I mean Valve has a game store called Steam, but what's the actual position they have? There are competing game stores - both digital and physical - and Valve isn't trying to run their competition out of business with shady business tactics? Just by being good at something and therefore running a successful business shouldn't be illegal or hated by itself - it's the way the business is being conducted that actually matters. Gaben is free to have yacht or two as long as his company is being run with a healthy mindset, their employees are being paid a fair salary (which I guess is another discussion in it's own who decides that) and they are not screwing their competition nor their customers up.

I brought Epic just as an example of an actual competitor actually trying to compete against Steam, sorry if I I was a bit unclear about that.

So lots of entrepreneurs get rich when they make a product that solves people's problems in one way or another and it sells with a profit - let it be a small profit or a large profit. The thing with capitalism is, if you make your profit too large, eventually a competitor will come and provide an equal or better product with slightly smaller profit or they figured out a way to make the product cheaper and still maintain the same profit margin with a lower price gaining a market share.

The problem with Apple, other large tech companies or some grocery chains in some parts of world (this is the case where I live actually) is that they are not allowing a healthy competition in the first place. If a competitor appears on the market, they will buy them before gaining too much traction, or if that's not possible, they will do everything they can in their power to drive them out of the market by lobbying politicians, or if they control some valuable aspect of the market, restrict access to said market.

Valve hasn't practiced any of those shady tactics as far as I know of and that's why people actually think of them as one of the "good guys" even if it is somewhat unhealthy. You shouldn't try to beat down the people playing with a friendly rule set of capitalism because they are the ones driving the competition forward.

I mean I get what you're saying, but Valve is actually one of the few large tech companies that are providing an actually good service (Steam). People should be allowed to make money by providing value to their customers because that's the motivation of building such services and products in the first place.

The hatred should go towards the companies abusing their position and violating customers and then just cashing excessive amounts of money for a crap product/service that has no real competition. If Valve had started making their competitors lives harder, by generating lots of nonsense lawsuits for example, they should absolutely be blasted down to hell by everybody. As long as they are just earning lots of bucks by providing a service people want to use without restricting using other services and playing with healthy rules otherwise as well, it's all fine and everyone working on the great service SHOULD earn more than average.

What would be the solution here that could drive the prices down? Limit profit levels per company?

I feel like it's not even capitalism itself being the problem alone, but also the entry cost for all these services. Building a competitor to Steam is pretty much equal to building a competitor to Youtube which means it's almost impossible due to the running costs of the service AND you would have to be somehow wildly better as in not gather as much money from your customers. It would be lovely to see some resolution to these problems without going full communism first.

I do, and I feel like the real intent is something completely different here than what is said out loud.

E: So Epic Games Store is actually giving out games for free and they still can't gain traction because their platform sucks so bad otherwise. My guess is someone just wants to try and get a tough competitor driven out of one country so that they could bring their own, worse, service there instead and take the market share without actually competing.

Let's replace "good guy" with "one of the few actually good services in gaming", would you still disagree?

They absolutely could. If only there was any serious competition and not just some quick cash grabbers like EA and others. As long as Steam is providing most value to users (=players) without even restricting competition like other tech companies do in other areas (cough Apple), they are able to take the 30% cut without a complaint.

Steam is a service that costs money to keep running - lot's of money actually in their scale. When you sell a Steam key outside of Steam, they don't get their cut which goes toward running costs and whatnot. It doesn't of course matter if it's just some random few keys but if almost all devs started to do that, it could cause some serious funding problems to Valve. That could then lead to reduced service levels of Steam and that would hurt their customers - the players - the most.

So while it's not a big problem currently, it could be if it wasn't prevented properly in contractual level. People who think that is an unfair clause don't probably understand what it actually takes to run a service like Steam or they are straight competitors trying to run them out of business in any way imaginable.

E: And actually if Steam still allows selling the Steam keys in external services but only requires the price to match the price in Steam, it's already a quite charitable policy. I guess they count on not too many people buying the key externally for the same price than in Steam store.

Haha, are you me? I moved away from Tampere a bit over 10 years ago before all the development projects started in the city centre. I lived in a couple different cities with the latest being Helsinki for many years, and oh my how much has Tampere changed for the better during that time. A bit over a year ago we made a decision to move back to Tampere with my girlfriend (who also is from here) and I absolutely love it. Hämeenkatu has an awesome atmosphere now that it's not full of speeding cars and buses. Now, I do still drive all around the city but I don't feel like it's any worse than it used to be; quite the opposite actually thanks to the underground parking below Hämeenkatu.

And it's not even just the city center that's great, but there are absolutely lovely pedestrian paths all around the city so you don't even need to take the bus or tram for moving about but instead you're able to walk or take the bicycle should you feel like it. Helsinki feels like going back in time nowadays when I visit there even though they are claiming to be building the "best functioning city in the world" according to the millions of construction work signs all around the city.

Also while traveling around Europe I have loved walking around thanks to good planning they've done in multiple places. And still it's not hard to take the car should you need to. It's just that it's more attracting to walk or take the bicycle instead of car when you don't need to carry heavy stuff or something :)

And I'm also a car enthusiast so it's not that I wouldn't like driving or own a car. I've actually driven to central Europe multiple times for vacation because it's a nice experience and you see a ton of places compared to flying. It's just that I also like walking and looking around quite a bit 😀

I've been learning German too myself, and the thing that the traditional language courses don't teach you is the way natives speak. Listening to actual German speakers was pretty much alien to me even after two years until I bumped into a couple Easy German videos where they touch the very same subject as this xkcd and that actually got me listening to certain parts of speech more carefully and that way also understand it better.

Now I actually find myself doing the same shortcuts sometimes when I'm progressing with the skill. It's the same with English since I have to use it daily at work even though I'm not a native speaker. Funny how the languages work in real life vs. in theory.

Oh no, the FizzBuzz EE has evolved since I've last viewed it! 😱 Is it bad if it actually reminds me of my current work project's backend (that I haven't written) a bit?

Well I mean stuff always has some costs assigned to it. Even if we are talking about Google or software in general, there are still people needed to create and maintain the software itself for the products, who in part also need to put some food on the table and get a roof above their heads. Then there are the infrastructure costs which are enormous on a global video streaming service like Youtube. Now, I do acknowledge that Google engineers are usually insanely well-paid, but that's the way life is when you absolutely need the people working for you. Other companies might choose to cut features while searching for cheaper developers but it is what it is. In the end, nothing is free and you always end up paying for services in a way or another. And I'm not sure if I would like to continue on the "free" services path that we saw in the last 15 years.