It /could/ do, sure. There's uncertainty. Companies deal with uncertainty all the time.

Perhaps they didnt believe that internal investment could actually bring profits.

Perhaps it could bring profits, but the opportunity cost wasn't worth it.

Businesses can do all sorts of investments, beyond upgrading their file serving setup to meet the ideals of IT workers.

Yeah, sounds like the IT situation was working within reasonable parameters for the company.

As a developer, I often see other developers/Adkins propose "huge improvements" only for it to cost much more than expected and deliver less. Maybe Ferrari guy was right to ignore this suggestion.

> I often see other developers/Adkins propose "huge improvements"

Ha I see that too at my group. I try to fight it. But buying a NAS for like few hundred <insert favorite major currency> just seems like common sense. Just buy it, connect it to a VPN, setup regular backps, then forget about it for a decade.

That's the best you can ever hope for from companies.

Valve investing in Linux gaming? Same deal.

> He is fighting everyone's 30% fees. > > Perhaps, just perhaps, they are worth it because if they weren't the it would be easy to create a platform.

Perhaps. And perhaps its monopolistic behaviour. If so, we all stand to win by challenging it.

> WTF???? So if you lose money, the he isn't going to sue you, but if you make money, then he will sue you.

Sounds like Sweeney is suggesting the hardware itself is sold at a loss, not that console manufacturers make no money.

30% sounds high. Are there anticompetitive effects at play?

I play so few games that I'm happy to buy mostly from the much smaller gog.com. I'm not sure if their fees are less, but it at least raises competition.

I generally don't trust DRM platforms like Steam or Epic, but bravo to Tim Sweeney for championing smaller publishers unable to negotiate down from Steam's 30% fees.

> Are there anticompetitive effects at play?

As much as some Mall in your city charging high rental rates. If they are not stopping other malls from being built (say by bribing politicians), and they are not stopping people from setting up solo shops, I don't see where the anti-competitive force is.

Apple's case is much different. They are using oligopoly power in one area (high share of OS), to extract revenue in other area. It's like if one of the biggest cities in the country, had a Mayor who also owned the only Mall in that city and stopped any other Malls from being built and charged super high rental rates in that Mall.

> As much as some Mall in your city charging high rental rates.

I had a quick look.

Per https://www.shacknews.com/article/130287/valve-faces-antitru... , Valve are currently (?) being investigated for Most Favored Nation practices.

This is the equivalent of a high rent mall demanding that its shops don't charge less for its wares in lower rent malls.

I stand corrected.

If you sell a lot, Valve will reduce their cut on Steam to 15% IIRC. And Steam keys are free to developers - that is, you can generate Steam keys on your website and sell them and Valve gets nothing in return, and there's no volume requirement like there is for reducing Valve's cut on the Steam store.

Steam also doesn't do exclusives (beyond Valve's own titles), nor do they pay any OEMs to pre-install Steam - with the exception of the Steam Deck, all Steam installs come from people who actively seek them out. It's not like Apple where (until recently) you had to go through them to get your app on iOS and pay them every step of the way for the privilege.