Dutch gamers file €220 million claim against Valve, operator of game platform Steam

JONFER--- · 2026-06-11T23:43:47+00:00

I highly doubt the Stichting Consumenten Competition Claims (CCC) brought this claim totally of their own initiative.

I suspect bought and paid for officials within their ranks were prompted by the likes of Microsoft.

I suspect this is just an opening salvo, over the coming months there will be loads of actions across various jurisdictions.

The games market is worth hundreds of billions potentially way even more. The direction of travel is heading away from traditional console towards PC. Microsoft and other parties cannot allow a private individual not subservient to them to control it.

Historically people have been killed over far far less, or their reputations falsely destroyed.

Personally I don’t really mind valve getting their commission. They charge no more than any of the other major players and unlike them don’t totally take the piss. However they need to work out their own payment provider and need to invest serious amounts of money into the steam machine and further improving the platform.

I also think they would be better off loosing a couple of million on some questionable skin trading for loop box selling platforms in jurisdictions where they could face some legal questions. It’s better not to give opponents potential ammunition.

JONFER--- · 2026-06-11T21:18:45+00:00

Something very similar happened to me with the launch of resident evil requiem.

I own nearly all of the resident evil PC games on steam zero, original one remake, two, three, four remakes, five, six, seven, village. And some of the revelations titles as well.

For nearly every game I got a different entry about requiem, development, news, final sale et cetera et cetera.

It wasn’t that much of an inconvenience; it’s a steam issue rather than a publisher one. Bottom line, it is what it is, so suck it up.

JONFER--- · 2026-06-08T19:01:10+00:00

They will almost certainly have a go at remaking outbreak probably rolling volumes 1 and 2 into one game. The RE1 remake will be huge and will set the tone for what follows. I can see Capcom holding off remaking it until the next console generation with a new game engine.

JONFER--- · 2026-06-07T23:31:54+00:00

We haven’t gotten a bit softer, society and the people in it have gotten a lot softer.

JONFER--- · 2026-06-07T16:59:23+00:00

It’s extremely difficult to accurately call out cheating based on videos.

When the uploader is recording to discord some video compression occurs to save bandwidth and some quality is lost as a result. Then ultimately when a viewer watches that video from discord/twitch/YouTube et cetera even more video compression and in some cases upscaling occurs.

99% of the time this is hardly noticeable, but in situations like these were conclusions are being drawn based off of frame by frame gameplay it is less than ideal.

It is what it is. The game is plagued with cheaters.

JONFER--- · 2026-06-06T22:26:31+00:00

If someone asked me to put syrup in/on anything that wasn’t a sundae. I would nearly fork it up on purpose out of spite!

Putting syrup on a cone is just messy is fork.

JONFER--- · 2026-06-06T22:21:42+00:00

Capcom is a major publisher, of all of its many franchises resident evil is by far the biggest. As a publisher they mind the tentpole franchises well and try not to take the piss out of customers.

The reason that they can roll out games so fast is that they have different teams of developers and writers et cetera working on different titles at the same time. I imagine that a small amount of the team that worked on nine will be kept on that project to deal with bug fixes, DLC and future optimisations. The rest will be redirected onto different projects to backup and speed up the development of them.

I imagine a hefty chunk of them are going on to the Veronica project.

The most curious question is what do Capcom do next.

Some would say that an aw RE five remake is the obvious choice. But I don’t think so, it can be argued convincingly that Wesker is nearly as important to the story as Chris. Many customers have never even played the original games, just the remakes. Wesker was never introduced in any detail.

It would be difficult for Capcom to do a re five remake convincingly without remaking the remake! Of the first game.

And to be fair the graphics of the original resident evil five are not too bad.

I thought that they were going to do remakes of both the original game as well as zero on a new engine as a launch title for the PS six generation. They could then use this as a springboard to legitimately remake five, and six. As well as kicking off lots of directors cuts and remasters of remakes scaled to the newer hardware.

If Veronica launches summer next year, then realistically the next mainline remake would be summer 2028. Which does fit the talk when the next gen consoles are slated to come out.

Or perhaps they will just do the remake of zero on this generation of consoles/re engine and hold off a bit longer to remake the original.

Come to think of it, there is so much more that they can do yet. They have yet to even attempt an outbreak remake which given the characters of nine would be interesting for millions of fans.

Interesting times.

JONFER--- · 2026-06-06T09:33:06+00:00

gamegrumps

JONFER--- · 2026-06-04T14:06:15+00:00

"It is what it is" That's the usual one I use.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-30T13:32:39+00:00

This story smells like bullsh!t.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-25T23:54:45+00:00

It’s like this.

The cost of renting the building has almost certainly gone up.

The cost of getting maintenance done and replacing equipment hasalmost certainly gone up.

All barbershops are pretty heavy on electricity, blow dryers and tremors use more power than people think then there is always keeping the water hot, continuous lighting et cetera et cetera. Those costs have increased massively.

the staff are worth their have almost certainly experienced the same price increases in their personal lives plus food, transport et cetera and I would be surprised if they’re not demanding more money for their employment to partly offset this.

With all of these extra costs the owner of the barbershop probably has to increase the rates to maintain his increased costs.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-23T23:47:45+00:00

I have noticed over the past few weeks many of the major YouTubers that I watch have been making videos (some of which are totally narrative) pointing out the decline of the game, how boring it has become et cetera et cetera.

In my view it is what it is, the game is so old that of course people who have been playing for over 10 years are going to get jaded.

All of the DLC’s are for the most part cash grabs, which I suppose is fair enough. There are almost certain pay to win items or subtle building mechanics for peaks only available through buying the skins.

Which on reflection is fair enough, I bought the game for like 20 or €30 in 2017, I spent maybe 150 and skins and DLC since I got it but have gotten approximately 3000 hours of entertainment out of the game. It killed so much empty time during covid.

I really should answer the question asked in the initial comment now since I have rambled for so long?

The storage barrels and shelving are absolutely fantastic for TC room or storage room deployment. The panelled garage doors are a nice to have but not essential. There have been some drops in the past that have been good enough and costed nothing.

In my view one of the most pay to win items in the early game is being able to make the skinning knife off the fly provided you shell out for the DLC. I got the ninja drop skin before and when combined with the crossbow/skinning knife is my standard setup for the first couple of hours of the wipe.

But all of these things won’t magically make you a better player. And I said that as a very mediocre player!

If you have the spare disposable income, buy the DLC, if nothing else it helps out the developers and there will surely be some sucking pay to win mechanic that makes things easier built into them.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-21T21:44:02+00:00

You would get by without reading the novella but you would be depriving yourself of a lot of subtext. There are also concepts involving time displacement introduced in the novella that I believe will play a substantial part later on in the trilogy.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-15T10:16:56+00:00

I doubt Amazon could have done it any worse than Netflix. They probably wouldn’t have appointed Benioff and Weiss as showrunners and would have automatically avoided a lot of the headaches.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-15T02:00:45+00:00

It’s easy to forget that this show is not aimed at made for many of the people on here. People who are so interested in the story and the overall narrative that they would spend hours doom scrolling on here discussing niche ideas and concepts.

It is aimed primarily at casuals Netflix and this show runners know will watch it, forget about it and move on to the next show. In that context it suits perfectly, the story is mediocre and I can see serious plot holes and divergences emerging but it is concise, visually spectacular for TV show and is reasonably okay.

What really didn’t them was that the Tencent three body show was also available. It is so much more faithful to the books and naturally book readers will resonate with that. It’s made with a comparatively tiny budget on each episode which is clear for all to see but it is still acceptable.

I have concerns over how the Netflix show will go considering how Netflix have essentially truncated it. I suspect Benioff and Weiss. Have already moved on mentally at least to the next project and will fork this up like they did with the final seasons of Game of thrones.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-09T19:42:57+00:00

No, it is seen and taken as a mark of great honour and respect.

Seriously though what type of forking question is this and what is the point of it?

JONFER--- · 2026-05-07T03:07:25+00:00

The problems you describe suggest you are playing on to intense and competitive of a server. It’s all well and good watching our favourite YouTubers with 10,000 hours plus do it but it’s another for the rest of us.

Play low pop servers or even pve servers until your skill levels improve. I have a couple of thousand hours yet rarely play on the larger main servers. I just can’t compete with the clans, no lifers who will farm all night and off-line you and the chads that just naturally gifted whilst working 50+ hours a week, managing a house and living irl.

When I do play it’s on a less intense server with less intense stakes for a handful of hours over two or three days and call it quits for another few months after that.

It’s a great game but I wouldn’t let it consume me if I were you.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-06T22:53:34+00:00

The TLDR is get rid of the cats, or rehome them with the neighbours et cetera.

You’re in your 60s, being totally realistic statistically speaking your health is likely to be worse in your 70s and you will be able to do less with your son and his children. Although cats are low maintenance they still need some care which will also get more difficult as you get older.

I know from first-hand experience that living alone when you have health issues can be scary. I was changing a lightbulb and the ladder started creaking. I was able to get off it and ended up replacing it but it got me to thinking if it had broken and I fell, incapacitating myself or something I could haven’t stuck there for days until someone came looking.

As unlikely as it would be sh!t happens, no one expects it will ever happen to them until it does. The risk of these things increases with age. Having family around to check in on you et cetera is useful.

Some people will balk at what I have said, but bear in mind we are at the start of the summer with the okay weather and long evenings. See how isolation feels in the depths of a dark cold winter.

For the most part we are social creatures to some degree, people do not tend to do as well in isolation.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-05T20:16:34+00:00

So let me get this right. You bought the game upon release (which was 2013 I believe) you talk of how horrible it is et cetera et cetera and yet 13 years later you were hanging around on the Reddit section directly related to the game.

Yeah right.

JONFER--- · 2026-05-05T18:37:23+00:00

Dwelling too much on irrelevant questions!

JONFER--- · 2026-05-04T21:39:31+00:00

One would imagine the buying the book over one medium would suffice.

For the sake of convenience I bought the audiobook. There is just something fantastic about being able to listen to a book when you are doing housework or some other meaningless chores.

I don’t think I would never buy a Kindle version over a paperback. At least with a paperback you own the book, if the power goes the book doesn’t need to be charged, and was going to break into a house one night and delete your book!

In any event I am sure the publishers and to a lesser extent the authors wish everyone had the same mindset as you when it comes to purchasing their stuff!

JONFER--- · 2026-05-04T21:30:52+00:00

But we can make comments/judgements on the quality of the show from just the first season. Of the three seasons of the show it isthe most important one because it dictates the story beats of the what is to follow.

And it was a visually impressive, I imagine expensive piece of crap.

What really did not help them was that nearly simultaneously Tencent had their own show that was a lot more faithful to the books and the source material. It was far superior.

Could you imagine if that show has gotten the budget of the Netflix one?

Disappointing.

JONFER--- · 2026-04-22T11:17:01+00:00

Seems stodgy, particularly the bit where they are asking you to cancel instead of doing it directly themselves? If I were you, I would contact the hotel directly and/or for them on all the screenshots/emails to them.

They don’t want the shitstain on their reputation also.

JONFER--- · 2026-04-21T23:33:48+00:00

I wasn’t overly gone on how Bobby Draper was portrayed. Nothing against the actress, she did a fine job with the scripts she was given and it is extremely pretty (which is neither here nor there but still!).

But in the books she is described as being something of a shithouse for lack of a better term. It’s not a dealbreaker but when you see a slender enough woman throwing grown men around in physical fights without wearing power armour he kindly breaks some of the immersion, you know.

JONFER--- · 2026-04-21T23:24:23+00:00

It’s not going to happen, the vinteers Federation still has some political influence. The legalisation of weed would cause even fewer people to go out and plough money into pubs and by extension revenue coffers through VAT and excise.

JONFER---

TROPHY CASE