Demonstrating some crazy idea always confuses people who expect a finished product. The fact this works at all is sci-fi witchcraft.

Video generators offer rendering without models, levels, textures, shaders-- anything. And they’ll do shocking photorealism as easily as cartoons. This one runs at interactive speeds. That’s fucking crazy! It’s only doing one part of one game that’d run on a potato, and it’s not doing it especially well, but holy shit, it’s doing it. Even if the context length stayed laughably short - this is an FMV you can walk around in. This is something artists could feed and prune and get real fuckin’ weird with, until it’s an inescapable dream sequence that looks like nothing we know how to render.

The most realistic near-term application of generative AI technology remains as coding assistants and perhaps rapid prototyping tools for developers, rather than a drop-in replacement for traditional game development pipelines.

Sure, let’s pretend text is all it can generate. Not textures, models, character designs, et very cetera. What possible use could people have for an army of robots if they only do a half-assed job?

Is the embedded video part of the Lemmy update? That’s a mixed bag.

It works better now than Discord will later.

Fuck software patents. Zero advantages to anyone except greedy bastards who fear competition.

They’re not “playing it safe,” they’re just killing art.

Not an answer.

Not a defense of Valve’s 30% cut.

You’re not being serious.

Two comments ago:

Their cut is so huge that they can afford to let devs sell keys elsewhere, knowing it makes no difference to their immense profit margin.

Largely because their monopoly is self-reinforcing, and the number of off-site sales is a rounding error.

Let’s try this again.

How is a 30% gross cut worse for consumers than 15%? Because that policy, that specific policy, is shared by Nintendo, Apple, Google, Sony, Microsoft… and Valve.

Why should we do a thing that’s completely unrelated to the question being asked?

Incorrect.

What Epic means by “for developers,” is… developers keep more of the money. Walk me through how that, specifically, is bad for you.

I am not interested in general attacks against Epic. I make no general defense of Epic. Fortnite’s business model should be illegal. But what you’re doing is bad argumentation. You’re reaching for ways to say ‘Epic bad’ as if that’s gotta be relevant. As if attacking Epic in general constitutes a defense of one specific thing Valve does. As if promoting Valve in general means this one specific thing can’t be wrong.

As for indie support - Valve doesn’t need to push big games on their store, because they have a monopoly. There is no sense telling people ‘if you’re gonna buy it on PC, buy it on Steam!,’ because of course you will. Indie games ‘don’t make Epic money’ because Alan fucking Wake barely makes them money. Their market share is garbage. Steam has the freedom and the incentive to push more game sales, of any kind, and there’s a lot more little games than big ones.

None of what Valve is doing would suddenly disappear if they took only one-quarter of gross revenue. Or a fifth. Or less. They’re shaving straight off the top for nearly the entire PC gaming market. Their war-chest is ridiculous. They have such a “petro curse” that they briefly forgot to make games. Yet they treat the studios that make them all of their money the same way Nintendo and Sony squeeze console developers.

Would criticizing this specific cut be easier, if we talked about Apple’s iron grip on the App Store? Because it’s the same damn policy. Feel free to talk shit about when Apple does it, if you insist on judging whole entities instead of what they do.

That shift was a quarter-century ago. ‘It used to suck worse’ is a bad excuse even when it’s fresh. I don’t care what Steam would cost if they were a brick-and-mortar store; they have only ever done digital distribution, and they have done it for a while.

Their cut is so huge that they can afford to let devs sell keys elsewhere, knowing it makes no difference to their immense profit margin.

Largely because their monopoly is self-reinforcing, and the number of off-site sales is a rounding error.

Meanwhile:

What Epic means by “for developers” is, developers keep more of the money. Walk me through how that’s bad for you.

Neat.

Explaining how they got the monopoly doesn’t change that they have a monopoly. Amazon or Epic could do all that - and they genuinely could, god knows they have the money - but the result would not be the same. They exist in the context of Steam already running shit. Adoption is a feature you cannot design. That’s why Valve had to force it on people via Half-Life 2.

Tim Sweeny even said EGS is made for developers, with the implication it is not for consumers.

What an absurd read. As if middlemen taking a third of revenue is pro-consumer.

‘Why didn’t they just try harder?’ is an increasingly worrying take. A company could copy Steam’s storefront and backend, verbatim, and it wouldn’t impact Steam’s monopoly on PC game sales. They’re entrenched and they’re well-liked. You can’t buy a reputation overnight.

Blaming the action without considering the environment is still a mistake. Epic tried everything, and people still scoff about UI, like that’s the billion-dollar difference. Nah: it’s attributing the difference in outcome to surface-level distinctions. And if Epic unfucked their apparently ugly storefront, these people would pick another excuse, because I guarantee you it wouldn’t change EGS’s irrelevance.

… and then they’ll recoil in horror when you mention that’s what a monopoly is.

Monopolies can be positive and functional. They’re still monopolies. Streaming was better was Netflix was the only choice, and had everything, for a reasonable price. Competition’s supposed to be what drives those qualities. Exclusivity breaks that. Exclusivity splinters the market into desperate fiefdoms.

But there’s still a word for when only one store matters.

Fuck software patents.

Neat premise, bad name.

Actual sequel, or deleting the first one and forcing some half-assed upgrade?

The do-anything device is gonna do what you ask. It has no opinions.

Fox-grade morons. ‘This one hit funded a decade of efforts! Why isn’t every show as popular as The Simpsons? Are you stupid?!’

Also, ban this entire business model. Nothing inside a video game should cost real money. The fact this shitty Flash game has squeezed half a billion dollars from people is disgusting.

Scunthorpe and ¢i@L!5 are why we can’t have nice things.

Recalling when two people found the same planet and did not see each other, disproving any implied multiplayer -

What’s the birthday paradox look like for “trillions?”

The do-anything robot gave us exactly what we asked for! That’s a vulnerability!

Also: jailbroke, surely.

That chair makes the thumbnail look like an FPS screenshot.