People keep asking me, and I haven’t really had an answer, but now yeah, I’m thinking I’m back.
Unfortunately we don’t need to wait. We have every reason to be skeptical and critical of the way Valve is run now, specifically how they promote underage gambling via Counterstrike.
Whether Gaben personally agrees with that assessment, or whether he’s wiped his hands clean of the damage his company has done, the fact is that someone at Valve created this system, and they will still be there.
At this point they probably don’t even need to. America is in full “Nine (gasps) Eleven (cheers)” mode. Why waste the effort to spin the narrative when the Fox logo in the bottom right corner of the screen says it all?
This is what happens to a society that worships money. Even if presume a wealth hoarder wanted to make a good faith effort to improve other people’s lives, he’s so insulated from reality that he couldn’t even fathom doing the one thing that would make a material difference: parting with his money, paying his employees what they’re worth, paying the taxes he ought to owe.
Instead he comes up with some cockimamey scheme using the tools at his disposal. It’s like he’s trying to distract himself from the obvious right answer. And that removes any appearance of good faith immediately.
Laura just wants to prove herself to her idol.
It’s too bad that lemme.ee was shut down, but I’m glad it means your account is probably gone now.
We’re about to lose Medicaid.
I can already imagine my maga uncle: “$30 an hour to do what!? Flip burgers!? Fucking kids these days are so lazy, they should be grateful to make $5 an hour!”
This isn’t some masterstroke from Mamdani, it’s just Fox News laundering his ideas through the fascist filter.
They were on Boston’s T stations as well a couple months ago. Maybe they target cities specifically, I haven’t seen any outside tech industry centers.
I feel you might like this blog. I think it about every day now.
The point is they’re going to transfer wealth from Blue states to Red states. It doesn’t matter if Red states have budget problems or not. This is just a pretext to rob and plunder political opponents.
if Nintendo or Sony were doing the same levels of layoffs
But they’re not. Well, Sony did layoff 900 people last year and took deserved flak for it. But you’re right, it’s not even close to the level of Microsoft the last 2 years.
As for Nintendo,
“If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease. I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world.”
Call it bad faith, but I literally don’t believe them. They can say it but that doesn’t make it true. Why would anyone trust these companies? Their goal is to get you physically addicted to gambling. It is every company’s wet dream to get kids addicted to their product and leeh off their income for the rest of their lives.
I bet we’ll see all of those things - the ads, the sponsors, the jerseys, all of it - within a year of this program going live.
Meltdown is MSM’s new Slam. Everyone is slamming someone else. MAGA is melting down about everything. When are they not melting down?
Can someone enlighten me on how such communities plan to deal with the 2038 problem? Is it even relevant to them?
I know nothing about trusts either, but I can’t help but laugh at the idea of some massively in-debt and in-denial idiot purchasing bank services they can’t afford and won’t benefit them in anyway. Just throwing more money down the drain, to the exact people they hate so much.
I wanna assume good faith here so maybe a “volunteer today!” would work… or maybe that’s just as menacing…
Yeah once you explore the whole map, it becomes a typical looter shooter where you’re just grinding for 6 crown weapons. I will say though, having only played for a couple years, the dev team did a remarkable job adding new content over time, and not all of it locked behind DLC. Picking this game up on sale for $5 felt like I won the lottery. It might be “just ok” but I did have dozens of hours of fun in the game with my brother and friends.
Boy you weren’t kidding jfc
That’s exactly the kind of libertarian “personal responsibility” philosophy that Valve would use as an excuse to justify themselves. You don’t need to be carrying water for a multi billion dollar company, they can take care of that themselves. Unless you work for Valve. I don’t know, I’m sure it pays well.
“Because make no mistake, Valve is an amazingly talented game industry icon. And they’ve also very intentionally crafted a highly addictive slot machine system… in a game that’s free to play that has no enforceable age limit.”
(Interviewer) “Has gambling led to a greater interest in Counterstrike?” (Valve) “We don’t know. We don’t have any data to support that.”
(CS Player) “I got a bunch of other kids to kick in $50. It was really fun when we won, and then it was all gone very quickly.” … (Ex-Valve employee) “It’s a very libertarian place. Valve doesn’t want to say what can and can’t happen on Steam.”