copygirl

Tangentially related: Oh boi I just love AI bros coming out of nowhere defending GenAI when nobody asked for their opinion. Wish more communities / instances would take a hard anti-AI stance and just get rid of them. It's not like anyone will make them see where they're wrong.

You see, it's not the internet censorship tool that prevents you from speaking your mind, it's the people that control it!

You can dislike the tool.

AI was built on stolen work, and will not create a generation of future artists that simply has a new tool available. It'll create a generation of workers that create profit for the wealthy class by generating garbage until it's somewhat presentable. Meanwhile, AI will starve out because it will run out of data to learn from.

Generative AI is the current fad of the tech bro world and it's what everyone clings onto because if everything goes well (for them), they can get future generations hooked and make stupid money. Meanwhile, media literacy will further decline, and with it the ability to look up anything on the internet, making it even more easy for the masses to be controlled.

Perhaps after having familiarized with GDScript, learning C# with the same game engine and API is also an interesting way to learn another programming language. There's also extensions for other languages, like Rust.

To add to what you're saying: To be fair, most of the lawsuit I don't really agree with, but maybe it's just laying it on thick.

Part of the argument is them trying to separate the Steam "Store" from the Steam "Gaming Platform", and in many ways that's obviously not possible. But they say that because of Steam's monopolistic-ish position, publishers can't not be on the "gaming platform", because it's where most people want their games, or else they'll lose out of a large chunk of money. (And without it, these games likely would not be made in the first place.) Thus Steam can force these unfair terms on developers.

There was also this portion on discounts that was quite revealing:

20. For example, Valve has set up visibility in its Steam Store to focus on games that are nominally “on sale” to gamers. Knowing that the best way to reach their audience is through discounting, game publishers must artificially inflate their list prices so they have headroom for discounting. But the “sale” price is not consistently available, and therefore some gamers pay an artificially inflated list price for the game. These supracompetitive prices increase Valve’s cut, force gamers to overpay, and prevent publishers from setting the most efficient game prices they could in the first place. Even worse, these supracompetitive prices are transmitted across the broader market by the contractual restraints discussed above.

They're admitting to inflating games' prices, so they can then offer a fake discount that's closer to the actual price they actually wanted the game to be. And then they complain when Valve doesn't let them list a game on sale for an extended period of time, just so they can essentially scam people. (Probably, once again, standard in the industry and elsewhere, but I feel like that's gotta be banned by EU pro-consumer laws.)

The EU can and should force Steam to get rid of the MFN clause. All Valve needs to do is to let competing stores price games cheaper than on Steam. (So long as Steam services are not involved with that off-Steam purchase.)

There's still plenty of benefits Steam provides to customers that many may choose it over a different store even if they could get the game for cheaper. And Steam also provides developers with tools that make Steam worth it, like Steam networking and cloud saves. As Gabe Newell famously said about piracy, but I believe this applies in this case too, it's simply a service problem.

And this was only mentioned in a footnote in the complaint document, though I saw it many times when browsing through the earlier lawsuit documents. Interestingly, this sounds like it should already be illegal in the EU, as per the Wikipedia link you gave.

How clear is the wording? Is it possible to find the text of the terms / agreement / contract online? Or is it covered by an NDA?

This is true! Vintage Story does it, for example. They're doing okay from what I can tell, but it's more of an exception. It's pretty clear that they are losing out on potential customers. Notably, you also lose out on regional pricing, which is pretty difficult to set up yourself. If you're creating games for a living, you don't have much of a choice about whether you put your game on Steam.

Because we are talking about someone using AI for most if not all tasks that involve thinking and/or creativity, as if it was any other tool.

First of all, it's hypothetical. If only for the fact that using a wheelchair in real-life actually greatly increases difficulty getting around. The point is that if you don't lose your muscles, they get weaker. Happens with anyone that has an accident that causes them to be unable to use their muscles for a prolonged amount of time. See also: Astronauts needing to exercise while in space or back on earth because they've not had to use many of their muscles as much due to lack of gravity.

Fair point, but many photos are not edited to the point of fundamentally changing them. I wouldn't call a touched up wedding photo a "fake".

edit: I guess I was distracting from the point. Yes, "AI" already implies "fake". Guess if someone were to look for "how to spot fake photos" this would help them find this video?

TL;DW:

• Check the "residual noise"
• Parallel lines should converge to a single point (vanishing point)
• Connect shadows to what casts them, extend the lines, they should meet at the light source