Current system seems like capitalists dream of underpaying employees as much as possible and having the narrative pass the blame to be between customers and workers.

And even better that workers will argue against actually being guaranteed a higher salary in favor of this system on the off chance they might get more. Sort of like gamblers who get off the high of that one big win. Either way, the shift away from having to pay full salaries and benefits is cause for celebration for owners, since they love that it’s more likely they don’t get blamed and instead the customer when the owner has enough money to take home profits and live well instead of struggling like their employees being paid the bare minimum.

It’s pretty much the absolute ideal situation for them. No blame and lower expenses. And most wonderful part of it all is workers being expected to cover the salaries of other workers as opposed to the people at top, so they continue to win in every facet.

When pay is basically non existent is there a reason to be on spotify? Or is it for “exposure” in hopes of finding new fans.

People this doesn’t affect are pirates. People who get to enjoy their media without worry are pirates. When pirates are getting the better experience and it’s customers who are getting affected what incentive is there to not pirate other than personal morals. Because it sure isn’t for a better product.

Yeah, hate haggling. Never know if it is actually a good deal, and tracking prices and deals is so unreliable compared other goods with the way those have historic price tracking recorded on sites like camelcamelcamel or keepa. Keeps consumers in the dark with only a broad idea of what isn’t a scam price and making the experience as exhausting as possible to extract money from them.

Isn’t that what sale is with it being sporadic? Retail price is for people who can’t wait for sales and need it now.

Not sure how retail price would be used. Permanent price drops are rare for pretty every purchasable good out there beyond digital games with companies saying something is X% off leading to more purchasing with consumers thinking they are getting a deal.

Publishers I believe are also the ones with power to fill the market with Steam keys to then have it priced however they want and including them in bundles that are sometimes less than the price of just the game alone during a sale. Some publishers opt to not make steam keys available at all.

As consumer it’s just unusual to see accusations of price fixing, since I can so easily get steam keys for cheaper. And only times I usually go buy direct from Steam these days is if a company doesn’t offer steam keys, so the only way to buy a steam copy is through steam. And prices for games feel like they’ve been so cheap that it’s the one thing I have no complaints about.

I enjoyed the first game. Didn’t really like the other entries, but the first once did a great job with the soundtrack and a vibe that made things feel nostalgic.

Games like Risk of Rain Returns is selling cheaper than it’s ever been on Steam. I use isthereanydeals often to check current and historical pricing before buying a game.

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/riskofrainreturns/info/

Feel like that is never actually enforced with my frequent use of isthereanydeals to check current and historical pricing before buying a game.

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/riskofrainreturns/info/

I wonder what would be said if isthereanydeals is pulled up as evidence, and shows games listed cheaper than steam on other stores. Pretty much reason a majority of my Steam games have been bought outside of the Steam stores, since I’m able to consistently get the games cheaper with better earlier discounts.

Is it listed retail price that is being talked about as opposed to sale price?

Their algorithm certainly made videos worse the moment they started priorizing the promotion of longer videos over shorter ones leading to an increase in incredibly long winded videos that waste everyones time.

Freetube I found to be easier since I haven’t needed to do any tinkering since I got it, and plus side has been not needing an account to have a personal subscription feed.

Yeah, I don’t care enough to simp for a company that has enough money to start off with a losing strategy to begin with of burn money to kill competition then is surprised that they can’t easily revert back the strategy that “won” them the market dominance in the market dominance in the first place.

And YouTube is one of many services that exist to try and convince people to make a Google account anyways. Without YouTube that’s one less reason to make an account with other email providers around and less of a reason for Apple users which is growing in dominance.

Pirates aren’t most people. Piracy finds a way among pirates.

Even without ads it’s shit without sponsorblock for me. Not even for the sponsor spots, but the absolutely annoying copy paste of please like, subscribe, hit the notification icon, blah blah blah blah blah.

I’ve preferred firefox on Android, since it doesn’t refresh on me when I minimize it as often as other browsers.

Yeah, from my experience anything marked playable has been pretty flawless. Found I actually enjoyed the PS3 games more than I did the PS4 ones reminding me of why it is my favorite Sony console.

This awesome. I actually do have a copy of the PS3 copy of the Jak and Daxter collection, but I’m too lazy to hook up my PS3.

I’ve had to block off entire instances too which I use the Connect app for.

I never found “all” browsable for any platform whether it be lemmy, YouTube, or reddit. It’s why subscribing has been so important to me, and filtering. Like on YouTube which I access through freetube I’ve disabled “trending” and “popular” since even the thumbnails were obnoxious for majority of the videos, and I blocked out channels to keep them from dominating search results. And on reddit what even made /r/all viewable was a reddit enhancement suite filter lists that was in the hundreds for blocking of communities, and even then was a wack a mole that required keyword filtering.

All of any platform will devolve into a shit show. As for niche subs. Yeah, not much that can be done about that if the user base is small.

I uninstalled chrome. Stopped logging into YouTube. And moved to freetube on desktop. Newpipe on Android.