351–360 of 383 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's price definitely gets affected by competition. https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/19/apple-may-lower-app-store-com... https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-s...
I didn't say "affected" though, I said set. Valve plays by common rules, Apple does not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine the GP was referring to the fact that Costco experiences that kind of growth while giving their employees excellent pay and benefits. Even low-level store employees typically make $20-30 an hour.
If only we had more of this. Why is it so rare? Do they have a benevolent dictator? Is this a temporary glitch that will be "corrected" when profits aren't looking as good? Are they a monopoly? I'm genuinely curious.
They also did have benevolent dictators who spent decades building up good will, but supposedly the new bosses as of a few years ago are not so benevolent anymore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were a dev selling a game years ago when physical distribution was the only method, you'd likely end up with a lot less than 70% after both the publisher and retailer take their cut. https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/company-town-blog/sto...
The difference is that the company had to risk manufacturing cartridges, distributing them, etc. If the game didn't sell, you ended up with lots of money lost. Steam is much much easier for Valve. I am not saying it has a value, but 30% seems a lot. Of course, in the end that 30% we end up paying it ourselves.
I’d suggest that it’s cheap, at least historically compared to just about any other product that’s been sold. If I had a popular marketplace platform that basically sold my product without much need for human intervention on the transaction, that has real value. Honestly 30% seems like a bargain to me.
In marketing and sales of the product, any human that touches the process ultimately is getting a piece of that transaction. We may not have physical media, but that was actually probably the least of the expense associated with software products back in the day. Consider the army of people needed just to wholesale to retail, coordinate distribution, distribute…
My recollection from those days is that if the dev got 10% royalties of a purchase price they would have been ecstatic. If you offered them 70%? They probably would have thought “what’s the catch?”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Or just someone in a different phase of their career than a union typically helps out. Unions absolutely hold back young high performers from advancing rapidly and standing out from the crowd. I was part of a few in my younger years and quickly learned they were a detriment to my earnings due to them favoring seniority and status quo over everything else. Once you hit a certain level and stop advancing quickly the eq…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uhhh.... 11 percent. That is the charge back rate in gaming. The "overall" stat for all transactions is something like 3 percent. Card processing isnt free. There are fees, and supporting card processing still has more humans in the loop than one needs. Never mind all the technology that comes with running the dam platform. Is 30 percent a lot. It sure is. Valve isnt a charity, this is how they chose to make money. M…
I would assume it's less than 11% for steam due to their incredibly consumer friendly refund policy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or just someone in a different phase of their career than a union typically helps out. Unions absolutely hold back young high performers from advancing rapidly and standing out from the crowd. I was part of a few in my younger years and quickly learned they were a detriment to my earnings due to them favoring seniority and status quo over everything else. Once you hit a certain level and stop advancing quickly the eq…
Then don’t join. Actively trying to stop others from joining is not the same thing. And fwiw, I’ve been in two unions that were nothing like you described. I got better conditions and in one case pay because of union organising.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s so nice to be guilted into supporting awful people, because a bunch of nice people were abused by the awful people but at least the art will keep one entertained and the corpos keep on abusing.
It's so easy to forget or ignore the good people whose great work was overshadowed by random controversy out of their hands. It's not the fault of the programmers who wrote the animation systems, or the artists who styled the characters' hair, that some random dickface manager pulled a random dickface move. I write this out of pure sympathy for the incredible work that I know gamedevs do, I'm not associated with Rock…
That is why that logic is broken. You’re just supporting the next wave of abuse for GTA7 not helping out employees.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those power dynamics are part of the human psyche. The will persist and be present under any alternative you care to impose.
This is just a belief. A belief that allows you to do anything, and can absolve anyone of any evil. Why stop there? Why have systems or government at all? Why even bother making murder illegal? After all, it's human nature. After all, it's just how life works. After all, the strong win, and the weak get eaten. Everyone knows that.
The point is not which system gets rid of these, in my opinion, permanent aspects of human nature, but which one results in the best outcome despite them.
If the belief is the collectivism deals with these issues better, that’s wonderful. But I never hear that, instead, I hear that not-collectivist systems are the one and only cause of these systems, and that only collectivism will solve them. And I just don’t believe that’s true, and I think we have lots of historical evidence of societies that tried forced collectivization and failed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then don’t join. Actively trying to stop others from joining is not the same thing. And fwiw, I’ve been in two unions that were nothing like you described. I got better conditions and in one case pay because of union organising.
As has been pointed out many times, apparently fruitlessly, the unions have lobbied hard to ensure that you don't always have a choice in the matter.
You might have a union negotiate minimum pay and conditions on your behalf, but that doesn’t stop you from negotiation beyond that individually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As has been pointed out many times, apparently fruitlessly, the unions have lobbied hard to ensure that you don't always have a choice in the matter.
Even in the US, you are not forced to join a union. You might have a union negotiate minimum pay and conditions on your behalf, but that doesn’t stop you from negotiation beyond that individually.
Forcing workers to either join or pay tribute to a middleman isn't OK.