Developers can and almost always do close to offer their games on multiple platforms and can even choose self hosted direct distribution of they do choose. Customers can choose to purchase their games on steam, itch, epic, Microsoft, or any of the many places they’re often hosted simultaneously. Steam is more often than not the choice people choose to use of their own free will because they perceive it as being the superior service.

Why do you believe excellence should be punished?

If someone says they’re not interested in dating Republicans, it doesn’t mean they are any better than the average person at picking one out from a crowd.

Valve is profitable because of the reputation they’ve built up over many years as being an incredibly consumer friendly storefront. Avoiding corporate bloat, and focusing their attention on the core aspects of their business consumers care about has allowed them to thrive where many others failed. Valve created and maintained a fantastic product. So yes.

Stream created and maintains a platform that gamers and developers want to use but more importantly, they’ve built up a reputation that people believe in and trust.

Gamers and developers are so eager to use steam because in all the years they’ve been operating, they still support and expand upon family sharing, have a fantastic refund policy (for consumers), don’t employ aggressive exclusivity deals, don’t limit download speeds behind paywalls, and provide a great review and recommendation system.

They’ve become successful due to this reputation, why should we punish them for that?

Valve created a fantastic entertainment product that people voluntarily choose to use. Why would you want to turn something people already love into something completely different? Counterproductive - especially when direct distribution is essentially free and universally accessible.

Another way you could achieve this is by hiring bakers of equal skill level and splitting all the tasks evenly among us!

The question becomes who determines the size of the stake. Without equal ownership in the business isn’t the relationship between me and the other workers more akin to an owner -> employee relationship as opposed to a co-ownership? If I’m the only one who can make execuitive decisions, determine the rates of profit sharing, choose who gets hired and who gets let go, it doesn’t seem that much different than how things might look in America today, for instance.

Suppose the contract I draft up is for $5 an hour and 1% of the excess profits, split evenly among all non-owners, I see no difference than hire things look like in Starbucks.

Thanks for the response! Would the idea then be that over time, the other two workers would eventually have to be given equal ownership over the operation?

As an asside, regarding the unanimous minus one vote policy as well, it seems like all you’d need to ensure that you never got removed was to ally yourself with one other person who would promise to never vote against you.

Thanks for the response! In my scenario I consider ownership to be the ability to make executive decisions surrounding the business. This could range from what products we choose to sell, what the sign on the front says, who we buy our ingredients from, how much we charge customers for, how much we spend on cleaning supplies, the color of the wallpaper, when we decide to look for new employees, ect…

If I’m the sole worker at my operation, I have full authority over all these things!

What about partially sighted or dyslexic individuals? Sure, a game like halo would need a lot of modification to be fully blind accessible, but a visual novel, for instance, might not. In my experience most visual novels are built as passion projects on shoestring budgets.

Lots of existing games have robotic narrators already (e.g minecraft), they just speak with a monotone voice. By incorporating more advance machine learning capabilities the same narrator could be capable of outputting a more nuanced and pleasant delivery for those that need it.

Using a robotic voice could make the game more accessible to blind, partially sighted, and dyslexic individuals. I’m not sure how an AI voice is inherently different than the voice that comes out of a screen reader, especially if it’s trained on the voice of employees or volunteers.

When you vote for a candidate you hate you’re telling them that they don’t have to change their platform to have your support. People making safe votes against their own interests is precisely why the people in power get away with all this bullshit. Don’t waste your vote by giving it to someone who doesn’t stand for what you believe in.

Thanks for your response! As I understand, even under marxism I still have the ability to use the product of my labour to buy things for my personal use? Like if I want to own a painting or piece of art, I can exchange the products of my labour with an artist for the products of their labour.

Regarding ownership, personal property still exists on some level, right? I don’t want other people wearing my clothes or sleeping in my bed for instance. I might not even want people driving my personal car if it’s something that I collected, built, or restored myself.

Thanks for your response! If I understand correctly, you’re saying the state / my community should collectively hold a vote to see if me leasing out the tractor is exploitative, and maybe prevent me from doing so or appropriate it for the collective benefit?

It was also my understanding that markets still exist under socialism in some level?

Thanks your response! I understand that distributed ownership and cooperatives exist as an option, even in existing capitalist societies. What I do wonder about is to what extent private ownership would still be permitted to exist?

Maybe in my scenario nobody else in the community thought the tractor was a priority investment at the time the purchase was made. Or perhaps instead of just me owning the tractor, it’s instead owned by my cooperative and we’re wondering if we can lease it out to other cooperatives?