It’s not questionable at all to assume that a user rooting and installing their own OS is a security risk. That’s the entire premise of zero trust. I’m sure Graphene OS is secure and better for user privacy when configured properly. But you can’t trust that an end user will configure it properly. That’s what I am saying and have been saying since the first message. You can’t trust the user to be security minded. Ultimately, the best thing you can do as a developer or a business is support a known quantity of software and hardware configurations and that likely means only supporting OEM installed ROMs.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.

What about that is unreasonable considering you’re using their platform to deliver your software and their multiplayer framework. Steam makes no money on the sale of your keys.

Also, if your issue is that steam is a monopoly, then go make accounts in other places and stop supporting that monopoly you’re mad about…

It’s not for your security. It’s for the company’s security. You’re really dense you know that. This is not about you and it’s not about Google. What I’m saying is, people suck ass. So to protect themselves from people sucking ass, they restrict access to their system to their terms. Completely fair if you ask me.

You can go cry Google bad all you want. I might even agree Google is bad. But this is not a Google thing. It’s an IT security thing. The banks and MFA providers are security first businesses. They will make the decision that protect them first and it makes sense for them to do so. If you owned a bank, there is a high likelihood you would make similar decisions that end users don’t quite understand.

As far as McDonald’s is concerned, who the fuck knows what their developers are doing. That app is trash anyways.

I got a ton of my games through humble bundle, Which distributes steam codes. I’ve also gotten steam keys through Itch.io.

As for your price argument, price matching is only for the lowest price steam has ever sold the software for. So you can sell your games at steam sale prices 100% of the time and have a higher price on steam. So you’re literally just wrong.

You’re implying that Google is causing these apps to not support custom OSs. But it’s literally not true. These apps are just not supporting custom OSs because their businesses don’t want to support non-standard platforms for security purposes. Tons of banks do not support custom OSs. It has nothing to do with Google and everything to do with not trusting the user which is 100% the correct approach for cyber security.

This has very little to do with Google. Custom OS’s in general are being restricted by these apps, not Graphene in particular. All custom OS’s and root access devices are inherently less secure, even if they are privacy focused OS’s.

In IT this is called a zero trust. You don’t trust anything you cannot verify yourself. And a user installed OS is not something anyone can verify other than the installing user. Obviously for your own security you have your own zero trust policy if you are using something like Graphene, but these companies aren’t making it more secure for you as a user, they’re covering their asses in case there are holes in security they cannot account for.

Most banks restrict custom ROM and root access devices for security purposes. Same with MFA apps. I get it. From an IT security perspective, restrictions on software compatibility limit the number of failure points. Even if you find a custom OS that is more secure as an OS, it is installed through opening up your device to security risk and there is no real requirement for you to close up that security risk afterward. My company has made the same choice to restrict supported platforms for our services.

McDonald’s app restricting the OS is probably some security decision they made because it’s more secure even when they probably don’t need it though.

But if everyone had the same amount of money, the interest is suddenly 0 because interest is made off the backs of debt holders. You can’t be a debt holder if you are wealthy enough to live on interest. Interest money always comes from somewhere. It’s inherently the transfer of wealth from one person to another. The idea that you might live stress free solely off of the interest of your wealth is capitalism. Meaning capitalism requires people to be in debt and it requires people to struggle while the wealthy do… passion projects? Sounds like an ideal society…

Except it has gotten progressively worse as a product due to misuse, corporate censorship of the engine and the dataset feeding itself.

That’s like saying we vote for presidents because “at least they aren’t Hitler.” I don’t like Liz Cheney any more than I enjoyed her Father. But she is not wrong in this instance and I think that’s the important take away in this article.

So less than 1% of natural born Canadian citizens in 2023 were to non-citizen parents? Really send like it’s not that big of a deal at all

He doesn’t care about the constitution. Like not even a little. He has said as much when he called for the termination of the constitution in 2022.

But steam isn’t trying to be monopoly. They don’t pay developers to only sell on their platform. Games that are only on steam are only on steam because steam is the only place that developer wants to sell the game.

That lawsuit is ridiculous and misses a ton of huge boons to developers. The fact is , valve only takes that sales cut for games sold on their platform but they never require you to make that sale on their platform. In fact, they are totally cool with you making the sale elsewhere and giving a steam code out which means steam makes nothing on that sale and they still host the software distribution for said sale. You can use their multiplayer infrastructure, their distribution infrastructure, and their communication infrastructure without paying them a dime if you sell your game on your own website. And it’s by design that you can do this.

As for consumer benefits, steam has a system that allows you to give your friends and family members access to your library. They are constantly selling games at steep discount (after getting permission from developers to do so). They allow a huge range of content with very light handed censorship policies. They have a robust multiplayer system and communications platform that integrates seemlessly with the games they sell and distribute. I won’t get into the Linux stuff but all I will say is Proton wouldn’t be where it is without valve and steam.

Steam is single handedly the most pro-consumer and pro-developer platform on the market. When developers put their games on steam, everyone wins. And it’s never a requirement that those games only exist on steam. When steam is the only place a developer sells their game, it’s because steam is legitimately the only place that developer wants to sell it anyway.

You wouldn’t want that. JD Vance is miles worse than Trump in every way people hate trump for.

Nah the end of our civilization will be the dogs that roll over to daddy Putin like you.

Tell that to the Uyghurs China is trying to destroy that the media conveniently forgot about.

An auction doesn’t necessarily need to go with the highest bidder. Things can be sold to whoever the beneficiary of the sale decides. The families of Sandy Hook are taking less money than they would have otherwise by taking the Onion’s bid and they are accepting of that fact that they will get less money as a result. The other outcome is Alex Jones buying his company back or some other company that may use the platform for more continued disinformation. The Onion is the only business that can give confidence that their platforms will continue to push Satire rather than spewing hatred into the world.

Where did I say any of that? I replied to OPs confusion about the lack of current events in this ancient meme.

I mean it’s clearly a pandemic era comic. The whole no toilet paper thing and deadly viruses.