You don’t need to be remotely close to the most profitable tech company per employee to do that.

I generally agree with most of what you said, but there’s a balance to be struck when it comes to shitting on things.

If you publish that opinion online, be it a newspaper editorial, or a random comment on a post, you are helping to spread that opinion, and that general emotional sentiment, to others.

And both social media companies, and foreign governments (and some internal actors), all benefit from the population being angry and divided. There is a constant bias towards anger that always need tempering.

Well thought out and reasoned critiques about specific choices are one thing, glib comments made from skimming headlines are another (not saying that’s what you do, but that’s what a lot of social media users of all kinds, be they Reddit, Lemmy, Facebook, Mastodon etc) do.

https://media1.tenor.com/m/qEOBXVHe_0EAAAAd/skating-basketball.gif

I would like to believe that’s true, but I’m not convinced that it is.

The Conservatives had an entrenched 30-33% of the vote, all the way through the Layton years.

This can happen when companies are making massive profits but want to hide them.

i.e. if they’re getting government subsidies, either direct ones, or indirect policy support, then they risk losing it if they post record profits and draw attention to their lack of need. So instead they will increase capital spending: buy up more properties, renovate their stores with nicer fixtures etc. On paper this keeps their profits down as their costs have gone up, however, in reality their overall valuation has increased because they now own all these assets that they can use, lease, or sell in the future (assuming they didn’t buy junk).

Some of it is also just normal expansion. If a new neighbourhood is built, banks and gas stations are often the first to try and get in. For gas stations it’s to get the ideal corner, and for banks it’s because people often switch banks when they move houses to whatever’s closest, and then never switch again.

Some of it can be specific government policy. The current US government has crafted policy to boost the gas powered vehicle market for years to come, which may give more confidence in building gas stations and having them be profitable long term.

And some of it can just be normal market adjustments. i.e. they stopped building banks thinking that everyone going digital would eliminate them, but their projections were wrong and they’re seeing more people then expected who still want to go into a physical location and talk to a person, so now there’s a wave of buildout.

Also, yeah the landgrab aspect is real. It would work differently for gas stations and banks, but look up the history of McDonald’s, they’re mostly a real estate company: https://www.wallstreetsurvivor.com/mcdonalds-beyond-the-burger/

Jesus Christ.

I know every online leftist seems to think Carney is the devil, but these numbers should give people massive pause at what the alternative looks like.

It’s wild to me that with as centrist as Carney’s been, he’s barely pulled any of the actual conservative vote to him. Really seems like we have a serious problem with growing entrenched conservatism in this country.

Or maybe you haven’t noticed how every game that’s made with Unreal Engine, all the way back since UE4, requires far more resources than is necessary to run what it’s running.

We’ll all wait for you to cite your source on that one, because, no Unreal does not perform particularly worse then any other game engine.

Unreal is broadly available and not just hidden behind AAA walls so a lot of A and AA devs won’t have time to optimize their games with it, but they wouldn’t have had time to optimize regardless of whether they published with Unity or Godot or any other engine. Unreal is certainly a vastly more efficient engine then Unity, which is its main competition.

Also, how are you squaring away the idea that Unreal is ruining games as art? There are two options:

1. be a creative game designer and spend all your resources on engineers to build you a custom game engine, then spend more resources training everyone at your company on how your specific niche engine works

2. be a creative game designer and use an off the shelf engine like Unreal to run and render your game so you can spend your resources on artists, writers, and designers, and everyone comes in knowing how to use it

Do you really think that number 1 leads to more artistic games? The literal entire reason we’re in an indie game mecca right now is because of the widespread proliferation of third party game engines, that let small dev teams focus on the game and not the engine.

Lmfao, you’re so brain dead that you think Unreal Engine is a bad thing.

Jesus fucking Christ learn how to think critically and not just suck Gabe’s billionaire dick.

Well Gabe is too busy having every gamer gargle his billionaire monopoly loving chode.

“Please Mr Valve, spit in my mouth and keep overcharging me. I want you to own more yachts.”

Valve is subsidizing their services that they provide to gamers.

Lmfao. No they are not.

They are the most profitable company tech company per employee, of any tech company. That’s profit, as in revenue - expenses.

PlayStation and Xbox subsidize the cost of the console.

Apple and Google have been having their 30% fees (and the monopolies that allow them) struck down by courts and competition regulators around the world.

So you’re a Republican then? You believe in small ineffective government and have no faith that government can do anything, ensuring that it won’t?

Congratulations, they converted you to their side without you even realizing.

How many viable game engines / game development toolchains does Valve produce that run on Linux?

You’re cherry picking parts of the ecosystem to care about, because it serves your preexisting narrative that Valve=Good, Epic=Bad.

Lmfao bro, you think that digital storefronts cost more to run then physical ones?

You think it takes more resource to change a database entry, then it does to run a physical store, staffed by real people, that have to import and store a physical item that they then have to sell you, and potentially take back and return?

Lmfao, Valve has tossed you trinkets over the course of 20 years and you praise them like they’re altrusitic gods, instead of the wealth hoarding millionaires and billionaires that they actually are.

Do you really think that MS or Epic would keep low markups if they have gained majority of the market?

Jesus Christ, thats literally the whole fucking point. Valve has been overcharging you because they have a monopoly.

Competition is what keeps prices low, and that’s not possible when Valve has clauses that prevent developers from selling their games for less on other stores.

If Larian didn’t list their game on Steam and subject themselves to Valve’s 30% mafia fee, they would get no sales because Valve has a monopoly of customers.

That is why devs choose to keep listing on Steam and paying Valve’s extortionate fee.

Consumers keep using Steam because Steam’s terms of service prevent a developer from selling their game cheaper on other stores, meaning that consumers never have an incentive to buy it elsewhere.

And developers have to agree to that condition, because Steam has all the users.

See the circular trap that monopolies create?

This is why Tim Sweeney is calling them out.

Lmfao, here’s smaller words big brain:

Steam has reviews and accepts returns.

👏 Congratulations.

Amazing.

How unique.

Now answer how their 30% fee of every single game’s revenue is justified based on their costs to prove that they’re not abusing their monopoly.

Oh, what is that? Every competitive app storefront everywhere, charging far less then that?

Congratulations on defending a billionaire’s monopoly.

Because it’s the only one. That’s how a monopoly works.

Lmfao, this is the fastest I’ve ever seen an attempted Goodwill Hunting fall on its face.

You have literally no idea what you even asked.

What are you talking about? Larian loses 30% of every single dollar spent on their game.

Of course that harms them.