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Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

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Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#511

Post by jorl17 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #371
reactordev wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things do not prevent cheating at all. They are merely a remote control system that they can send instructions to look for known cheats. Cheating still exists and will always exist in online games. You can be clever and build a random memory allocator. You can get clever and watch for frozen struct members after a known set operation, what you can’t do is prevent all cheating. There’s device layer, driver layer…

That's easy to say. But they do prevent some cheating. Don't believe me? Consider the simplest case: No anti-cheat whatsoever. You can just hook into the rendering engine and draw walls at 50% transparency. That's the worst case. Now, we add minimal anti-cheat that convolutes the binary with lots of extra jumps and loops at runtime. Now, someone needs to spend time figuring out the pattern. That effort isn't free. No…

100% agree. This is exactly the kind of big picture thinking that so many people often seem to miss. I did too, when I was young and thought the world was just filled with black and white, good vs evil dichotomies

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#512

Post by Rohansi »

torginus wrote: post #316
socalgal2 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like Apple: a well-liked company that has an obvious and not inherently exploitive business model. Apple does have an exploitive business model. Take 30% from every business that's not them. Apple is trying to own the entire world. They're quickly becoming the bank by offering Credit Cards and Savings. I'm sure once they get big enough they'll turn the screws and add more charges because no company will want to los…

I honestly can't remember the last time I brought something through the App Store - my lifetime total money spent there is probably less than $500

You also need to include (digital) purchases made inside of apps because Apple also takes a 30% cut there. That is likely the bigger amount because it includes all of the in-app microtransactions for games.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#513

Post by tomrod »

mcny wrote: post #487
InvisibleUp wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it a touch strange, in the abstract, that a corporation being public is a bad thing. On paper it should be a good thing; being publicly owned should mean that your corporation has turned from a private business venture into effectively public infrastructure that's impossible to boycott and depended on to some extent by everybody. As a result, financial statements should be (and are) public and transparent, and…

> (There's also strange situations like Google/Alphabet, which is publicly owned, but effectively does not allow shareholders to vote on anything.) You mean the special class B shares that gives 10 votes per share, right? It isn't just Google though. Facebook and Snapchat also do the same thing, iirc?

And, famously, Berkshire Hathaway

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#514

Post by nialv7 »

whatever1 wrote: post #493

Don’t you think that if usage goes significantly up, MS will just use its lawyers to shut down all of these cute initiatives ?

No, the supreme court has settled it [0], there's no basis for a lawsuit.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#515

Post by tomrod »

positron26 wrote: post #475
ethbr1 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ponzi schemes work* too. *At a specific point in time and for certain investors

Please just talk about capital and leverage like an adult. Do you expect a CFO and their team to look at the math and say, "Well, we figured out that we can speed up adoption and bring forward billions of dollars of revenue by spending fewer billions from capital injection and debt deals this year" and then not do it?

Adults tell jokes too, especially gallows humor, and to great effect.

Ergo I propose grandparent commentator inject more humor in their clear understanding of leverage and debt to widen your, my, and their audiences' understanding regarding debt and leverage beyond your proposed metaphor of the toddler CFO failing the marshmallow challenge.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#516

Post by nish__ »

faidit wrote: post #496
InvisibleUp wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it a touch strange, in the abstract, that a corporation being public is a bad thing. On paper it should be a good thing; being publicly owned should mean that your corporation has turned from a private business venture into effectively public infrastructure that's impossible to boycott and depended on to some extent by everybody. As a result, financial statements should be (and are) public and transparent, and…

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own like 90% of stocks, and the top 1% own 50%. While the poorest 50% of the population own about 1% of the stock market. So "publicly" traded (the term public ownership can be confusing because it can also mean state control) just means it's open for the elite to invest in.

It's amazing to me how many people don't get this.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#517

Post by tomrod »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #264
usefulcat wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely more than just private ownership. In fact I’d say that’s the least part of it. Look at all the horror stories about businesses that were bought by PE firms; those are all privately held too.

Private ownership is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to have a business which has a healthy relationship with its customers. You also need the owners to be people of reasonably good character who understand that the best way to run a business is a win-win approach on both sides, not people who see nothing wrong with extracting maximum profit from the business no matter whom it hurts. The PE horror stories…

Theory of abundance, you could classify your approach as. Rather than artificial scarcity to exercise market power.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#518

Post by tomrod »

MobiusHorizons wrote: post #433
kasey_junk wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hypothesis then is that there is not a _single_ public company that has a healthy relationship with its company? Not one, in the entire global public space? When does this relationship with customers happen? Is it at the IPO? When they file the paperwork? When they contemplate going public for the first time? Or is it that any founder who might one day decide to contemplate going public was doomed to unhealthy cu…

> Not one, in the entire global public space? It is genuinely hard to think of one. I treat all companies as adversarial relationships, where I fully expect them to treat me as disposable at least over any time horizon greater than 1-2y. There are certainly some companies that are more likely to find a mutually beneficial equilibrium. I think of Target, IKEA, sometimes Apple. But I don’t trust any of those companies…

Fortune 500 companies are particularly neurotic example of 'all' companies.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#519

Post by anvuong »

reactordev wrote: post #54
ZiiS wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works in the sense it allows you to run the game; but it does not prevent cheating. Obviously, Window's kernel anti-cheet is also only partially effective anyway, but the point of open-source is to give you control which includes cheating if you want to. Linux's profiling is just too good; full well documented sources for all libraries and kernel, even the graphics are running through easier to understand translat…

These things do not prevent cheating at all. They are merely a remote control system that they can send instructions to look for known cheats. Cheating still exists and will always exist in online games. You can be clever and build a random memory allocator. You can get clever and watch for frozen struct members after a known set operation, what you can’t do is prevent all cheating. There’s device layer, driver layer…

I don't know why you brought up VAC as an example. It is a horrible AC, so bad so that an entire service (FaceIT) was built to capitalize on that.

VAC is still a laughing joke in CS2, literally unplayable when you reached 15k+. Riot Vanguard is extremely invasive, but it's leaps and bounds a head of VAC.

And Valve's banning waves long after the fact doesn't improve the players experience at all. CS2 is F2P, alts are easy to get, cheating happens in alost every single high-ranked game, players experience is shit.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#520

Post by ethbr1 »

aydyn wrote: post #481
ethbr1 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not, all other things equal. Valve can be Valve because HL + Steam, in the same way that Google ~2010 could not be evil because search + ad revenue. The difference is that Google IPO'd and took market capital, and Valve didn't. Once public investors are onboard, you maximize profits or face lawsuits.

But thats the point, Valve IS maximizing profits. If they treated their customers like Epic does, do you think people would still be using Valve when Epic is generally a bit cheaper?

The entire point of this thread is that there are many things that Valve could do to increase its profits over the short, intermediate, and long terms... that it doesn't (presumably because that's not the kind of company it wants to be).

As the simplest example, they could have stamped HL3 on a third party game and made several millions of dollars with only a minor hit to their brand (in 5 years, "that bad HL").

In more realistic terms, they could have built proprietary, closed source emulation packages (they are funding a lot of development, apparently) to give themselves a unique advantage.

If they were a publicly traded company, they probably would be doing all these things.

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