Right. This is only “right” because tech corporations were allowed to undermine the meaning of ownership without any attempt to protect customer rights. The concept of “buying a license” is fundamentally contradictory, because without the transfer of ownership, nothing was “bought”. Yet they still present this licensing process as if it was a purchase, which is deceptive.

Many take it for granted that this is just the nature of digital purchases, but the digital market simply created the opportunity for companies to redefine purchases with less resistance. Now they are trying to do the same with physical objects: physical media, technological devices, vehicles, so forth, trying to establish that people didn’t own what they bought.

And the basis of all of this is simply that they wrote some text that they said so. Can you imagine if customers tried something like this? They would be laughed out of the room. It’s a sham. The flimsiest possible pretense of legitimacy. Yet it’s treated as valid because they have the lawyers to defend it while the average customer does not, and governments often neglect their role to advocate in favor of the public.

They don’t owe Epic any respect or reasons to dislike them either. For all this “all companies are bad”, you are being a bit picky over when they can or can’t be judged.

I gave you my reasons why I don’t like them. They are not jumping into the game client market in the early 2000s, they are did it 2018. They have had the blueprint ready, with many examples, but they didn’t care to match the other alternatives in the market. Which in itself wouldn’t be such an issue, but it does leave a bad taste when they make themselves the only option where to buy certain games. I don’t hate them because it’s cool, I hate them because they inconvenience me.

No company is good but that doesn’t mean they are all equally, identically bad.

We have seen what Valve did when it was not the market leader because it didn’t spawn in such a place. What they did is lock their own games to their own platform, which is something most other PC storefronts do or did at some point.

We did not yet see what Epic would do if it would got to the top. Is it even guaranteed that they would continue to take less revenue?

And really, if all companies are bad, what’s the point of rooting for Epic to overtake Steam?

I see people going “this is what you get for buying digital”, and that’s what they are not seeing. This is not about digital being more unreliable than physical. This is an attack at the concept of customer ownership itself.

It shouldn’t be, but fighting Microsoft in court would be hellish, and not even a guaranteed win given how much undue influence corporations have over the justice system and politicians.

I can agree that GoG doesn’t have a large share of the market, but I’m still unconvinced of the benefit of this call for competition for competition’s sake when it’s introducing anti-competitive practices. Usually we want competition to push back against anti-competitive practices.

Ok, I really don’t get Epic hate. Sure, they’re using shitty practices to attempt to compete with the megolith Valve is, and it sucks.

Meanwhile GOG attempts to compete by offering features that other platforms don’t offer, like DRM-free installers and a multi-platform game launcher.

If Epic got to #1 place, what guarantees there are that they would stop using exclusivity deals to hinder their own competitors? It might just be that we end up with a more anti-competititve market leader, and then what would be the benefit of having overtaken Steam?

Absolutely do not support this view of “the company sold the product but they still own it”. Tim Cook isn’t handing out iPhones as a favor.

It’s definitely disingenuous. They are using their legal defense as marketing, “you guys don’t get it, we are just sooo much more secure as a monopoly”.

Hanlon’s Razor shouldn’t be used for business and politics because there are big incentives to be malicious and play dumb there.

What you call “building the ecosystem” I’d call selling products to users that should be allowed to make their own choices. They could very well choose to stick with Apple, but why does Apple get to decide that for them?

Considering how this is being pushed by petty micromanagers at expense of profits, they might as well see it that way.

Fair enough

Our society is long overdue giving con men the ass kicking they deserve.

It doesn’t help that social media censorship is leading to a more constrained language, if anything. Not only profanities are either censored or shadowbanned by some platform algorithms, there’s also general use words for sensitive topics such as suicide, abortion and the like.

Then perish. 😈🔪

Yeah but I don’t have a climate controlled storage for it

Well, we are seeing what happens when they randomize it. It doesn’t always work.

Thanks for sharing your opinion about it.

Not really. People may talk shit about comments, but if it was just a matter of getting just articles, you might as well stick to the news sites. Even as far as pure news aggregation goes there are better options than relying on whatever a handful people decide to share here.

There’s value in public commentary too. It may not be as polished as these articles but it provides a variety of perspectives, questions and criticism that might be pertinent, and for as lacking or biased as they may be, it’s much easier to tell compared to sources trying to pretend impartiality.

There’s a reason why we are here and not on, say, Feedly. This particular community only highlights it further, since it’s entirely based on the interpersonal element. Ain’t nobody looking for journalism or scientific articles on !Showerthoughts

They had a brand that was so powerful it was used as a verb, and he gave it up for the letter that is used as a generic placeholder, just because he’s obssessed with it for whatever reason.