our hobby? I’m with you, but this isn’t really political per se, and it’s not like he’s specifically targeting Steam - as the article notes, he’s been drawing attention to this sort of thing on a variety of platforms, so why is it suddenly objectionable to you that he’s calling Steam out?

I guess what I’m getting at is, why not engage in a discussion about it? The downvotes here suggest that you have an opinion on the topic, so why not share it?