903
Why is Google allowed to remove purchases from our Play Store accounts without telling us?
(www.androidpolice.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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It's their accounts, you just have access to them. They can close the whole thing tomorrow.
I don't even want to know what will happen when the valve guy retires. A publicly owned (edit: meant to write privately owned) company that could just shut down tomorrow. Many gaming publishers are aware, having their own launchers. Are you?
I'm telling you, root server, self-hosted everything and FOSS. If you can't do your things with that, it ain't worth doing anyway.
To start with, you're right. Digital distribution in general is volatile for consumers. While I will say that Steam, at present, is leagues better in that you must download the game purchase in order to play it (meaning, you have a direct copy of the game on your hard drive, which will remain there even if the game is removed from the Steam store), it is not outside the realm of possibility that this could change in the future.
That said, publishers having their own launchers, I'm sorry to say, has absolutely nothing to do with their fears over "the valve guy" retiring (his name is Gabe Newell, by the way), and significantly more to do with making more money. These publishers figure if they can get you, the consumer, to buy their games directly from them, they can make 100%+ of the money, instead of having to pay Steam a percentage for any transaction. Due to the limited scope of these Publisher-run launchers, purchasing a game from them is even more volatile than purchasing from Steam (at least in the current climate), in such that if the Publisher suddenly finds their launcher is not bringing in customers (which, on average, compared to the draw of Steam at present, they generally don't) publishers could simply drop their launchers and the catalog of games you, the customer, may have purchased from that launcher would go with them... again, yes, this could happen if Steam went down, but presently, pound for pound, the publisher's launchers are far more likely to fall than Steam will.
Also... for any of these services (Steam or publisher launchers), you have to download the game locally in order to run them. The games are not streaming as most movie and music content is. As such, once you install a game, you could crack them to remove any DRM attached to them (barring any game that's strictly online), then, yeah, you can self-host/store these games yourself all you want. If you buy games from GOG they make this even easier for you.
Thank you for taking the time.
Those launchers will be installed even if you use steam. You are mixing up store and launcher. The launcher often exists to have a viable game without steam running.
Saying it has absolutely nothing to do with it is a bit weird. I have bought most of my games on Steam since 2014, yet I have all the launchers.
Gog is the way to go for non-online games. And all the classics. And yeah, of course, the games often require online components. Not much to be done there. Sometimes, things just die.
Sometimes, they don't. I still run a Trackmania server. Glorious.
So if steam went down, my games with launchers would still work. All others would be a crap shoot, at least until valve releases some offline-steam as a farewell for their customers.
Or they'll have to resort to cracks, which could be illegal, or even criminal in some areas of the world.
It's a private company. You can't invest in them.
Valve is private, yes, but you can still invest into them if Gabe accepts your investment.
Lol, you know what I meant
The Valve guy doesn't run a publicly owned company. But go on, keep spewing.
How does that make a difference? Anyhow, I meant to write privately owned. My mistake.
The difference is that a hostile takeover can't happen.
Unless the founder still owns a majority of the shares, you can take control of a public company without needing the consent of the board (and CEO, founder, etc)
A hostile takeover doesn't have to happen. If Gaben decides "fuck you all" and decides to close the company, then there's not a damn thing you can do about it. It's his company and it doesn't owe you the privilege of continuing to exist.
I know it can happen, but that still makes a difference between public and private companies. That's one risk less.
Especially for Valve which is a very desirable company for their position as de facto PC games online store.
Yeah, it doesn't make much difference, I just commented on the low-hanging fruit of what was clearly incorrect.
My bigger problem is with your fear-mongering and the gibberish that assumes that self-hosted FOSS solutions are somehow a viable alternative for the majority of users. I'll pick privacy-compromised convenient products 9 times out of 10 and actually spend my time doing things I want to do, and I'm pretty bored reading all the privacy nutjobs trying to tell me how to do things.
What fearmongering. Being cautious and talking about it is fearmongering now?
And why shouldn't privately run FOSS solutions be viable for the majority of users? Millions and millions are doing it.
That's like saying that cooking isn't viable for home-use and that all people should just order their food, trusting that the service holds up their deal regarding quality. If they even follow a standard.
It is just a matter of lifestyle and how much one values their own authority over things. You seem to be biased in this area, yet I'm sure, in other areas you are doing exactly what you are calling me a nut job for.
You are throwing opinions out without any reasoning attached.
Your claim: "root server, self-hosted everything and FOSS. If you can’t do your things with that, it ain’t worth doing anyway."
Do you really think I need to "reason" why this is utter nonsense? Fine, here you go. My elderly technically barely-literate father and mother are supposed to self-host their email servers so as not to just use Gmail? Old people who don't speak English and use Netflix or HBO or whatever to stream movies and TV series are supposed to self host Jellyfin and torrent their stuff? They're supposed to use OpenStreetMap to find directions around the city instead of Google Maps, because "privacy"?
Maybe my grandparents should run GrapheneOS.
Or perhaps you're suggesting that, since they can't root server and self-host FOSS stuff instead of using off-the-shelf products, they should just not watch anything other than cable TV, and write letters by hand and post them. And if they need to go somewhere that they don't know the way to, they should just ask for directions on the street (and hope the person they're asking doesn't just pull up Google Maps, since then they'd be using it by proxy!), oldschool style.
This is not viable, feasible, or possible. "Millions and millions are doing it" tells me you have little understanding of the scale at which modern technology is used. There are an estimated 7 billion smartphones in the world. Almost 2 billion gmail accounts. So the fact that "millions" are using self-hosted FOSS alternatives means... basically nothing.
Home cooking has been a staple human activity for millennia. It is widespread, it's a skill passed on from one generation to the next, slowly ingrained in people. And even then, the majority of people are absolutely trash at cooking, can barely cobble together one or two recipes, buy ready-made meals, have others cook for them, order out or go to restaurants. Your "root server, self-hosted everything and FOSS. If you can’t do your things with that, it ain’t worth doing anyway." could be "buy your own ingredients and home-cook every meal you eat. If you can't do your things with that, eating ain't worth it for you" and it would still have been utterly ridiculous despite billions more people in the world having the ability to do it.
You need to accept that self hosting and FOSS is for a fringe part of the population and suggesting it as the solution to the issues that currently exist with services like Steam or Google or Netflix is counter-productive. Maybe many generations from now it will be possible to have a sizeable amount of people using technology that way, but now ain't it.
And by the way, I've been on the Internet since like 1998, I went through Napsters and DC++ and I torrented tons and tons of things for years and years. But even for me, the idea of doing what you suggest is absolutely exhausting and not something I really want to find the time to engage in. "It is just a matter of lifestyle and how much one values their own authority over things.", you say, and you're right. That's a much more reasonable stance than your original comment. The truth is I don't care too much about the authority I have over "my media" or "my data".
Fine. Be that guy.
Setting up that complicated FOSS stuff took me six hours, ten years ago. With another hour every six months to maintain, if at all, as most things update themselves. And you know what? My parents can use them too, as they are all set up to be multi-user by default.
You just don't care. Why argue about it then, trying to make others not care, spreading your ignorance. Even calling me a fearmonger. You being afraid is not on me. It's your own ignorance.
Perhaps, just perhaps, you should have taken a minute to learn about the tech you are using. Torrented for years, eh? And now you are the literal jock putting down nerds, because they did learn? And we nerds spent two decades at making it all easy. Installing your own cloud on a root server takes five clicks and ten minutes for heaven's sake. Installing the root server itself is done in a matter of two hours. They even come hardened out of the box.
I can't argue with ignorance. I've never talked about replacing each and every technology with FOSS. Just the sensible ones, the ones with money attached. With privacy attached.
And that is both cheap, and easy to do. And your parents could just hire someone. You know, like hiring a carpenter, doctor, gardener. Have you heard of businesses? You don't have to spend ten minutes on it.
FOSS is being used by a fringe part of the population. Why change that, you don't care. Why should anyone think differently?
You are strawmanning, adding new topics at will too. I can't write a book here.
Feel free to take it as a win. I wonder though, why are you here, and not on reddit? Oh. Right. I would guess: because of your freedom and privacy, right? Did you get banned there? Your comments deleted? So you do care. Just not enough? Just a tiny portion of people use lemmy, after all.
Where to draw the line? Damn double standards, eh? .
You accuse me of being afraid. Of what exactly? You're the one afraid Gaben is going to pull the plug on Steam and other stuff like this. I'm not. You're the one saying everything needs to be self-hosted FOSS. I don't care if it's not.
I don't want to take anything as a win, but I realize now that you are so divorced from the reality in which we live that there's no point continuing to debate. 80-year olds who can barely afford food should... hire businesses to root their phones and install self-hosted mail servers for them? That may work in some highly privileged places in the world, but do you have any idea what conditions the vast majority of humans on this planet live in? What their priorities are?
You say you "never talked about replacing each and every technology with FOSS." but that's exactly what you said in your first post and that's what irritates me and what I take issue with. If your stance would have been "I like to self-host stuff for myself and family and use FOSS. You should look into it, it's cool and not that hard", I'd have upvoted you and not batted an eye. But you came in here with the sweeping generalisation that if you can't root, self-hosted FOSS something "it ain't worth doing".
I never called anyone a nerd and I'm not sure why you feel like that's the case.
And not that it should matter, but I'm not on reddit anymore since they killed RIF and I a) didn't like their stance with regards to third party apps and b) can't stand the official mobile app. Not really because of my privacy, and no I didn't get banned.
Anyway, I accidentally came across another one of your posts on a different topic on here, and now I understand. I'm sorry for having engaged you at all and please accept my sympathies.