Yet there were still no findings that Iran indeed was working towards nuclear weapons. Just having the means to do it isn't the same as actually doing it.
ChairmanMeow
joined 2 years ago
Yes, that is the big thing many people are missing. Valve takes a 0% cut from Steam keys sold outside of their platform. The 30% does not apply.
The only rule Valve sets out here is that you don't sell those Steam keys for less on other storefronts. Which imo seems fair enough if Valve is doing the distribution and asking for nothing in return.
The big sticking point is whether the 30% cut isn't too high in the first place.
What? That wording isn't even relevant to the case. That's just Valve saying they will do a review of the price changes on Steam. They set out no specific requirements (other than a minimum price of $0.99, but will try to catch errors based on their pricing recommendations). It's similar to how Valve reviews new store pages and provides recommendations to devs on how to improve them. They do have rules against games set up for card farming scams, but that makes sense.
Wolfire's case is about how Valve as an extremely large player is impossible to go around, so game devs have no choice but to accept their 30% fee if they want to reach most of the market out there. Valve then uses these fees to entrench this supposed monopoly position (Wolfire specifically cites the acquisition of WON back in the day, which Valve eventually shut down and merged with Steam).
Wolfire argues that a fair price is much lower than 30%, and that Valve should lower the fee and therefore have less funds to fight their competitors, creating a more competitive environment.
But that is what the policy is about. Steam doesn't have a price parity policy regarding general game sales.
It is true. Valve does not enforce price parity for non Steam keys. Here is an example where the dev says that they are offering a better price on EGS because of the better cut:
https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/
Pretty clear example of the same game having a lower base price on Epic than on Steam.
Wolfire claiming Valve does this is something different from Valve actually doing it, and that's where the dispute lies. According to Valve, Wolfire's explanation of the price parity policy is incorrect.
Here's the policy itself: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3
You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. **It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers. **
The policy is pretty leanient regarding the "worse deal" aspect. You're allowed to have a sale on one platform but not on Steam, as long as you offer "something similar" at a different moment to Steam users too.
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.
Even if you violate this policy, Valve will still sell your game, they may just stop providing you with Steam keys to sell.
I don't see Wolfire winning this tbh.
It's so hard to even conceptualize if it would be better. A few common divisions would be, but is it easier than a decimal system? Would switching to one ever not feel weird if you previously learnt the decimal system?
So it's just a coincidence that no neighboring country has threatened them with outright military invasion since they got nukes?
I mean, haven't they?
And when has Iran ever threatened to use a bomb against Israel?
The IAEA cites several officials that have stated that Iran is able to manufacture nuclear weapons, and pundits on state tv have threatened Israel with total destruction and "annihilation". It doesn't take much to put two and two together. They're overt threats, but threats nonetheless.
The Soviets didn't just keep expanding across Europe, precisely because the US had the bomb to hold them in check.
This ignores the many proxy wars the US and USSR fought in many regions. I wouldn't necessarily call that very stabilizing. Meanwhile the theory that wars won't be declared between nuclear powers is actively being tested by several states at the moment, prodding and probing nuclear-capable alliances to test where the boundary lies.
Results achieved in the past do not guarantee success in the future.
As much as I agree that Israel is a destabilizing force and that you have their MO fairly spot on, Israel doesn't seem to be using its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent for invasion. They don't have to, they have significant conventional forces with US backing, making invasion nigh-impossible anyway. That's how it went in the past at least with the various regional wars.
I'm not sure an Iranian bomb would stabilize much if anything. Israel sees it as a direct existential threat and will stop at nothing to prevent or disable such a weapon. Iran has also repeatedly threatened to use it on Israel offensively, which doesn't really bode well for peace either. Suppose Iran does lob a bomb at Israel, how would they respond? Or what if Israel strikes first? I don't trust either party to be reasonable and responsible here tbh.
Iran can't use the weapon to threaten Israel as you say, because it'd be an empty threat. Iran can't nuke Israel without getting nuked right back. Israel knows this, so they can continue their expansions just fine.
MAD doctrine prevents nuclear wars from breaking out, but as we have been seeing recently it doesn't prevent conventional wars.
If you actually bothered to read the book at least a little bit, you'd have read he actually sources a fair bit.
He's also providing an eyewitness account from his time there. I'm not sure how much more primary you want to get.
You know how the British do their football chants? Do that, but mock that flag. Make it almost seem like he took it so it could get mocked.
Tsarist Russia started with the russification process. The Soviets initially under Lenin reversed course, but this later changed under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. They accelerated the process. None of this is contradictory to what I've said.
The pogroms in tsarist Russia are horrible acts of genocide, but they were fairly simply anti-Jewish in nature. They were not a part of the russification process and should be considered separate. Hence when I compare the russification between tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, I'm obviously not taking any pogroms into consideration. It's horrible, but unrelated to the subject at hand.
So far no radiation was detected, so perhaps it was stored more securely (or somewhere else).