top 98 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 327 points 11 months ago* (30 children)

I love how Valve's strategy is basically just 'don't piss off the customers and occasionally do something super fucking cool', while everyone else in the space seems to be cutting off their nose to spite their face

  • source
  • hideshow 30 child comments
  • [–] 157 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Benefits of not beinp publicly traded.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] -3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Valve ceo just added a $500 million mega yacht to his fleet. Valve true benefit is that thanks to window they managed to build a monopoly on videogames distribuition and that their customers are kids addicted to videogames.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    and that their customers are kids addicted to videogames

    TIL I'm a "kid" despite being 44 years old

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    15 years old you probably wouldn't be here on lemmy

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    I'm here on lemmy because I'm a reddit refugee, I spent almost 12 years there but came here when they did their little API shakedown shitshow. Lemmy is good enough for me, despite there being the occasional troll, like you seem to be.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 76 points 11 months ago* (15 children)

    Valve also gutted their LGBTQIA+ content a few months back. And they have had a MASSIVE nazi infestation basically since they set up message boards because Gabe Newell is infamously libertarian.

    So... chill a bit with the glazing. They are better in a lot of ways but they are not our friends.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 15 child comments
  • [–] 62 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (13 children)

    You are aware the game removals are due to MasterCard and Visa right?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 13 child comments
  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    At best you can argue that Valve will not protect you. Hence, not your friend.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 29 points 11 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I'd rather have control over my digital items than gambling protection that infringes on what can I do with them

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    What items do you think that you have control over? You don't own anything in your account and it can be taken away for any reason or for no reason at all.

    https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/legal/site-terms-of-use

    All right, title and interest in and to this Site, the Materials and all associated Proprietary Rights is owned by Valve or its licensors, and no ownership of any of the foregoing items is transferred to you by virtue of this Agreement or Valve's permitting you to use the Site.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [+] -11 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    As we all did when we were young playing pokemon, Mario, Mario party, marbles, mighty beans, hot wheels, etc

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [+] -6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Shh don't tell them things that make sense, they want to feel persecution. Jk. But i did hear that most/a lot of those were incest or rape based since that's super illegal in many countries, so payment processor companies pushed for their removal. Not to mention, many removals were country-specific, not worldwide. Frankly that's fine by me, not sorry your anime rape and incest games are gone

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    don't piss off the customers

    Unless it's their UI, they love to do pointless changes nowadays. On top of the stuff mentioned by the other replies

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 20 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    any and all UI changes will make people angry

    steam has had so few of them compared to idk youtube that, imo it's fine even if it's kinda pointless

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    So much this. You can fix blatant bugs sometimes and have people whine because it breaks their flow to have it work correctly.

    What do you mean you made it so it no longer freezes for 20 seconds after clicking the Q-button?! I count on that pause to ensure my J-Flame comes at the right time! How dare you?!

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    At least they kept some of the old ones, still kinda dumb that to access the old tags system you have to click search with an empty search field of all things. Also kinda weird that they killed old skins so fast, I don't have anything against using SFP and patching in a new one but it's gotta be really demotivating for skin creators.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 142 points 11 months ago* (7 children)

    Epic Games CEO and Fortnite boss Tim Sweeney:

    everyone will have to 'fess up to using it eventually as AI will become "involved in nearly all future production."

    Once again Epic games act like the moronic villains they are.

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago*

    Why do they say these stupid things as if they were giving an order?

    They can't order people to buy their stuff, they can't order their stuff to work when it doesn't. Having "AI" in it doesn't change the latter part in case they think otherwise, just got this idea.

    I suppose they like the change from the old "spend lots of resources, then scale indefinitely" with software development to the more traditional in other spheres "spend constant amount of resources for constant result", and expect it will build hierarchies like everywhere.

    Well, companies were going bankrupt long before personal computing.

    I don't know about Epic Games, I think I'll play Oolite in free time when I'm done with my EU4 addiction. Or actually make something useful.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    everyone will have to 'fess up to using it eventually as AI will become "involved in nearly all future production.

    True enough! No reason not to say it up front, right?

    Look y'all, not 1-in-20 people give a flying fuck about AI like we do on here.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    That is true, but for instance Ian M Banks predicted AI being able to make art already back in the 70's in his Culture series of books.
    Even accurately simulating famous artists. And his conclusion was that AI should not make art at all, because it would end up detracting from the value of art.

    I think the reason the CEO is wrong, is that it will be a legal shitshow, and I think AI art may become illegal, or at the very least required to be clearly labeled as AI art.

    We will see how it turns out.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    I'll call your bet and say that Sweeny is right. I think AI will become so commonplace that there will be no way around it and the market has already been streamlined in this direction.

    I would love it if my "feels" could be seen. But that is not reality. This battle is already long lost. Lemmy and the like can rage about it til their flames die out but it is a lost cause.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    There have already been several lawsuits against AI companies, where it is revealed that AI art is copied from existing original works.
    You may be right, but I don't think that battle is lost quite yet.
    AI is mostly good for memes, beyond that it tends to quickly becomes repetitive, and of little value.
    Of course AI art generally has a human "director" guiding the AI on what to do. As I said previously we will see how it turns out.
    I'm not sure the end result of this will be within 10 years.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    The result is that this is unsustainable unless copyright and IP law except for trademark and authorship are dropped, to avoid imbalance between using AI on existing work to generate commercially clean substance and using your ability, helped by existing culturally meaningful material.

    It's basically an IP laundering technology. Supply to satisfy demand.

    When libertarians say that regulations make barriers for those more vulnerable, but not for those who can bend those barriers, they are right. Except I doubt many a libertarian expected to be proven right this way 20 years ago.

    And I think they might even drop IP laws. When enough elite types are certain that control of computing power and datasets allow them to remain on top in such an environment.

    That's also where all the advice to get used to AI in all production comes from, I think, they are already salivating at the thought of just reusing old stuff from enormous datasets, legally, not paying anything, and keeping staff only to do basic control of what the machine generates. Basically people who expect that they'll be able to do the theft of the century and remain elite.

    The headlines about AI killing human creativity don't help, they are telling these people what they want to hear.

    It won't kill all human creativity. It will kill those relying upon killing it. It's like a gold mine in EU4, except giving inflation 10x the original.

    I've just read yesterday what the Russian idiom "red price" means (said about the biggest price one can give for something, and already a robbery). So - the opposite of that was "white price". No, it's not about civil war. It's about copper and silver money. There were not that many silver mines in Russia, so when someone decided to turn the printer on, they'd mint a lot of copper coins. While silver money was mostly foreign ("yefimok", from Joachimstaler, same as taler, dollar, you get the etymology, the international coin of that age, which is also why metropolies had their traditional money and colonies had dollars - dollar meant a silver coin of the same weight as Joachimstaler).

    Since I've remembered Russian history, that's also similar to USSR's advertised strong side - instead of relying upon complex evolution process to achieve big things, we'll just build a command system in charge of all our resources and plan the path we already know. As you might see, it doesn't answer where future evolution will come from. It didn't come at all.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 48 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    "Calls."

    There's only one call, and it's coming from Tim Sweeny at Epic. It's just more of his usual yelling at clouds, because he's got a pathological hate-on for anyone else who runs a storefont, including Apple and Google but especially Valve. He hasn't made any positive contribution to the world since about 1998, and at this point we can all safely discard his opinion with nothing of value being lost. He wants to allow AI slime on his own platform because he thinks it'll make him free money, but maybe he ought to worry about the smell coming from his own house before he goes around trying to dictate at others how they should run theirs.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 25 points 11 months ago

    It's so unfunny that the only one to contest Valve on PC monopoly is Tim Fortnite, who seemingly does the worst job everywhere yet still can still afford it. It's almost like Gaben himself created a perfect villain for his company, so it'd never be criticized.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago

    He wants to allow AI slime on his own platform

    Don't forget the blatant scams called crypto games! He proudly announced Epic Games Store would happily sell games centered around NFTs and crypto after Valve said they wouldn't allow it.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 99 points 11 months ago

    It’s literally a plagiarism machine, so I completely agree with them.

  • source
  • [–] 34 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    How many reasons to overthrow and kill the CEOs do we need

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 57 points 11 months ago
    [–] 24 points 11 months ago (12 children)

    Disclosure is good, but it would be useful to be granular and clear.

    Games could use ai for interactive dialogue or content generation and it would be really cool.

    Games could run models like olmo 3 which are completely open source, and that wouldn’t be bad in my opinion.

    Ai textures probably make sense too depending on context.

  • source
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (10 children)

    It's like hard to draw a line as well. If I take a picture with my phone today of the city I live in and use it in a game, the phone applies some AI filters automatically.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I think different people have different aversions to why they don't like or want to use AI.

    In the case of "automatic" "filters" on pictures taken on phones, this is or was called computational photography. Over time more capabilities were added to these systems until we now have the moon situation and the latest NN processing.

    If someone only cares about environmental impact, then that doesn't really apply in this case if the processing happens on device, since by definition a phone is low power and thus doesn't consume water for cooling or much power for compute.

    However, some people care about copying, for numerous and possibly conflicting reasons. Generating assets might violate their sense that IP was stolen, since it's a pretty well known fact that that these models were created in large part with dubiously licensed or entirely unlicensed works. I think a reasonable argument can be made that the algorithms that make LLMs work parallels compression. But whatever the case, the legality doesn't matter for most people's feelings.

    Others don't like that assets are generated by compute at all. Maybe for economic or political reasons. Some might feel that a social contract has been violated. For example, it used to be the case that on large social media, you had some kind of "buy in" from society. The content might have been low quality or useless drivel, but there was a relativly high cost to producing lots of content, and the owners of the site didn't have direct or complete control of the platform.

    Now a single person or company can create a social media site, complete with generated content and generated users, and sucker clueless users into thinking it's real. It was a problem before, various people getting sucked into an echo chamber of their peers, now it is likely to happen that there will be another set of users get sucked into an entirely generated echo chamber.

    We can see this happening now. Companies like openai are creating social media sites ("apps" as they call them now) filled only with slop. There are even companies that make apps for romance and dating virtual or fake partners.

    Generated content is also undesirable for some users because maybe they want to see the output of a person. There is already plenty of factory bullshit on the various app stores, why do they need or want the output of a machine when there is already existing predatory content out there they could have now.

    Some people are starting to wake up to the fact that they have only a single life. Chasing money doesn't do it for most. Some find religion, others want to achieve and see others achieve. Generating content isn't an achievement of the person initiating the generation. They didn't suffer to make it. A person slaves away in art school for years only to take a shit job they looked up to for years, then doing the best work they can under crazy pressure is an achievement.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Jean completely agree, but for me that just underlined the point above of making it more granular. But there will be almost no big games where you can say truly nothing was done by the AI.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (6 children)

    People like when the phone cleans up their face

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    I like when my phone captures actual unedited pictures. I think it's dangerous to modify recordings automatically without the user's express consent.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Phones have been doing a lot of post-processing for a long time.

    Tbh, most phone cameras would look crap without it. It's something of a miracle what they can achieve with a tiny sensor and a tiny fixed lens.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    Have you used a phone camera recently? This has been baked in for many years on every out of the box camera experience on flagship phones.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    So you're saying even MY pictures have probably been edited by my phone without my consent? That's really bad. I didn't opt into this. I don't like what this could be used for.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 21 points 11 months ago

    That needs just two words:

    Thank you.

  • source
  • [–] 20 points 11 months ago

    Slopification

    LOL This is gonna catch on. I've seen things that this describes.

  • source
  • [–] 27 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    I think what's important in this drama is that, despite their evil monopoly shit they're guilty of, Valve really does do the right thing sometimes to win consumers. Gamers want AI disclosures, even if devs don't.

    That's why it's not surprising to see that statement from Sweeny, and why it's not surprising that people still hate the Epic Games Store.

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Just curious, what is the evil monopoly shit you're referring to? Is it simply the fact they are effectively a monopoly in games distribution, and that in and of itself is bad, or are there more specific practices or actions you're thinking of?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Both. I'm strongly of the opinion that monopolies should not exist, and if they do it's the result of illegal and/or unethical activity, and should be fixed immediately. They break the free market and end up hurting everyone in the long run.

    In addition to what @Asterisk@lemmy.world said, they also include a forced arbitration clause in their terms of service to prevent class action lawsuits from customers.

    Tbh, they're very low on my personal list of monopolies to hate, so I don't really have that many arguments ready to go. I'm sure others have made a good case against Steam somewhere on the internet already.

  • source
  • parent
  • [+] 63 points 11 months ago (10 children)
  • [–] 37 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I want to know if AI was used or not to make a game; it’s a deciding factor for me, as I will not buy anything built with AI. No matter if it’s a placeholder or not

    Same. Once they dipped into the convenience, I can't believe they wouldn't use it again when they're in a rush, crunching, etc.

    I don't even touch games with AI-generated store assets, they just feel so cringeworthy. If you can't afford an artist, just use assets from the game ffs.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [+] -9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I'm pretty on-record as being resistant to LLMs, but I'm OK wiþ asset generation. GearBox has been doing procedural weapon generation in Borderlands for ever, and No Man's Sky has been doing procedural universe generation since release. In boþ cases, artists have been involved in core asset component creation, but procedural game content generation has been a þing for years, and getting LLMs involved is a very small incremental step. I suppose þere must be a line; textures must be human created, not generated from countless oþer preceding textures, but - again - game artists have been buying and using asset libraries forever.

    Yeah. Þere's a line in þere, somewhere. LLM model builders aren't paying for þe libraries þey're learning from, unlike game artists. But games have been teetering on generated assets and environments for a long time; it's a much more gray area þan, say, voice actors. If an asset/environment engine was e.g. trained entirely on scans of real-life objects, like þe multitude of handguns and rifles, and used to generate in-game weapons, þe objection would be reduced to one you could level at games like NMS: instead of paying humans to manually generate þe nearly infinite worlds, þey've been using code which is wiþin spitting distance of a deep learning algorithm. And nobody's complained about it until now.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Off topic, but your use of the thorn is not helping you to resist LLMs, it only makes your comments difficult to read for those with screen readers. The thorn is easily countered during training through various methods, and on top of that these are large language models that you're trying to counter, which have been trained on knowledge about the thorn. Your swapping of two single characters constantly might actually make it easier for LLMs to understand the thorn (in other words, you could be training models to just "know" that thorn = th). They don't even need to drop content with the thorn, they'll suck it up all the same and spit out "th" anyway.

    Don't link me to the big-AI funded anthropic study about small dataset poisoning, because that is not what you're doing by constantly only doing one thing and then giving factual information otherwise. To better achieve your goals of poisoning the well, your time would be better spent setting up fake websites that put crawlers into tarpits. Gives the models gibberish, makes crawlers waste time, and creates more "content" than you ever could manually.

    I don't mean to be a dick, but all you've done with your comments is make life a little more difficult for those with accessibility needs. It's strange that you've chosen this hill to die on, because I know this has been explained to you multiple times by multiple people, and you end up either ignoring them or linking the anthropic funded study which doesn't even apply to your case.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    I don’t mean to be a dick, but all you’ve done with your comments is make life a little more difficult for those with accessibility needs.

    It's not even just people using screen readers, it makes sighted people have to do extra mental work too. Whenever I come across a thorn character, it distracts me from processing the actual meaning of their comment, and I just give up the effort after a few sentences. (Case in point: I just skipped the 2nd half of their comment and read yours instead 😅)

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    The thing is, with LLM code completion in every IDE, AI features and filters in Photoshop and other image editors, video/audio editing software etc, it will very soon be that there are only games made with AI assistances, and games made by devs lying they used tools with no AI.

    I've made a game using AI features all the way back in 2010 - I used the brand new content aware delete & fill feature in Photoshop CS5 to edit visual novel backgrounds. That was AI.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago

    You and I are 1-in-50 purchasers, if that. Nobody gives a shit if AI is in the game.

    Go grab a random dude on the street,

    "Hey! Just one question? If you're considering buying a video game, is the fact they used AI in making it a deal breaker?"

    Nobody cares. I'm with ya. Don't fucking buy it, I won't. But enough other people will that it won't make a difference.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago

    Windows, google, photoshop now all comes with AI. Are you going to avoid any product made with these? AI isn't just a tool to generate a game with a click, it can offer all sort of feedback and tools, for example it could be used to change the color of a box without having to do it manually. Unless the whole process is documented you will not be able to tell if AI has been used or not.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 24 points 11 months ago

    Agree 100%. It is just Disclosure, if you use AI for voice lines on a robot character but the game is good then disclosing that "this game used ai during creation" isnt a bad thing, you used a tool for a tool to help make your game. I dont think disclosure hurts you.

    If your game is a simple asset swap of a unity demo and you used 10 prompts to generate all the story, dialogue and sky boxes then disclousing you used ai is simple a branding iron on a pile of shit. The branding iron aint changing the smell of your pile.

    There is a lot of inbetween these 2 extreams, but the consumer havung more information in the buying process is not a bad thing.

  • source
  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago

    It's a pity other platforms, especially social media / video platforms don't require full disclosure of use of AI. It might allow a lot of AI slop and misinformation to be eradicated, downvoted, or at least call itself out.

  • source
  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Gabe wins the internet once again.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    We need the disclosures now to slow the pace of the bullshit taking over, but it will not be stopped.

    I mean, fuck, at this point if they're using photoshop to extend a background, it's AI. It'll just end up becoming the California this contains items known to cause cancer logo all over again. It's still the right thing to call it out, but everything, in short order, will require the label.

    So why the fuck are they fighting to not do it? I'll be a couple of billable hours and everyone and their brother will either disclose that they're doing it or lie about it and we can move on with life.

  • source
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I would never respond to social media drama in their position.

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    All the nuance is lost in these discussions. It's something else when you're pushing slop made 100% with AI, and something else if you're using AI for mundane stuff like secondary voice lines in ARC Raiders for example

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    So, then you are in favor of the disclosures?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I'm in favor of the disclosures for my own personal reasons, but I see a lot of people who are anti-AI usage based on "vibes" and that does not sit well with me. If people are disregarding the positive benefits of the technology because "vibes", it makes me doubt the validity of those opinions.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Dude, I think you're making up a guy to be mad at. People more often like AI because of vibes. There's a fucking thing called vibe coding, and I'm supposed to take people seriously as software developers as they use the phrase.

  • source
  • parent
  • [+] -7 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    I'm curious how they define AI. In my view AI has been used for games for as long as games have existed.

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 24 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    LLM and GenAI, you dingus.

    This stinks of whataboutism, giving examples that incredibly obviously won't be included

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    If you are talking about NPC AI as if their behaviour that is programmed - then you talk about the wrong thing. The buzz is about AI being used to generate textures, levels, designs of characters, text/dialogue, story/plot of the game.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›
    172 comments in c/gaming@lemmy.zip view that post
    88 comments in c/games@lemmy.world view that post
    4 comments in c/gamedev@lemmy.world view that post
    1 comment in c/indiegamedev@lemmy.world view that post