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The community to discuss buying European goods and services.
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local investment, job creation, innovation, increased competition, more redundancy.
European Instances
Lemmy:
Basque Country: https://lemmy.eus/
๐ง๐ช Belgium: https://0d.gs/
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria: https://feddit.bg/
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๐ฑ๐น Lithuania: https://group.lt/
๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands: https://feddit.nl/
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๐ฌ๐ง UK: https://feddit.uk/
Matrix:
๐ฌ๐ง UK: matrix.org & glasgow.social
๐ซ๐ท France: tendomium & imagisphe.re & hadoly.fr
๐ฉ๐ช Germany: tchncs.de, catgirl.cloud, pub.solar, yatrix.org, digitalprivacy.diy, oblak.be, nope.chat, envs.net, hot-chilli.im, synod.im & rollenspiel.chat
๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands: bark.lgbt
๐ฆ๐น Austria: gemeinsam.jetzt & private.coffee
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland: pikaviestin.fi
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Steam is still basically the only option AND they are actually helping Linux a lot with game compatibility. Altough, if I need games specifically on steam I'll be buying the key from Greenmangaming (UK) or GamersGate (Sweden). If anybody has more alternatives feel free to let me know so I can add them to my list.
GOG sadly misses a majority of games atm so I just can't replace steam with it yet.
isthereanydeal.com
No grey market key sellers, only legit.
I think Steam might be the only private company in this.
Really says a lot.
It does.
Private companies are - often - not driven by pure greed. The people work hard for their company to be successful and they are much less likely to fuck it all over with a stupid move.
Public companies, however, are controlled by a bunch of money motivated monkeys that couldn't give a rats ass about a company's future. They'll bleed it all dry and go to the next company.
Dude, Steam is selling games you don't own. How greedy is that?
least socialist lemmy user
I sometimes feel an anxiety when pondering what will happen when daddy Gabe isn't here to keep the wolves at bay.
me: steam is terrible; it's just drm with a nice bow on top
steam: steam visual novel fest starts now
me: i love steam stuffs more items on my wishlist
(for real tho itch.io and gog are much better use them - and download the actual offline installers from gog don't use galaxy)
You are allowed to say Fuck on the Internet. Why are you following the self-censorship rules for Instagram and other social networks if you are making a joke about them?
Looks like it was baked into the image template they used
I realised that those who censor themselves on the Internet, grew up on the Internet when YouTube started demonitising profanities and thus picked up the habit.
We are getting old.
youtube was good before googol bought it, now it is crap.
Daily dose of getting old: that buyout was like 20 years ago
The buyout was less than a year into it existing
Very few actually remember pre-google youtube
I still don't understand why the company is so highly regarded. They enable underage gambling. Life must be easy for a company. You just have to be a little bit better than the others and you are regarded as a hero.
i mean, out of all things a company can do that are bad, underage gambling is probably one of the better ones, and the argument in favor of it is that it's on games like csgo and cs2, where the age range is obviously higher than an actual child.
Realistically, i think you have to be kind of stupid to get caught in gambling, but it is also definitely predatory, and there's a reason it's a heavily regulated industry. There's definitely a better solution than we currently have, but it's not as bad as it could be either.
"underage gambling is probably one of the better ones", "you have to be kind of stupid to get caught in gambling" you seem like you do not know what you are talking about respectfully.
Have you watched cofeezilla? The industry already has armed mafia structures.
i'm just saying, i can think of a lot worse things a company can do. Amazon, notably. Most countries without substantial labor protection laws, probably also rank worse. Countries currently at war, or controlled by gang violence, probably also worse.
The prison industrial complex, that's pretty bad. Spending money because you're mentally incapable of processing how spending money in that fashion is bad, yeah probably possibly to be worse than that.
Have you watched cofeezilla? The industry already has armed mafia structures.
im sorry steam has a militia?
Sure there is always worse, but you don't have to like B because of what A did.
steam does not, but the economy, that they are center of has. Operators of online skin casinos are adopting mafia tactics. You could say "oh, that is just some fringe groups at the outside", but these actors are deeply embedded with streamers, competitive events and the entire culture.
yeah that's pretty typical of any sort of "tradeable currency" digital or not, these sites are all hosted in countries with favorable laws, and in places where it's hard to regulate them.
There's shitty people on the internet, should we personally vet and maintain every single user of the internet, or should we just be "moderate" about it. The question of the ages, how much do we actually care about this specific problem.
Look, I agree, that they do many good things for consumer protection. They blocked NFT in games and in game advertisement, but they sit at the center of a damaging marketplace and could stop it, but don't and deserve criticism for that.
and it is fair criticism, i have no problem with that. I'm just not sure it's worth demonizing them over. A lot of companies, even good ones, have bad practices, it's just the way the world works, it's hard to do everything absolutely perfectly.
Again, not trying to justify it, i'm just saying there's a level of expectation i think you need to set.
Costco is cool too! They have local products.
Most important of all they compensate their employees like they are actual humans.
steam is just so based.
I dont think a single more based company has ever existed. It rivals the greats like linux, with a touch of gambling.
I dont think a single more based company has ever existed.
Hyperbole much? I like Steam as much as the next guy but lets not pretend the guy that owns 6 yachts is a good person just because he's better than the next worst. Steam DRMs the shit out of games sold on their platform and if you're an indie dev that wants to sell your game Steam is THE place to do it.
Steam made $10bn last year, they have about 100 employees (their parent company Valve has about 400). I used to be a bigger fan of GabeN but more recently really started considering him and looking into it and realized he's just another unethical billionaire. This video by Coffeezilla is a good jumping off point. regarding the intentional targeting of youth with addictive gambling mechanics in loot crates and circumventing gambling laws. It's all very purposeful and continues to this day.
Steam's DRM is completely optional and is among the least intrusive DRMs available for developers to use. Many games are sold 100% DRM-free on Steam.
I don't know of a single game on/from Steam that doesn't require Steam to run. Thats DRM.
I wouldn't have started even dual booting Linux if it wasn't for Steam after being pleasantly surprised with my Steam Deck played most of my Steam library. It's the primary why I intend to get AMD gpu next time around for the better driver support, but that won't be for a few years.
Yep, if you want a reason why Valve are "less evil" than other companies, one big thing to point to is the huge investment they've made into the Linux ecosystem. Even though it's in their own interests (Microsoft locking out steam would cripple their income), we can see with Epic suing Google/Apple that there are other, shittier ways that they could have attempted the same thing. The investment they've made into Linux, Proton, KDE etc benefit everyone and can't be taken away on a whim.
Steam may be a very successful business, but theyโre still the seed crystal for a whole ecosystem of gambling that preys on addicts and children with the whole CSGO loot box thing. Take a wild guess what forms of addiction have the highest suicide rates?
Fuck Valve. Fuck all Corps. No business has ever nor can ever, genuinely give a shit about anything other than increasing profit.
On the other hand, Valve wishing to seek an alternative to Microsoft's poor decision^[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)#cite_note-cvg_newell_linux-2%3A%7E%3Atext=upon+the+release+of+Windows+8+in+2012] making has been a great boon to the Linux community. Valve was also there at the start of Vulkan^[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan#History]. But is "funny" that Gabe Newell started off as a Microsoft employee, in fact the one that led the team that ported Doom to Windows with Doom95 and in turn also helped launch Windows (95) as the gaming OS for decades to come.
As much as I distrust and hate corporations, Valve isn't in it for the shareholders, you can't buy Valve stocks and that means they at least have a bit more soul than a lot of other corporations - even though they are profit seeking.
What I don't like about them is how they sell you a service, not an actual game. You technically buy a lifelong lease on each game, never ownership. Your shit can be gone in minutes with nothing to prove for it, except for bank statements saying Valve took your money.
Which is why I'll always buy on GOG^[https://www.gog.com/en/about_gog] if possible. DRM free and European.
Does everyone just keep glossing over the โthey enable the abuse of addicts and childrenโ part?
Iโm not saying I disagree with your other points Iโm just confused.
Because it's a weak-ass point, quite simply. Capitalism itself does that shit, not gonna knock Valve for something every game company does, if we play that game with everyone it gets exhausting
"Wont SOMEBODY think of the children?" Is literally a Simpsons meme