The news keeps on newsing, and I keep on summarizing. Love it or
hated, the CSIPGA news digest is back!



* Valve's Day In Court
https://www.pcgamesn.com/valve/uk-lawsuit-steam
The big story of the day, Valve's gonna end up in court again due to
predatory pricing. This time in the UK, just to change things up! Once
again, the gist of the complaint is that Valve dares charge a 30% fee
for its services, while other platforms --with less reach and fewer
features-- get away with charging less. A bit less ridiculous are the complaints about how you can only buy expansions for Steam games
through Steam, and Steam's 'parity obligations' that mean publishers
can't charge less for games on other platforms than they charge on
Steam. Those, legally, look a bit iffy... but while I'm no fan of the near-monopoly Valve has on PC gaming, none of its competitors look any
better, and overall Valve has been good for the industry and customer.
I wish we had better competition in the market... but this lawsuit
sounds like something sponsored by Epic, who'd rather use legal
warfare than actually compete on actual features.



* Publishers Suck https://www.gamespot.com/articles/most-indie-game-publishers-are-predatory-and-opportunistic-says-manor-lords-publisher/1100-6537713/
The big triple-A publishers suck, we all know, but the smaller
publishers that help Indie developers get their game to market aren't
much better. At least, so claims Tim Bender, developer of indie hit
"Manor Lords". Indie publishers might even be worse, since at least
the triple-As have the money to burn and can turn even a turd into an eye-watering spectacle should they desire. Indie publishers "don't add
a lot" to the success of an Indie game. They're more interested in
amassing a large catalog than actually helping to fund the development
or market the games of their partners, and this fascination with
Numbers outweighs any desire to push quality products. And while I
can't say much about software publishers, this sounds totally in-line
with my experiences with print publishers, who at best are more
interested in offering absolutely predatory advances to authors, or
are just bulking up their line-up so they can sell out to bigger
conglomerates down the line. But in the actual production and sale?
They've little to add to the process, other than to milk the authors
for every penny they can.



* AmazonGames Declines https://www.gamespot.com/articles/amazon-lays-off-16000-people/1100-6537717/ Amazon just fired 16,000 people, including an undisclosed number from
its Games division. Which really isn't a surprise; off the top of your
head, name a game developed and published exclusively by Amazon? No,
me neither. It was never something Amazon ever seemed very dedicated
too; rather, it felt like Amazon hoped that its vast treasure horde
would be enough to propel it to success. Apparently not. Hopefully
this won't effect the Prime Gaming give-aways, which is really the
only thing I care about. ;-)



* RAM Makers Rejoice! https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/memory-chip-specialist-sk-hynix-reports-record-breaking-profits-but-doesnt-have-a-word-to-say-about-almost-anything-apart-from-ai/
SK Hynix is reporting record-breaking profits! Not really news; we
know that RAM manufacturers are raking it in, largely because of sales
to AI tech-bros (gotta keep that bubble inflated somehow!). But do
keep this fact in mind, because...



* RAM Makers Rejoice More! https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/new-report-claims-samsung-sk-hynix-and-sandisk-are-all-planning-to-double-the-price-of-nand-memory-chips-this-year/
... those same manufactures are planning to double the price of memory
chips in 2026. "We're already making bank, but let's see how high we
can raise the price anyway!". And maybe this might make software
developers start to optimize their code... but I wouldn't bet on it.
Rather, I think it'll just push people to use streaming servers more.



* Too much DLC to buy? Just rent it instead! https://www.pcgamesn.com/crusader-kings-3/subscription-pass
Paradox Interactive has always had a hard-on for DLC; almost all the
games they sell have hundreds of dollars of DLC available for it. It's
how they make their money, really... to the point that the core games
are almost always on discount, and frequently show up as freebies.
After all, why sell the whole game when you can nickle and dime your
customers? But you know what's even more profitable than that? A SAAS subscription service, where you can get the whole game... but only if
you keep paying a monthly fee!



* WinRAR exploit in the wild https://www.pcgamer.com/software/security/google-says-a-winrar-exploit-for-windows-is-in-widespread-use-by-government-backed-threat-actors-linked-to-russia-and-china/
WinRAR has always seemed a bit sketchy to me. I mean, it is the
favorite compression method for pirates, but it turns out it's more
than that. Developed in Russia, it was probably inevitable that
Putin's regime got its fingers into it and an exploit in the code is
now being actively used to exploit vulnerabilities. The exploit is
fixed in the latest version (so update if you use it!) but who is to
say there's not some new as-yet-undiscovered problem embedded into the
code? Honestly, I don't really see the point for WinRAR anymore
anyway. It's competitors (I'm a 7Zip fan myself) are almost as good,
and it's not like disk-space is so limited we desperately need the one
or ten megabytes WinRAR might save us...



Alright. That's enough for now. I'm sure some other stories will cross
my desk eventually.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.6
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)