Capturing a UART Design in MyHDL and Testing It in an FPGA - <AUTHOR> http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323837&

<comment><USER2> As yet another FPGA enthusiast with a software background, I want to like MyHDL more than I actually do. It makes the expression of complex generated hardware easier (because it's Python), but the workaday circuit level stuff ends up even cruftier-looking than VHDL. And the simulation backend seems like mostly a toy. Chisel is sort of the same thing, but based on Scala, and has a lot of the same issues IMHO.

Honestly I wonder if all these "open source HDLs aimed at hackers" projects are simply trying to do too much and what the world really needs is just a cleaner Verilog with the synthesis and simulation environments more strictly separated...

Also: what editor thought that the best way to represent code examples was as an unreadably small app screenshot followed by helpful "bigger image" and (sigh) "view this code on github" links?

<comment><USER3> I think verilog (and mostly systemverilog) is beyond saving. Systemverilog has a spec bigger than c++ and it's full of broken, unused features or features that aren't compatible. Over the years they have added any feature that some HW engineer asked for resulting in a true kitchensink language. I don't think that there is a single simulator that implements the complete spec. (and on top of the regular language they use lexical macros very heavily)

VHDL is a little better but the syntax is horribly verbose and it lacks power to do advanced verification (either it needs a better library or it needs a few more features). In my mind VHDL can be saved, some VHDL-coffeescript could be wonderful.

MyHdl is interesting, it's build with clear goals & it's made by an experienced HW engineer that also understands good software design (most don't). He would disagree with you about simulation ([http://www.jandecaluwe.com/blog/its-a-simulation- language.ht...](http://www.jandecaluwe.com/blog/its-a-simulation- language.html)). The RTL code that MyHdl generates always looked very clean to me and the simulation possibilities with python are of course infinitely better than anything that systemverilog or vhdl can offer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very nice comment, I agree with it 100%. Being able to apply good software desgin at a RTL design is a killer feature of MyHDL in my opinion.

The possibility to mix RTL and high level software is a very nice feature, for exemple: To make a FFT in Python in few lines and compare the output to your RTL FFT with asserts. And script it so you can loop through a different number of fixed bits width and check the TVE at each bit width.

To do this in Python I used ~50 lines, in VHDL it would be a headache and I probably would end up needing to use matlab to compare the results.

<comment><USER2> I guess I don't see this as such a big deal. My own experience is limited, but doing this kind of validation by iterating over the input space using e.g. perl to generate verilog is fairly straightforward. I've done exactly that with decent success; again it's a straightforward software problem, and I'm a software guy.

I think the problems I had is sort of the converse: hardware is hard. Reasoning about hardware is hard. And having the representation of your hardware about which you much reason be expressed in the actions of an interpreted program (where the synthesis is a side effect basically) makes things harder than it has to be. The RTL ends up being polluted with simulation constructs and hiding the meaning I'm trying to see. And if anything MyHDL is actually worse at this than Verilog or VHDL.

<comment><USER3> Because reasoning about hardware is hard it's important to be able to rely on simulation. I'm not saying that all issues can be caught/detected in simulation but many can. In most designs 90% of the code (typically the synchronous logic) can be fully debugged in simulation. Ok there is still a portion that can't be debugged, and you'll likely spend a large amount of time on that final 10% but the alternative is certainly worse.

A good designer can avoid constructs that can't be or are very hard to simulate correctly. A good example is signals that have to cross clock domains, metastability is easily missed in simulation and the problems it causes in actual hardware are huge. Good hardware design tries to avoid or encapsulate these kind of constructs.

Beyond this you still have to deal with the analogue world and that is often hard to simulate. Clock generators that misbehave, working with memory controllers (and buggy IP cores): it's not all under your control and that why hardware design often feels so hard. A lot of time is spend on these issues, but that's only because the rest is made easy by using VHDL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its a nice simple design. Interesting to see it python instead of the usual verilog/vhdl

Real uarts tend to implement FIFOs and oversample and do control signals. The virtual 16550 linked below oversamples at 16x and the generic verilog uart below does at least try to sniff at the center of the bit clock even if I don't think it oversamples.

Here's a generic verilog uart

[http://opencores.org/project,osdvu](http://opencores.org/project,osdvu)

here's a virtual 16550

[http://opencores.org/project,uart16550](http://opencores.org/project,uart16550)

Those projects would be logical paths of inspiration to extend the python uart. You could probably just steal/borrow the PDF spec sheet for the virtual 16550 and use that as a spec to implement the python uart.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your feedback!It's indeed a very simple implementation, the goal was more to explore MyHDL than to have a robust UART.</comment></comment>


Chinese Pillow History - <AUTHOR> https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/XV_E7BEAACIAo9Vz <comment><USER2> One of the things I like about the Chinese culture is how deep they go into finding a meaning.

<comment><USER3> yet money is the always the strongest msg

<comment><USER4> Worth talking about!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But none of us will think it acceptable to sleep with such a pillow from ancient china after seeing a real thing in museum.

<comment><USER6> I don't know... I'm willing to try it. I was surprised when I first tried a bean pillow in Japan. The next surprise was a pillow that is soft on one side and rocks on the other. I was really surprised that I liked the rocks the best. Eventually I ended up with a buckwheat pillow, but unbelievably I occasionally like to swap it for a bag full of rocks (especially in the summer). If you don't try it, you don't know!

<comment><USER7> Yes, count me in as a buckwheat pillow adherent. Best thing I ever did to improve sleep. Prevents a hot and sweaty head. Plies into desired thickness or contour well. Apparently, they're also less likely to foster mites or other pillow dwellers. No concern about foam off-gassing.

I have one cased with cotton on one side and wool on the other. The wool side is less crunchy but warmer so I prefer the thin cotton-on-buckweat feel by far.

A king-sized buckwheat pillow is luxurious but weighs a ton. For travel or camping I take a very small version, also useful as a meditation zafu.

Plastic versions of buckwheat filling I've slept on in Japan probably make extra sense in a commercial setting because I assume the whole thing is easily washed and dried. Slightly soft tiny hollow tube cuttings is the best description I can give.

Your rock pillow is interesting. Polished little stones in a thin sack?

<comment><USER6> Yep. River stones -- just want them to be relatively small and not to have to many jagged edges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was fascinating. Thanks for sharing it.</comment>


Shrinking Aral Sea - <AUTHOR> http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/aral_sea.php <comment><USER2> what is also interesting is that as the Aral/Ural sea has dried up is that the land bridge that has formed has opened greater access to a former Soviet biological weapons lab/military base [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vozrozhdeniya_Island)

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently learned about another somewhat related large-scale Soviet environmental project called the 'Northern River Reversal', which probably would have undone the damage to the Aral Sea (but most likely would have messed up the environment in northern Siberia even more). Within this project there were also tests performed for the 'Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy' program where nukes were used to dig out parts of a planned river- reversal-channel.

Crazy times.

[edit, link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal)]

<comment><USER4> Kapuscinski has an outstanding piece on both of these projects in his book "Imperium". Basically, the real purpose of these projects was to remove all the private fruit gardens and replace them with state-owned cotton farms. State-owned in this case really means "owned by the families that ran the Soviet republic", of course, since these were largely independent of Moscow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone still have doubts about the fact that we are in an Anthropocene era? When lakes like this (once having a surface of about 70000 km²) disappears and the soil all around enriches with layers of salts carried by wind it's just hard to argue that we as humans haven't have any noticeable effect on Earth's geology.

</comment><comment><USER6> On a smaller scale there is Mono lake in California. Same cause, water diverted for irrigation, lake dries up.

<comment><USER7> Mono Lake is smaller than it used to be, but it is growing slowly thanks to legal protections [1].

Owens Lake [2] to the south of Mono Lake is gone. It was larger than Mono Lake. Lake bed salts blown by the wind are pretty toxic, and Los Angeles was required to use some water to reduce dust.

The largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi used to be Tulare Lake [3] in central California. It's gone and the southern San Joaquin Valley no longer drains to the ocean. Salts and other junk is slowly building up.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Audubon_Society_v._Su...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Audubon_Society_v._Superior_Court)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake)

<comment><USER8> On the other hand, the Salton Sea didn't exist before the engineering accident which created it.

<comment><USER9> The most recent incarnation was created by an accident, sure. The lake has existed many times in the past: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea#History)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Systemic issues with how human civilation is run, especially large scale pertrol chemical monoculture agriculture is to blame. We will continue to have these issues until we start innovating to use more restorative & ecologically friendly techniques.

One issue is the feedback cycle of nature is slower than the snap judgments of humans with vested interests.

One thing I've noticed is some people either understand the systemic issues & some people do not. I speculate that a person pays attention to certain things. Many people will discount another person's perspective if they cannot observe the same distinctions.

</comment><comment><USER11> Btw there was a very good article about this in National Geographic Magazine earlier this year, with interesting insight from the people who live there.</comment>


Ever done a DNA test kit? Help Covid-19 crowd science. Get insight into your DNA - <AUTHOR> https://supfam.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/SUPERFAMILY/23andMe/ <comment><USER2> 876 people have signed up so far. Very close to hitting the initial target of 2000 participants. Read the BBC article about the study here:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england- bristol-52591581?...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england- bristol-52591581?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=5ebe630762e5cf06639d539d%26Coronavirus%3A%20Genetic%20link%20study%20participants%20sought%262020-05-15T15%3A33%3A13.112Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:a4dd8d00-f822-4b9c-bcd4-383f34ba47b7&pinned_post_asset_id=5ebe630762e5cf06639d539d&pinned_post_type=share)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, so far it has been shown that blood type plays a role in COVID-19 susceptibility: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v2)

I doubt that this it the only factor at play, perhaps they will find specific variants of proteins that affect the efficacy of the immune response.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great to see this public online study trying to understand genetic determinant linked to phenotype! As an end user, I am proud to have participated in the study during its initial development phase.</comment>


Schroedinger, What is life [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/philosophy/religionandscience/mindandmatter.pdf <comment><USER2> context: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F)

<comment><USER3> Also, it was mentioned in this: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics- theory...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of- life/)

And the Hacker News thread of it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103215) [A New Physics Theory of Life (2014)]</comment></comment>


Francis Picabia, the Playboy Prankster of Modernism - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/arts/design/francis-picabia-the-playboy-prankster-of-moderism.html <comment><USER2> This is so unbelievably boring to me, and I think the article tells me why. This guy was born into wealth, didn't have to work, an international playboy: his paintings were probably the most boring part of his life. At least an article on his nightlife would be entertaining and no more spiritually bankrupt than his hastily-done paintings.</comment>


When I raised my B2B SaaS's prices - <AUTHOR> https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/t/when-i-raised-my-b2b-saass-prices/7017 <comment><USER2> As an occasional B2B SaaS buyer, the key point in getting your pricing right / wrong is knowing where the limits are for;

a) I can just get this on my company credit card without needing approval

b) OK for this price it's going to show up as a line somewhere in a budget and / or I'm going to have to get approval from my boss ( 1-2 meetings work )

c) For THAT price I need to trigger a whole enterprise process, have a ton of meetings, make the case

Mostly you want to stay in a) for volume sales. Once you start getting into b) and c) you start needing support agreements, enterprise sales people etc. plus b) and c) make work for the customers that are your "adopters" in the enterprise - they need to love your product for that to happen.

<comment><USER3> Would you mind sharing where the price cliffs are for (a), (b), and (c)?

Just curious.

<comment><USER4> At many companies, people can expense up to $50 with minimal (no?) prior approval via providing a receipt. That's a great place to be for tools that are useful in your job but not required.

Beyond that, most companies need more documentation or prior approval from your boss (only). The upper limit for that is often $500. That means whether something is $60 or $499, it can take exactly the same effort.

Above that, it often requires boss' boss' approval or a real line item in the team/department budget. The upper limit for this is all over the map, I've seen anything from $1000/month or $10k/year. Once you cross into this zone, assume customization, a more complex sales process, and you've left the realm of expense reports and moved into Purchase Orders (POs).

Above there, this is starting to look like enterprise software sales which is a beast unto itself. This likely turns into competitive bidding, a dedicated sales force, custom contracts & TOS, and a lot of other things. _IF_ you can be successful here though, you can do quite well, especially if you've figured out how to make it repeatable and scalable.

<comment><USER5> This is a great comment - I would add that for the $50 price point / pricing stage, it is also low enough for an "operator" (someone using your SaaS to help their daily work) to just put their credit card in first, and then worry about claiming back from their company later.

The "pinch" of buying is therefore low enough to encourage uptake. If the base price level is higher than this, then that itself becomes another mental task for the potential customer to work through before pulling the trigger. This doesn't mean you shouldn't have higher priced plans (you must!), but from my experience $50 or even $99 as the upper end of the "base" plan is a good first threshold to get prospects to be ok with putting their credit card in.

<comment><USER6> But with all those things, beware of the recurring expense problem: I would agree with all those cliffs, for one-time expenses.

As soon as payments are recurring, things will be more complicated: Being bound to a contract beyond the current year is often subject to approval, at least when recurring payments are involved. Not yet paid but binding future obligations have to occur in various reports and need accounting involvement. Better have short contracts with autoextension or at least the possibility to pay up front for a fixed term.

<comment><USER7> > Better have short contracts with autoextends

Does that mean monthly recurring payments?

Or is that too short? did you mean yearly?

> the possibility to pay up front for a fixed term

What's a good fixed term, maybe one year? Or a few years?

<comment><USER6> > Does that mean monthly recurring payments?

Usually yearly should be fine, however, monthly would reduce customer anxiety (not sure if thats very relevant for B2B) but increase possible administrative overhead on your side.

> What's a good fixed term, maybe one year? Or a few years?

Longer than your usual recurring term. I'd say 2 to 5 years. The right term depends on the overall cost of that package: you should price them below the next-higher aforementioned cliff of course. If you usually offer yearly $20 contracts, and you have determined a typical cliff to be at $50, you could offer a 3year package for $49.

Also consider other factors: you might not want to support a version for the whole fixed term. And you definitely don't want to sell anything perpetual or semi-perpetual.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the help

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As the price goes up we tend to get larger organisations as customers. Unfortunately, they are also more likely to ask for custom legals, T&Cs, and security audits. In all cases, I say no. That may change in the future.

this was a particularly interesting bit. I've got a feeling that the organizations that care about custom legal and security audits can be charged way more than $50 a month. If people are caring about that you're probably beyond a developer with the corporate card in terms of who is buying.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. I operate a B2B SaaS company as well. We also said "no" a lot in our first 5 years. It wasn't worth the overhead. But as we grew and our processes matured we started talking to enterprises. Turns out that we'd already figured out most of what they wanted/asked for at that point.

We have a list price on the website and also a "contact us" enterprise plan over a certain size. Once an enterprise ends up in that funnel, everyone involved knows multiple zeroes are being added to the TCO. It's never been a problem for us.

Larger orgs really will pay significantly more just to have their hands held.

<comment><USER10> Yup. I worked for a hosting company once that added a zero to the price of service for an NBA team that wanted a 12 hour SLA instead if a 24 hour SLA. Another NBA team bought the highest priced of solutions i offered and told me as they were signing, "we know the least expensive option was probably overkill for our needs, but it is important that we have your full attention."

<comment><USER11> I have been occasionally "in the room" for conversations where a contract between an enterprise and a vendor is being discussed. I was initially surprised that enterprise buyers specifically wanted per-X billing, to ensure that the vendor was equally incentivized to maximize X as the buyer was. But it makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >I've never put up prices for existing customers.

I think this is key. New customers will evaluate based on the current price not historical prices, but if you increase the price for existing customers, they will feel cheated.

<comment><USER13> What do you do if you want to experiment with lower prices? If you lower the price for existing customers during the experiment, it's going to hurt if you end up putting the price back.

<comment><USER14> Call it a flash discount/sale/promotion for new/existing customers.

Adjust the terms as needed.

<comment><USER13> > Call it a flash discount/sale/promotion for new/existing customers.

Not sure if you mean this, but the problem I find with offering sales (where you mention the end date) is you can't tell if some customers are only buying it because they don't want to miss out on a limited offer so it doesn't help you learn the real value of your product.

Like when people buy clothes in a sale they end up never wearing, or people that buy Steam sale games and never play them.

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't usage metrics tell you that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Our [1] UX/UI design service with a monthly retainer had similar results when raising prices for new customers (old ones are locked in at previous rates). same conversation rates, more revenue, zero complaints, bigger customers. Big difference is that we charge $xxxx/mo. So raising our 4-figure prices resulted in a huge revenue increase. We're probably going to double prices in a few weeks to see what happens.

[1] [https://fairpixels.pro](https://fairpixels.pro)

<comment><USER17> Fyi: faq entry "how will I communicate..." is cut off on ff mobile (limited height and overflow hidden?).

Nice concept otherwise - charge subscription instead of per-project and allow endless iterations. Brilliant!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> yeah $50 is still not a lot for the service you provide, if shneider electric, weework, ... are really your customer, you could probably 10x your price. You have to think on the value your bring to them instead of the the complexity of your service.

Actually for your product I would expect the price to be around $200 per month for a <300 people company

But the price has a big impact on what people expect from you, so if this is a side project, you may prefer keep it low

<comment><USER19> I agree that it's a low price, but disagree one should just raise it because they can. Keeping prices low helps prevent competitors from undercutting, or even competing in the first place, in my opinion. If this service were charging say, 500 per month, they'd likely have a lot of knockoffs enter the space.

<comment><USER20> If I'm a huge business getting a lot of value out of a $500/mo SaaS product that does everything I need and is reliable, it would be a pretty bad decision to take a chance on a new $200/mo service offering the same thing.

<comment><USER19> That's true for a while, but companies churn a lot as new things come about. I can't even tell you how many travel/HR, ticketing, chat, and video conferencing systems my rather boring company has gone through in my tenure.

More importantly, new customer acquisition. At 500 a pop, someone like me could be inclined to give it a go, and I'm just one not-so-motivated guy. That's great passive income with a handful of customers. For 50? Not worth the effort since now I'd need a handful x 10. At 500 a pop, companies with way more resources will outpace and outspend you for that. Less likely for 50. Just my opinion.

* To be clear, the above is a hypothetical. I have zero interest in copying anyone's work, or really any side project at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but you don't learn anything from this exercise. Unless you somehow know how many new customers would have signed up without a change in the price, you can't infer anything from this. It's tempting to compare with earlier growth rates (as the author did) but for a small, growing business the growth rate isn't going to be constant over time. What is really problematic, though, is trying to do this type of comparison when we're literally in a different world due to the pandemic.

<comment><USER22> I take your point generally but I think it's overstating it to say you learn _nothing_. Definitely the signal can be hard to isolate form the noise, but if it's a big enough signal you'll hear it.

For example: if sales fall off a cliff, it's reasonable to interpret that as "perhaps I over did it." and so on.

<comment><USER21> > For example: if sales fall off a cliff, it's reasonable to interpret that as > "perhaps I over did it." and so on.

But (a) that's not the outcome, so it doesn't help here, and (b) with the pandemic, even if sales went to zero, you'd still need some way to know the effect of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Have you heard of Van Westendorp's Price Sensitivity meter? It could give you numerical insight into how you might raise prices further (vs. guess and test).

<comment><USER24> Successful SaaS companies are always testing their pricing

<comment><USER25> I ran a successful SaaS and didn't test. While it's easy to test basic conversion, it's way harder to test the prices' impact on churn and an effect on PR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd say that the author missed the chance to add sales copy and/or message the trial users with "Our prices are going up on [date], act now to lock in this rate!"

It seems like you could squeeze at least a temporary bump in conversions out of that.

<comment><USER27> For most bootstrapped SaaS businesses, the number of active free trial users is so low, it's not worth your mental capacity.

Also. You really don't want customers who will buy from you at $29/mo and won't buy at $39/mo. This is because if $10 makes difference in their purchasing decision, the value they are getting out of your subscription is roughly what you charge. This segment of customers will churn the fastest as they will be constantly on the edge revaluating whether your subscription is "worth it". You might as well not care about whether they become customers or not. So why bother with cheesy tricks to make them convert. It's not worth it.

<comment><USER28> As a self-funded SaaS owner, I agree 100% with the above answer. Totally correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > What did I tell existing customers about the price change?

> Nothing. I probably should have, but it fell off my to-do list.

This pisses me off, I started paying for Notion back when they limited the number of blocks monthly and then at some point they changed the pricing to unlimited blocks in their Free plan, and I didn't notice until last month. I googled, I couldn't find any announcement, no tweet, nothing. I felt betrayed, It's been over a month, and now I find myself using Notion less and less every day.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I didn't raise prices for existing customers. FTA:

> I've never put up prices for existing customers. I'm okay with people > getting the price they started with indefinitely. It is the way I'd want to > be treated as a customer. Anyway, within a couple of years, as existing > customers churn, the "problem" of older customers paying less will simply go > away.

<comment><USER30> i think the problem is that the poster could have used the free plan now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reminds me of my mother-in-law's wedding photography business. She was struggling with the what-ifs of raising prices and losing her valuable customers. She took a business course and they recommended she double her price. Double.

She gained more customers than ever before.

I guess when it comes to wanting a premium product, whether it's a wedding or software in general- people are less likely to follow-through if the price is unusually cheap because it gives the smell of "maybe they have terrible support" or "maybe they cut corners in x or y".

</comment><comment><USER32> Have you explored any non-digital marketing channels for growth yet? I am working on a sales model for companies like yours that sell to small/medium sized businesses. Would love to chat if you had some time to discuss. Is there a good way to contact you?

</comment><comment><USER33> Always enjoy a good read, thank you Steve!

Also, this thread has some gems too, glad I found it.

</comment><comment><USER34> >January 2020: start actually charging the new prices.

So you just started billing them a different amount without even warning them?

<comment><AUTHOR> FTA:

> What about existing customers?

> I've never put up prices for existing customers. I'm okay with people > getting the price they started with indefinitely. It is the way I'd want to > be treated as a customer.

<comment><USER34> I think this could have been stressed a bit more clearly in the section I referenced - since it's vitally important!</comment></comment></comment>


Malicious Deep Fake Prohibition Act of 2018 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-115s3805is/pdf/BILLS-115s3805is.pdf <comment><USER3> From the definitions section of the act:

> The term 'deep fake' means an audiovisual record created or altered in a > manner that the record would falsely appear to a reasonable observer to be > an authentic record of the actual speech or conduct of an individual.

This limits the scope of the act to prohibiting deep fakes that are not explicitly labeled as such. If the recording (or, potentially, links to the recording) contains any type of disclaimer, that should be sufficient to establish that no reasonable observer would consider it to be authentic.

But I wonder if this provides enough protection to victims in the case of deep fakes where a person's face is grafted onto sexual content or other content that might embarrass the person, whether or not a disclaimer exists.

For instance, if someone puts an acquaintance's face into a sex scene and distributes it online, then even if there's a huge "This is a deep fake" scrolling disclaimer across the video, that person may still feel as if they have been defamed.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure your reading of this is warranted at all.

In any event, are you sure it protects you from criminal liability if you label something as a deep fake, then other people redistribute it without that label?

<comment><USER5> > if you label something as a deep fake, then other people redistribute it > without that label?

If I print off a copy of a Van Gogh making it clear that it's a copy, and then somebody else sells it as an original, who is liable for fraud?

<comment><USER6> The intent of the law seems different in these cases though. The purpose of anti-forgery laws is to protect the producers and consumers of art from being ripped off financially. The purpose of deep-fake prohibitions is to protect the viewers of the video from being misled about reality, and the subject of the video from the consequences thereof.

Yes they both involve making visual copies of things but the underlying dynamics are completely different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> With respect to the U.S. Congress, I don't think there is sufficient language to make something like this sufficient without also being overly broad. I'm looking at this, specifically:

      10 ''(2) the term 'deep fake' means an audiovisual
      11 record created or altered in a manner that the
      12 record would falsely appear to a reasonable observer
      13 to be an authentic record of the actual speech or
      14 conduct of an individual; and

If that's the case, any sort of creative editing, even just quick cuts, could fall under this (see: any primetime or cable news, any TV campaign ad, the quick cuts of Obama where it looks like he's singing Never Gonna Give You Up, etc). And, not to get on the US politics slant, but a law like this could be weaponized against political foes—basically, label everything you don't like as "fake news" and prosecute it under this law.

Additionally, if you look at this and just say "well, we all know what a deep fake is, so your point is moot," I will say, somewhat at the risk of contradicting myself, that maybe the language needs to be forward-thinking to cover whatever the next "deep fake" is.

In my opinion, the sort of clause above would be better written like:

      The term "Computer-generated audiovisual impersonation" means an
      audiovisual record created or altered by computer generation in
      a manner that the record would falsely appear to a reasonable
      observer to be an authentic record of the actual speech or conduct
      of an individual;

<comment><USER8> _If that 's the case, any sort of creative editing, even just quick cuts, could fall under this_

Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. This technique has been used to deceive untold times.

<comment><USER9> I agree. A world where edited interviews must air with a disclaimer that it has been edited to remove certain portions might be extremely beneficial.

<comment><USER10> Almost every prerecorded interview would carry the disclaimer, rendering it meaningless. Though it would be fun to see "fake reaction" every time they splice in footage of the interviewer nodding, smiling, scowling, etc.

<comment><USER9> Almost every prerecorded interview presented as they _currently are_ would carry the disclaimer. It might cause interviews to be presented differently (either ruthlessly trying to keep on topic, or with an easy link to the full interview), but even if not, having that disclaimer would be useful as an indicator that forced people to remember that what they are seeing might be out of context, and to look for that context.

Finally, I think it would give people more tools for going after the purveyors of misleading content. Either they would need to have a disclaimer, which could be pointed to for those that accepted the content without reservation, or they could face repercussions.

I see no problem with forcing people and organizations that purport to be representing a real situation but are instead presenting a view of that situation ideally suited to their own narrative to note they are doing so. Just because we've been conditioned to be tolerant of it in our media does not mean it's acceptable or needs to continue as it has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Deep Fakes" in general seem to be already covered by existing libel laws, though that has some problems. Libel is generally a civil matter, and is extremely difficult to prosecute.

There is precedent, even in the US, for criminal libel laws[0]. Perhaps following that path (combined with continued work on detection and defeat of the technology) would be preferable. Since libel and defamation are well- defined and have a long history of jurisprudence, many of the constitutional and legal issues which would have to be answered in opening a new avenue of speech restriction could be contained within the existing contexts.

I'd even think leaving it in the civil arena would make sense until it became a problem worthy of criminalization. Legislating a matter before it arises is almost never a good idea, from either a prudential or principled standpoint.

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2014/05/13/impersonating-someone-online-with-intent-to-injure- his-reputation-is-a-crime-in-new-york/)

<comment><USER12> Aside from the civil versus criminal distinction, it seems significant that this statute judges harm differently than libel laws. Libel/slander requires reputational damage to an individual, while this is about facilitating criminal/tortious conduct in general. That seems to cover some fairly significant non-libel cases, like knowingly creating a video for someone to use as an alibi.

I agree that it still seems like premature legislation, though. Even from the viewpoint of a random programmer, it's both overbroad (this covers any video editing, not just 'deepfakes' as commonly understood) and incomplete (what happens when no recognizable people are represented, but an edit is still used to facilitate criminal action?)

If doctored video becomes as believable as authentic video, it's going to be a major upheaval, returning us to a world where seeing isn't believing. Probably not completely; there will be an obvious market for hard-to-fake authentication, even in forms as simple as registering a video hash with a trusted source as soon as it's taken. But the departure from a world where a high-res video of an event is reliable proof is going to be a very big change, and I seriously doubt any law written today will productively adjust for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just yesterday it occurred to me that Deep Fakes could be used to create some of the most potent disinformation campaigns ever. Already now we have had memes with misattributed quotes and photos edited to associate Clinton with the devil, satanic rituals and so on. Think of how much more impactful slightly off quotes and speeches would be.

<comment><USER14> > Already now we have had memes with misattributed quotes and photos edited to > associate Clinton with the devil, satanic rituals and so on

Right, like my favorite one is the idea that she took $150 million from Russia in exchange for a shipment of our uranium. Those funds went to the Clinton Foundation a _charity_. Sheesh.

<comment><USER15> > Those funds went to the Clinton Foundation a _charity_. Sheesh

While independent investigations have concluded there was no wrongdoing, the reason above is really no defense. The Trump Foundation, for example, has shown how nonprofits can be manipulated to the benefit of the founders.

<comment><USER16> No _proof_ of wrongdoing. They also failed to come up with any plausible reason for the payment other than wrongdoing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> IANAL, but based on the wording, it seems like it's only unlawful to create w/ intent to distribute, or to knowingly distribute, a deep fake IFF you're facilitating unlawful conduct. So for example, blackmail? Does libel count? Does the very act of distributing a deep fake count as libel against the subject?

Can any lawyers chime in?

</comment><comment><USER18> > (2) the term 'deep fake' means an audiovisual record created or altered in a > manner that the record would falsely appear to a reasonable observer to be > an authentic record of the actual speech or conduct of an individual;

I see nothing of this act that restricts the applicability of so broad a definition of "deep-fake" so as not to cover the activities of Hollywood, specifically the CGI mapping of actors onto body doubles such as that performed in "The Crow" (1994).

Yet another deeply troubling knee-jerk reaction of an act that promises to catch "just the bad".

<comment><USER19> Conversely, I think that we may soon need regulation around Hollywood's right to digitally reincarnate dead actors for use in their commercial film productions.

The idea of Universal CGI'ing George Carlin into saying politically-tinged speech he would disagree with would be a travesty. And I'm not sure how that would be prevented, save his estate successfully suing Universal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I mean deep fakes clearly seems protected by the first amendment, particularly strongly in the case of parody. That's not too say however they are clear from libel law.

<comment><USER21> So are they protected or not?

<comment><USER20> Basically my argument is that they're protected from criminal but not civil charges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The crime is not well-defined. Meanwhile, there's this out without further explanation: "No person shall be held liable under this section for any activity protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.''

<comment><USER23> Lots of legislation effectively leaves it to courts to hash the actual specifics out. Courts can only rule on specific examples, so it prevents a genre of legal stupidity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know how this act would interact with the first amendment?

It's my understanding that the first amendment is extremely broad - <USER2> donating money can be counted as protected speech, surely 'parody' videos of politicians would also be?

<comment><USER25> Page 4, line 8:

        (2) FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTION.—No person shall be held liable under this section for any activity protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.''.

<comment><USER26> But what activity does this act prohibit, that isn't "protected by the First Amendment"?

<comment><USER27> Libel is a crime and some states have defamation laws. It wouldn't be hard to tack this onto those and--if they really want to push it, which they will if given the chance--make it a sex crime to get that lifelong punishment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It would seem to ban only international or interstate created deep fakes. This appears to prop up the locally created deep fake market.

I'm only half kidding, it seems like the immediate defense would be: I made it at home or in a data center in my home state thus the statute does not apply.

<comment><USER29> I suspect this limitation is because the supreme Court has traditionally held the federal government to such limitations in many areas.

<comment><USER30> The US Constitution only gives the Federal government the power to regulate international and interstate commerce (and of course other powers too, but those aren't relevant here). Article I section 8: [https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution- transcri...](https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution- transcript#toc-section-8-)

The Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments to the Constitution) explicitly states that all powers not explicitly granted to the Federal government are retained by the states and by the people. So that's probably why this limitation exists.

Of course, the Federal government has really stretched the meaning of "To regulate Commerce ... among the several states" and has gained quite a bit of power out of that line. But it's still a limitation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd bet that this act would paradoxically increase the power of "deep fakes" in that the problem isn't the existence of "deep fakes" but each person's reaction to them. The prevailing culture of knee-jerk hot-takes already thrives on selectively edited video and fresh discoveries of forgotten pasts. If it isn't inoculated into thoughtful skepticism by steady revelations of various fakes it will become more susceptible to the few left un-prosecuted under this law.

</comment><comment><USER32> How does one prove the fake is fake.

There's going to be development of "live notarised" data streams, so a camera feed gets certified, etc..

People are going to use deep-fake tech as an excuse -- someone faked me, I'm not racist/sexist/fascist/... . How can you show the real is real.

I'm imagining a future where you can choose the actors in the lead roles of your films; great for narcissists!

<comment><USER33> Heinlein explored this idea of Fair Witness as a profession in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

[https://lccn.loc.gov/61011702](https://lccn.loc.gov/61011702)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Jeez, yet another annoying new law encroaching on something fun I do as a hobby. I'm really sick of our lawmakers doing this when our existing legal code seems sufficient to punish abuse.

Does this mean I should take down my Donald Trump text to speech engine [1]? Or consult a lawyer?

It yields really poor quality (right now), and I doubt any reasonable person would consider it to be actual audio from Trump.

Does this prohibit me from improving it? I was about to train an ML model on my samples and switch to parametric generation.

[1] [http://trumped.com](http://trumped.com)

</comment><comment><USER35> In other words: deep state sets the stage for forthcoming shocking real videos of major players.

Yes, yes, downvote into oblivion, but remember this when it happens...

</comment><comment><USER36> This concerns 'records', but I wonder if a program that can do a realtime overlay would solve the moral/possible legal issues.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm curious about peoples' views on something.

It's clear that in the future we will be able to create fakes that are effectively indistinguishable from reality. The audio in this 'Trump speech' [1] is already remarkable. So there are two ways we can go from here. The first is to try to maintain faith in multimedia. What you see or hear is _probably_ real because we try to pass a bunch of laws making it a really bad thing to try to impersonate people.

The second is to go the route of internet speech today. If somebody claims to be somebody of note, you generally would not believe them without extensive proof. And so what they say does not reflect upon the person they claim to be. If video/audio manipulation tech was allowed without constraint, this would eventually become the same for general audio/video. Having no trust in what you see or hear is not a great thing. But at the same time, I think there's a very good argument to be made for the fact that people are already far too susceptible to fake information because we, even before the 'real' advent of deep fake type technology, are still teetering on the precipice between believable and not.

For instance this [2] famous image of "animal testing" that keeps going viral on social media every couple of years. It has nothing to do with animal testing, but people are naive. Deep fakes would throw us well off that precipice to the point that I think we'd see substantially increased amounts of scrutiny given to misinformation. The downside here is of course we'd also see substantially increased amounts of scrutiny given to legitimate information, though I'm not entirely sure I see that as a negative.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gpc_artOYI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gpc_artOYI)

[2] - [https://speakingofresearch.com/2014/02/27/fact-into- fiction-...](https://speakingofresearch.com/2014/02/27/fact-into-fiction-why- context-matters-with-animal-images/)

</comment><comment><USER38> sooner or later they have to make a full length feature film using this technology

<comment><USER39> I thought there already was (some of) one. Starring Nicholas Cage, as _everyone_.

<comment><USER40> That's amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's funny how a very simple DL architecture any beginner could prepare ended up in a prohibition act - essentially training two convolutional autoencoders, one on the face one wants to replace (extracting dataset by e.g. tracking face with OpenCV in target video), the second on many pictures of the face one wants to replace (e.g. scraping from Internet or known videos), then essentially gluing together encoder from one and decoder from the other, assuming latent variables match, and suddenly a fake video is done.

IMO if you really want to control deep fakes, you should use a blockchain and track all processing steps, starting from image/video acquisition. I don't want to give anyone ideas, but they will do it anyway.

<comment><USER42> This doesn't even begin to make sense. You can't force people to register any creation on the blockchain and there can't be a main "only real things allowed" chain. If we want to shoehorn a blockchain into every possible problem ever, lets begin with ones that could actually work.

<comment><USER41> The idea is to enforce equipment manufacturers to prepare uniquely identifiable IDs in all imagery/footage their equipment produces, entice all software vendors to register all operations in a blockchain and store a reference to it in metadata; then reject any footage that can't have all steps verified as "fake".

How is that any different than tracking production inputs in logistic chains using blockchain?

<comment><USER43> Nothing can stop me from pointing a camera at my computer monitor and recording a verified video of a non-verified video.

<comment><USER41> Sure, but in that case your chain starts with your camera, producing "pro" looking video which would be totally unlikely (not mentioning trivial stuff like noticing monitor/lens distortions etc.). Analyzing subsequent processing steps stored in blockchain would likely show very low probability of authentic work due to missing many required steps (OK, there is still certain low probability you can fool it somehow, but would you want to waste so much time/processing power on it?)

<comment><USER43> This is whack-a-mole. If I can design deepfake software, it isn't much harder to design it to specifically anticipate the user filming the result. The user would input their monitor specs, their camera specs, etc., and the software would produce a weirdly distorted video which looks perfect when filmed with that camera from that monitor.

Or, people just outright sell doctored cameras where you can intercept the input feed.

This isn't like adult content filtering, where all that matters is that kids can't get around it. You have to assume people who know what they're doing are going to attack your technical solution, and apply ingenuity in doing so. When the enemy consists of hackers, you can't ward them off with a hack!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/04/fortnite-dev-launches-epic-games-store-that-takes-just-12-of-revenue/ <comment><USER4> One of the things Steam's 30% cut subsidizes is the generation of unlimited free license keys for developers to do with what they please. So, for instance, if I am an independent developer, I can sell my game on Steam. Say I sell 5,000 copies. I can then turn around and generate 25,000 keys gratis, and sell those on my website (paying maybe a 5-8% fee to my payment processor, but otherwise taking everything). Those keys activate on Steam, at which point my customers get the benefits of Steam and I pay nothing for the bandwidth or upkeep.

This also allows me to give keys to other vendors, like Humble or GreenManGaming, who do take a cut (in some cases close to Steam's 30%, in other cases closer to 10-12%). Those vendors may choose to discount my game beyond the discount I offer by giving up more of their margin to the consumer.

It is not uncommon to see games on Steam where the origin of user reviews is 50% Steam purchases, 50% off-site key activations, which implies that Steam's effective margin may be as low as 15%.

Now, I think most independent developers are willing to sell on any platform who will have them and for whom the marginal costs of submitting / uploading are lower than gross sales, so certainly I don't think Epic is making a bad move here and I suspect they'l get decent developer uptake, but I also think the sort of "topline sticker comparison" obscures some of what's going on.

To some extent there may be value in having this discussion a week from now when Epic has rolled out the store and we have a better idea of how other considerations stack up.

<comment><USER5> I've heard rumors from people I trust that they are going to crack down even further on keys, possibly to the point of making it so you can't resell elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> This may not be a bad thing, though. (As long as they're doing it with discretion.)

A comment by 'vatueil' in this thread hinted at an important point: Steam is currently battling the massive library of half-baked 'crapware' that snuck onto the platform for the _sole purpose_ of being sold off as cheap keys in bulk. It's really more of a scam than anything.

Valve has a reputation to uphold, and it's no wonder they want to put this practice to and end.

<comment><USER7> Maybe they should not have let crapware onto their platform in the first place?

It did not passively sneak in, it was actively let in by Steam.

<comment><USER6> I feel like there's some hindsight bias here. By that I mean:

If I took two equally bad games-- one by a legitimate developer who may need some practice, and another by a developer whose intention is to scam the system-- would you be able to tell which is which?

I would argue that the former has a right to be on the platform (good luck trying to objectively define what constitutes a 'good' game, after all) and the latter does not. But there's no way to tell them apart until the devs show their true colors.

Seems fair to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Official announcement - [https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing- the-epic-...](https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-epic- games-store)

 _" Developers receive 88% of revenue. There are no tiers or thresholds. Epic takes 12%. And if you're using Unreal Engine, Epic will cover the 5% engine royalty for sales on the Epic Games store, out of Epic's 12%."_

 _" From Epic's 12% store fee, we'll have a profitable business we'll grow and reinvest in for years to come!"_

This is great news for indies who Steam seems to be ignoring[1] lately in favor of AAA. Maybe that will eventually put enough pressure on them to at least reduce their cut. There's been increasing concern over whether it's worth it for indies given the lack of visibility. If you have to push an audience there anyway, is it worth the 30%? Jason Rohrer[2] and Positech Games[3] for example have been successful outside of Steam keeping a much larger piece of the pie.

1\. [http://greyaliengames.com/blog/steams-discovery-algorithm- ki...](http://greyaliengames.com/blog/steams-discovery-algorithm-killed-my- sales/)

2\. [https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-03-12-jason- rohr...](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-03-12-jason-rohrers-off- steam-paid-off)

3\. [https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2018/11/23/selling- gam...](https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2018/11/23/selling-games-direct- from-your-website-in-2018/)

<comment><USER9> "...if you're using Unreal Engine, Epic will cover the 5% engine royalty for sales on the Epic Games store, out of Epic's 12%."

So there is a bias in the Epic store towards Unreal titles then, contrary to what I just read.

<comment><USER10> No bias. If you sell a Unity game, the fee to Epic is 12%. If you sell an Unreal Game, the fee would have been 12% for the store plus 5% for engine royalties for a total of 17%, which would strongly dis-incentivize developers from using Epic's own engine. Epic is simply waiving that 5% engine royalty so that its store is game-engine-agnostic.

<comment><USER11> You forgot to mention the Unity cut in your sum.

Epic is certainly not making the store engine neutral. It costs less to use unreal than unity.

<comment><USER10> Unity is royalty-free altogether, you pay a subscription for the development tools (think Adobe CC or MS Office365) and get all upgrades during your subscription. You can alternatively not pay a subscription fee at all, and accept certain restrictions on your engine's capabilities, mostly on the use of enterprise-level features an indie developer wouldn't have the resources to use anyway.

So, by eliminating the 5% engine royalty for its own store, Epic is making Unreal _also free_ and thus engine choice is not a deciding factor in whether to use Epic's store.

IOW/tldr: Unity and Unreal cost the same amount of money to use and license if you sell through the Epic store.

<comment><USER12> > You can alternatively not pay a subscription fee at all, and accept certain > restrictions on your engine's capabilities

Just fyi: that is not how the unity license works. Unity's license is if _your company_ makes >= $100k a year you're required to buy the $400 per seat license. If your company makes >= $200k year you're required to by the $1500 per seat license. Period. So for example if you're employee of Google and in your 20% time you download Unity you are not allowed to use it for free. Google makes X billion a year. That's greater than $200k a year. All employees of Google who download Unity for work related purposes are required to have the $1500 per year seat license.

This has nothing to do with whether or not you publish a game. Unity is sold similar to Photoshop. It's a subscription. The only difference is unlike Photoshop, Unity has a free tier for people and companies that make less than $100k a year.

From the unity site

Free version eligibility: I or my company generate annual revenues or raised funds less than $100k

Plus version eligibility: I or my company generate annual revenue or funds raised of $200k or less

<comment><USER10> You're not required to buy the $1500 license _unless_ your company has already made $200k. If your first game goes bonkers and sells $1 million on the free version, you do not have to pay $1500 for the Plus version unless you make DLC or a new game after your bonanza. The license is prospective, not retrospective.

Other than that, you've just restated what I already said. Unity provides the tools on subscription, but does not charge a royalty anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They've made their argument for why developers should publish there. Now, why should I want to use the Epic Games Store as a launcher?

Don't get me wrong. There's plenty of room for Steam to improve. I want launchers to compete for its _users_ , but all they ever seem to compete for is _publishers_. For all of Steam's problems, people love it because it offers a huge feature set out of the box.

\- Achievements \- Friends lists \- Voice and text chat \- Family sharing \- Streaming \- Multi-drive support \- A decent refund policy \- User reviews \- An easy-to-use mod workshop \- Cloud saves \- User-generated tags \- Independent curators

The list goes on...

So-called "competitors" never bring even half that feature set to their new platforms. Instead, they force users to switch by making games exclusive to their platform.

A lot of people have talked about publishers having incentives to distribute games on multiple platforms, but history has shown us that they simply don't.

I don't know what the solution is. I guess I just wanted to vent.

<comment><USER14> > \- Achievements - Friends lists - Voice and text chat - Family sharing - > Streaming - Multi-drive support - A decent refund policy - User reviews - <USER2> > easy-to-use mod workshop - Cloud saves - User-generated tags - <USER3> > curators

Do people really care about this stuff? I've started holding my nose and grudgingly using Steam, and really all I want is a way to buy a game and get it on my hard drive. I don't need a middle-man to launch it for me or clutter my system up with achievements and friends and yet-another-chat-app. Every time I run a game, Steam even shows that little pop-up--as if I needed a reminder that it's constantly sitting there in memory, eagerly waiting for me to hit SHIFT-TAB and "engage" with it. Can't I just play the damn game I bought without the distributor trying to insert itself into the experience at every opportunity?

<comment><USER15> So the shift-tab thing feature was copied from a chat program called Xfire, which back in the days of AIM and such was a neat way to be able to talk to your online friends while in a full-screen game.

Steam copied that feature and added a web browser, and the rest of those interactions some time after.

I agree that it feels like marketing BS but it is cool to be able to chat with out-of-game Steam friends in-game.

<comment><USER16> I remember that for quite a long time, Xfire also did it way better than steam did.

Xfire worked quite well accross all games - they had a nice variety of skins you could install (compared to Steam's 3 skins including the default one, IIRC).

It saved your screenshots and videos in 'the cloud', had some neat 'join server' feature that worked in almost every game and it mostly worked without any issues.

You could also use their server browser so you didn't have to even launch a game beforehand, you could just browse for your servers in their program and then jump right into the game.

Seeing Xfire mentioned brought some nostalgia to me, thank you :D

(Also, Xfire changed to a tournament system and eventually died. Which is a shame but steam does probably everything and more than Xfire does nowadays. Except custom skins?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I keep repeating this: two things Steam does right are effortless no- questions-asked refunds, localized prices in many regions of the world, so that people in poorer countries pay affordable prices.

I do think that Steam is only going to grow bigger, because most of the growth in game sales are going to come from China, Russia, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Africa, Mexico, Brazil etc than US and Europe. But most other stores does not seem to understand that expanding to these markets is key, and seems to be operating in US&Europe centric strategy.

(Off-topic: Incidentally Indonesia is not far behind the US in population, but current predictions show that they aren't going to overtake the US anytime soon, however Nigeria is on track to overtake both US and Indonesia to become the 3rd most populous country by 2050).

<comment><USER18> GoG does both of these, and have done so for much longer than Steam.

<comment><USER17> It doesn't not to do either of them as wholeheartedly as steam: GOG refunds are for technical issues not no-questions-asked. Similarly in my region Steam prices are lower than GOG prices. Moreover like GOG, steam also supports DRM free games(if the developer wants a game to be DRM free).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pulling from what I said in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18600248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18600248)

I guess this explains Valve improving the revenue share a bit on Steam recently.

Also, at first I wasn't thinking this would be much of anything (yet another storefront), but the kicker per the article is that those developing in Unreal Engine would not pay a percentage for the use of Unreal Engine (~5%) on top of the store cut (~12%). That would probably be huge for developers so I could see this one actually taking off.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wish Valve had pushed harder to compete with Origin, but this looks like the end of its complete dominance. Once EA demonstrated that anybody could hack together a launcher, it's become a free for all. As a consumer it's been a worse and worse experience since increasingly small companies felt the need to replace steam with technically inferior solutions. But this is different-now we get a competitor which is willing to sell more than just its own titles, and this will be a major blow to steam (because indies will go for this- fortnight will be the killer app for this new store just as Half Life 2 was for Steam.) I was really rooting for Valve because they where making a linux gaming future look possible.

<comment><USER21> > this will be a major blow to steam

we'll see. i'm in no hurry to rush out and buy anything that isn't on Steam. all these articles talk about the cut Epic will take, but as a customer, I couldn't care less. what i do care about is e.g. Steam's excellent return policy. maybe i'm just getting old and am not that interested in games, but i'm happy to pass up games if they aren't on Steam.

i'd venture a guess that Steam and Epic Games Store may not be competing for quite the same market; Steam is likely to remain dominant for PC gaming (maybe rightly so, they have worked hard to get there), and Epic Games Store might focus more on mobile gaming instead. so it's a bigger threat to the App Store/Google Play than Steam IMO.

<comment><USER20> The popularity of Fortnite means that there's already a huge install base on PC. As a customer I don't like to see total vertical integration of platform and engine tech-I don't want to see Unreal go the way of Source, and I don't want to see Unity squeezed out.

<comment><USER22> Don't forget that Epic has built-in 5% affiliate commissions, which they will cover for the first 24 months.

This whole thing will get huge advertising and popular support, developers will just need to take advantage of it.

I'm sure there will be some great exclusive games on there too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd be more excited for this much needed competition if it weren't a company that survives by taking advantage of children's naivety of money and natural impulses to sell virtual outfits and animations at sickening prices. App store cuts are ridiculously high, but at least they're not taking candy directly from babies.

<comment><USER24> I'm not a fan of Fortnite but that is extremely disingenuous. In your interpretation, parents are completely absolved from responsibility and apparently children have free access to credit cards that can't legally even be issued to them.

Want to know the responsible answer to "mommy can I buy a Fortnite skin"? It's "no". Simple as that. Same as it was when the question was "dad can I buy this Harry Potter poster" or "mom can I get this GI Joe" or "grandma can I buy a stick to roll my hoop with" or anything marketed to kids over the past literally forever.

Don't want your kids spending money on video games? _Don 't give them your credit card number_. Don't blame Epic for making a fun and free-to-play video game that kids enjoy. The people actually spending the money aren't kids being taken advantage of, they're actual consenting adults. Kids don't have credit cards so they cannot make digital purchases.

<comment><USER15> > Don't blame Epic for making a fun and free-to-play video game that kids > enjoy.

You had me up until this point. No one can deny the extreme amounts of psychology (read: manipulation) used in children's marketing. (Or any marketing...)

<comment><USER24> Marketing can only go so far. There are plenty of things (video games included) marketed towards kids with big budgets that the children are completely ambivalent about. If they didn't enjoy Minecraft or Roblox or Fortnite or Pokemon or JUUL or McDonald's Happy Meals or light-up sneakers, they'd join the ranks of EZ Squirt ketchup, ET for Atari, New Coke, or the Virtual Boy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I absolutely welcome the competition, but it's going to take a lot for me to trust the Epic Games Store as much as I trust Valve.

Lots has been written about Valve (employee handbook, supposedly-not-there- but-actually-just-hidden political hierarchies), but I don't think of them as a normal for-profit company though they most certainly are. They've taken bets like steam for linux, the steam controller, steam boxes, their crazy no- hierarchy structure (no matter how misguided) and I just don't see other game companies or platform companies doing the same. They have my respect. I've also never seen them do anything blatantly greedy/money grubbing on a large scale (though their excuse is usually that they're a small company) and the gaming community absolutely _loves_ to get out their pitchforks.

Maybe I've just been marketed to really well but I think it takes a certain kind of company to be who Valve is -- they're like a mozilla in my eyes.

<comment><USER26> Interesting, since I remember how controversial the Steam DRM was at the time of its launch.

But Valve _have_ outcompeted and outlasted other vendors by being the least anti-consumer DRM system with the best discounts that doesn't interfere with playing your games. If anyone remembers Games For Windows Live, that's an example of how not to do it. Here's the cheering on RPS when its closure was announced: [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/20/it- liiiiiiiiives...](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/20/it- liiiiiiiiives-gfwl-perma-closing-next-july/)

UPlay and Origin exist but are tolerated through gritted teeth. It remains to be seen whether Epic get a good or bad reputation.

<comment><USER25> Point taken, that particular controversy definitely slipped my mind... There was a time when it didn't have that.

This annoucement definitely made me think of UPlay and Origin, I think I played a demo of "The District" (?) and there was much gritting of teeth.

I might also be biased against fortnite....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If Apple loses their anti-trust case in court and is forced to open iOS to alternative app stores, does that mean the consoles would be forced to open up their platform as well? It would be nice to have some of these alternative stores on the PS4 and XBox.

<comment><USER28> Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that console hardware is usually sold below cost to get people into the ecosystem and make that back as people buy games.

So forcing console makers to allow other stores would probably have a much more dramatic impact on the console market.

And while IANAL, it seems a bit of a stretch to apply anti-trust law here.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure I see why the level of hardware profitability is at issue?

It's use of platform power to lock in profit and exclusivty that appears to be at issue.

<comment><USER24> Yeah if anything that's even worse. Dropping the price of your product to unsustainable levels to gain a competitive advantage is called "predatory pricing" and is a valid cause for anti-trust suits.

<comment><USER28> This isn't really predatory pricing though.

This is structuring your costs, such that you are profitable over the lifetime value of the customer, even if you are not necessarily making a profit right away.

And this has benefits to consumers, who can get into the ecosystem more cheaply, and developers who can sell to a larger audience, because people can get in more cheaply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> At first glance, I thought Steam was in big trouble. Last MAU numbers I could find were 90m for Steam and 75m for Fortnite.

A game store is a marketplace, in startup terminology. Epic already has a lot of the consumer side, and 60% lower fees is a huge incentive for the developer side.

But UX-wise, so many games are built on top of Steam. In Rocket League, you get logged in with your Steam account. You invite friends to party via Steam.

And how would migrating work? Would Epic let me launch the game because I already own it in Steam? Or would I have to re-purchase? (No way people would do that)

If I'm playing on Epic, and my friend is on Steam, would we be able to party?

This introduces a ton of complexity, and while certainly troubling for Steam in the long run (once new games come out), I think their moat is still very strong.

Also 40% of Epic Games is owned by Tencent, so this would mean China's market share of the world's gamer market growing, for better or for worse (depending on your political opinions).

<comment><USER31> I believe there's a decent amount of prior art for games supporting cross- platform play across Steam and traditional consoles (PS4 / Xbone / Switch). Presumably you'd need to re-buy a game like Rocket League to get it to show up in your Epic library, but the Steam version could likely be patched to allow Epic players to play alongside Steam players?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Obviously there's a non-zero cost for developers to publish thru multiple stores, so it makes sense to try to incentivize them with a greater share of revenue. It would be interesting if they tried to leverage the popularity of Fortnite to also do this on Android.

<comment><USER33> There's also a cost for the customer; they have to use multiple launchers.

<comment><USER34> Only sort of. All applications use one master launcher: The operating system. Battle.net, Origin, Steam, etc. all can put desktop shortcuts to individual games.

<comment><USER35> Having to manage all those accounts, installing all that launcher software, and running always on "agents" is anti-consumer.

I've found historically with software that the better something works, the more likely it is to get screwed up. Netflix has made browsing a chore, Amazon Video introduced ads, Spotify is getting clunky as they "optimize" the UI, Gmail taking time to load in 2018 when it didn't in 2015, Android requiring root to install an app to prevent album art from replacing your lock-screen background and apps from making obnoxious color choices on notifications.

Ah well, maybe I'm just getting old and people want less robust, clunky software! /rant

<comment><USER36> I'm absolutely amazed at how bad Gmail has been running lately. Slow to load initially, UI not updating in a timely manner, keyboard shortcuts stuttering - the list goes on. At first I thought this was a browser issue (I run Firefox Nightly), but it's the same in Chrome. It's all very vexing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Epic seems to be really trying to kill the 30% cut game. First by bucking the Play Store on Android and now offering their own competitor to Steam on PC. Sort of impressive, glad to see we aren't going to be cemented into these cuts forever.

If everyone who has Fortnite has the Epic Games Store by default, there will be a huge initial market penetration as well.

<comment><USER37> Nice to see some resistance to the 30% cuts, with Apple recently having to deal with a lawsuit regarding the AppStore as well. Not to diminish the value of the service, but 30% for what amounts to CDN + Payment Processing, is too much.

The deal used to come with some amount of marketing & discover-ability, but that has basically shifted to the developer as well.

But even then, in a normal world you should have to bear some risk of the product to get that kind of cut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Just yesterday I read a rant by an indie-game dev on Twitter, he complained that Steam would flush out good indie games by catering more to AAA studios and simultaneously watering down everything else with Steam direct.

Don't know if this is right and I don't know if the Epic Games Store has a solution to this problem, but more competition in the space is probably a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER39> Everyone seems to be talking about Steam but the forthcoming Android store feels to me like a much, MUCH bigger deal.

I mean, nobody stops anyone from setting up a new PC game store, and the Epic PC store is just another entry added to the already long list of stores all competing with Steam. But on Android (outside China), the Google Play Store pretty much has a complete monopoly that they made sure was virtually impossible to break while still being able to be technically called "open." Sure, Amazon Appstore and a few other stores exist, but they haven't really been able to make any real impact due to Google erecting so many hoops for both developers and users to jump through in order to stray from the Google Play path. (eg. Google Play Services, "Unknown Sources" checkbox buried in Settings app, etc.)

But now Epic is forcibly prying it open by using Fortnite as their lure to induce people to actually jump through Google's hoops that were supposed to be insurmountably high user friction. Of all the past alternative Android app stores, this one sounds like it could actually work.

The ensuing Google/Epic all-out war should make last year's Google/Amazon Chromecast/FireTV/YouTube feud look tame. Break out the popcorn.

<comment><USER34> Indeed, I feel like people missed the bigger news here. And I was always surprised Steam never tried to take this on: Many Steam library apps are also available for Android, but Steam has never tried to support cross-platform access to it.

Another highlight of this: Do bear in mind there's a class action antitrust lawsuit being bandied about by the Supreme Court right now against Apple and the App Store. If that doesn't go Apple's way, Epic is potentially poised to be one of the first players in that as well.

<comment><USER39> I was half expecting Valve to expand to mobile stores back when they first released their mobile apps. But no, it never went beyond a companion app and 2-factor authenticator.

None of their other initiatives (Big Picture Mode, Steam Controller, Steam Machine, Steam Link, SteamVR, etc.) ever steered in the general direction of mobile gaming, either. They've been married to PC gaming since their inception over 20 years ago, I guess mobile gaming is just not in their DNA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my opinion taking a percentage cut on something that is not strongly correlated with any special effort, borders on scam.

And yes the scammers are everywhere: your bank, broker, recruitment agency, financial adviser, real estate agent, etc...

Call me bitter, but I paid way to many years 20% of my paycheck (yay, work for free on Fridays!) to some agency because they, for no good reason at all, somehow are into this percentage margin business as well.

The country I live in all major stockbrokers will charge you the higher of $90 or 1% (discount brokers take about half that), whereas a lot of other countries have enough competition that you get actual flat prices per trade.

You are selling some service, then please put some actual price on it. E.g. $2000 to review your game and put it onto our platform.

If the service requires ongoing efforts than put some price on this as well.

Without price there can not be any free market.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think we're going to see a lot of Unreal Engine games on this store. With the UE royalty being absorbed by Epic, it seems like a no brainer.

</comment><comment><USER41> Are game launchers becoming a race to the bottom?

<comment><USER42> No. Ubisoft already tried and even gave out a bunch of games for free. Didn't work.

<comment><USER43> What is Ubisoft's carrot? They don't command a game engine ecosystem. What can they offer that others do not?

<comment><USER44> Ubisoft's carrot is wasting hours of your time fighting a crippled UPlay launcher that doesn't even work, so that you can access a mediocre Ubisoft exclusive.

It's a hard pass for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> And they throw in the Unreal Engine royalty with the 12% cut.

In response to this new competition, Valve reduced prices on Steam on Monday. Valve just reduced their cut from 30% to 25%, and down to 20% for the high- revenue titles.[2] Competition is a good thing.

[1] [https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68183/valve-makes- change...](https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68183/valve-makes-changes-to- distribution-agreement-lowers-rev-share-for-successful-games/)

</comment><comment><USER46> Well this makes me feel awkward as a Unity dev.

I saw that they'll allow unity based games on their new store but I wonder if that's just for the short term. Kind of makes me wonder if I should've chosen Unreal.

<comment><USER47> Considering Tim Sweeney's pretty strong stance against walling in marketplaces too hard, I think it's.. relatively safe at least.

<comment><USER48> They have indicated that the epic store will have third party exclusives, so I wouldn't be too sure about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> At least now Valve can play their Half Life 3 card if this new store gains some "steam", I'm sure Gabe N. has been dying to have a reason to.

I'm all for competition, Epic Games rocks!

</comment><comment><USER50> If they pair this with a 10% discount on games to the consumer they can attract both devs and consumers.

<comment><USER30> Why do they need to attract consumers? Isn't Fortnite already the most popular game in the world?

From what I can find, latest report of Steam MAU is 90 million people, and latest report of Fortnite MAU is 75 million.

They already have the consumers.

<comment><USER51> But Fortnite is free to play crap, so like 0.1% of those 75 million actually paid something?

<comment><USER52> Fortnite is making hundreds of millions of dollars a month{1}. IDK what "free to play crap" is, but if it can pull in over a billion a year I think most companies would be happy to have it on their ledger.

1- [https://www.recode.net/2018/6/26/17502072/fortnite- revenue-g...](https://www.recode.net/2018/6/26/17502072/fortnite-revenue-game- growth-318-million)

<comment><USER51> It's simple. 99.9% of the users play without paying a dime, and the game has to cater to the "whales" that spend thousands.

That's fine when you peddle digital hats, but if they want to open a store, they want paying customers in it don't they? Most actual games they'd want to sell need to be paid for upfront... and I don't see the average Fortnite (or any other free to play abomination) player doing that.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, you'd think, but this survey of 1,000 players said 68.8% had spent money on in-game purchases.

Maybe they somehow managed to target just the 0.1% of players who spend money (according to you), but it seems highly unlikely that the numbers are that low.

[https://lendedu.com/blog/finances-of- fortnite/](https://lendedu.com/blog/finances-of-fortnite/)

<comment><USER51> That's interesting. Personally, I'll still think I'm too poor to afford free games though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once upon a time, valve used to develop games. Then it became big and realised where the money is, and stopped developing games. Epic is currently developing games. Will they get big and stop? If they did, they still have Unreal. Steam has nothing other than the store.

<comment><USER53> Valve has several extremely profitable games, such as DotA2.

<comment><USER9> Good point. Insert "just a " next to games developer :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is sort of an interesting case study. Markets can be inelastic and see this sort of unspoken price collaboration... until a major player jumps in like this and undercuts all them. I think we'll start seeing a lot more competition on revenue share thanks to this.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is great news and I hope it shows up in the arguments for the iOS App Store that Apple's 30% harms consumers because no one is allowed to compete with a store that takes less of a cut. Valve (30%) vs Epic (12%) seems extremely relevant to that case.

</comment><comment><USER55> Great news, I'm looking forward what Discord is pulling off. As far as I heard, they also want to push into the game distributing market?

Epic Games seem to me really as one of the very very few game companies who, beside of marketing, also act very generous.

<comment><USER22> Discord are already distributing, with a 30% commission.

By all available accounts their launch has been unremarkable, no Indies getting rich.

Their service is now obsolete with this Epic announcement. They are best just offering affiliate banner advertising to the Epic Store and getting the 5% from that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> No matter how much I like Steam, breaking their monoculture would be objectively good.

<comment><USER57> As much as I love Valve I really want them to wake up. Epic Games capturing a huge portion of their market share would seriously help that.

Maybe I'll see Half Life 3 in my lifetime after all.

<comment><USER58> I think Valve are keeping Half Life 3 for a rainy day (Given that, if they played their cards right, they could make significant $$$ just by pushing out a crappy game 'cos of the name)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> What is the proportion of people with Fortnite who are likely to use this - like steam e.g. Consistently pay money for games- relative to Valve's playerbase when steam arrived?

</comment><comment><USER59> Good! - The steam hasn't changed for the last 10 years. Maybe epic will actually value their user's experience.

</comment><comment><USER60> Awesome idea EPIC. Steam had some bullshit for wayyyy too long!

</comment><comment><USER51> Are they cross platform, or Windows only?

<comment><USER61> Unreal Engine & Epic Launcher, and most (all?) epic games are at least macOS + Windows. I hope & assume their store will be as well

<comment><USER51> I think it's safe to believe it when you see it, not assume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> In this age of free to play games, why not? The amazon way.

</comment><comment><USER63> One major upside for publishers in steam is DRM which epic won't offer.

<comment><USER64> Why? Steam DRM gets cracked all the time.

<comment><USER65> Right. Back in the day when CS:Source was still one of the main games played on steam, whenever they released a new single player game, the limiting factor for how long until it was on the pirate forums was how long it took to write up the forum post. The Steam DRM itself was generally cracked at all times.

I've not kept track, but I'd not be shocked if this was pretty much still the case. It would certainly explain why so many games still have another layer of DRM when sold on steam.

<comment><USER63> I was completely unaware. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I think eventually Steam will be replaced by some system built on open distributed systems such as torrents/webtorrents and cryptocurrency. At least that would make sense.. theoretically the cut that the distribution platform takes could be zero. So developers have a lot to gain from such a system.

<comment><USER67> > theoretically the cut that the distribution platform takes could be zero.

Then there is no reason for a distributed system to remain cohesive. Each node in the system takes some responsibilities for hosting, bandwidth, etc. Without giving the distributors a cut, no one will want to distribute. Likewise, not everyone who buys your game on the network will want to use there space and bandwidth for distribution.

For a distributed system to _actually_ be functional, all participants need incentives.

<comment><USER66> You're basically arguing that the concept of torrents isn't workable. It's been proven.

To me the tricky part is licensing but I think technologies like Ethereum could handle that.

<comment><USER68> Licensing is the easy part.

The hard part is discovery (there is always money for someone who can do a marginally better job matching games to gamers), marketing, financial infrastructure (dealing with returns, credit card fraud, beta keys, review keys, DLC, crowdfunding campaigns, microtransactions), social matchmaking, mod management, etc.

Those are mostly not distributed problems. They are services problems. Steam is all of those things. The core licensing component is only the most obvious part.

Torrents only cover distribution. Ethereum only covers cash exchange.</comment></comment></comment></comment>