Well, I have some good news for you!

And so, the global election year continues u_u…

As a french man, I wholeheartedly approve of the bond villain style Macron picture they gave as headline. It’s very appropriate for what he’s doing nowadays (even though, in this precise article case, he really didn’t do much tbh)

Kind of clickbaity title. The media companies will still stay under Alex Springer, it’s some advertisment divisions which are being sold. Nothing’s changing here.

Huh. A tribune by Sophie Binet (general secretary of the CGT, one of the biggest French trade union, and major player in the june elections as well as the protests last year) in the Guardian?

Certainly wasn’t on my bingo card today.

Thank you for the link! It helped putting things into proper nuance and context (indcluding throwing away that ridiculous notion that the ‘Steam Store’ and the ‘Steam Gaming Platform’ are two completly different things in different markets).

However, reading the whole thing, it sounds to me like while the court dismissed some of the claims (1 to 4 and 7 apparently), they agreed that Wolfire and the other plaitiffs had the right to ‘plausibly allege unlawful conduct’ about the ‘Most-favored-nations restraints’ (the part where Steam forces publishers to set prices on all stores without steam keys being involved) without mentioning anything more on the subject.

I’m not americain so I’m not sure if I understand correctly, but that means the ruling isn’t over and it’ll go into an appeal court, right?

Um, I’ve read the complaint from top to bottom and it claims way more than just ‘Valve wouldn’t give them keys to resell’ if they’re not at the same price as on steam. It also claims Valve puts a ‘Price Veto’ clause which allows them to delist games from Steam if the publisher gives bigger sales on other platforms, even if they do not using steam keys, which does sound super uncompetitive to me.

Although I’ll agree the evidence listed in the complaint seem a bit on the light side. Do you know if the trial happened yet? And if so, do you know where I can find what resolution they reached?

The only downside is that it’s not really supported anywhere at all yet. But I do hope it becomes a real thing some day.

AFAIK there’s a lot of talk about making GNU Taler the basis for the ‘digital Euro’ which is curently being debated at the EU Parliement.

I feel like that’s just a very loud minority among those who play games. As you’ve so stated, the majority of people who play these games either do not care for politics in video games, and another subset prefer it that way.

If even the greediest of companies in the video game industry keep doing that, that means they’ve analyzed the market and having politics in video games might have between no to a positive impact on sales.

For the first part, I agree with you. An international agreement, like what was done for baseline multinational taxes, would be preferable. However, given the sway many million/billionaires hold over smaller (autocratic) countries, I don’t hold out much hope on that front, unfortunately.

As for your second point on moving decision making away from the voter, this is ideology. The EU parliement needs to vote on every text, and members are directly elected by EU citizens. For me (in France), I feel as though the EU has been much more respectful of democratic pressure than our national institutions (point in case, all the chat control proposals so far have been dismissed, where as our president has passed many suveillance and other highly unpopular laws unopposed).

There is certainly a point that can be made regarding regarding the fact that less populous countries send so few EU MEPs that they don’t feel that they hold much sway ovet the EU, and we clearly need to find a better system than we do now.

As for your last point, though I understand your position, I thouroughly disagree. There is no such thing as economics -let alone foreign policy- without politics, and it’s something that was clearly meant to be with the establishment of the EU Comission, Council, and Parliement. There are many political topics that are difficult to being up on each single national levels, but that can cause positive effects in each EU country if not around the world (the so called ‘Brussels effect’, notably with standardisation of plugs, the creation of carbon emmission roofs for cars, or even GDPR).

(btw I’m not one downvoting you, I think your point is interesting and needs to be discussed :) )

On the contrary, I feel as though a tax like that can only be done at EU level rather than a national level if it wants to have any efficiancy. The ultra-rich are not bound by the same rules of territoriality as the rest of us, and would have no problem moving to another country in the EU if a local tax displeases them.

In fact, this has been a key argument put forward by right-wing politicians against high-wealth tax on a national level for quite some time, that they would flee the country the first chance they get. But by registering it at the EU level, the million/billionaires won’t have anywhere to run if they still want to enjoy the benefits of being in the EU :)

Culture wise? Probably. Institution wise though…?

Our current republic was founded by de Gaule, and our constitution was written by him as well. The thing, he’s a millitary general, who (much like a good chunk of the French population at the time) held disdain toward parlementarism, due to the lack of stability of the Fourth Republic.

What that means? Our current system has much of the power concentrated in the hands of the gov (see 49.3 and to some extend 47.1 where the PM can just decide to override anu vote on law. It was something taboo, only used a fair few times before Macron, like once in 2014(?) and it ruined the PM (at the time Manuel Vals)'s carrier. Macron used it dozens of times throughout his years as President), leaving the National assembly with little manuveur than the censor motion (dissolves the current gov, but leaves the president in power).

That and Macron preparing to sell our public media and hospital to the private certainly don’t give me mich confidence in that regards if the RN were to win (’ •_•)

From what I understand, he was hoping for :

1. Destroy the incoming alliance between our two Far Rights parties (that worked)
2. That the trad right party would implode (that worked)
3. That the left would self-combust like always (that did NOT happen)

And that he would thus be the ‘only credible choice’ against Far Right. (Note that in the last legislative elections, he was NOT given a majority in the National assembly so that he’d have to negotiate with other parties, which he refused to do anyway, except maybe with the small trad right wing party).

Obviously, that didn’t work out. As other in the French subs have pointed out, he’s an ex-banker. He’s used to making risky bets. But now’s first time where he has to assume the consequence if he looses it.

(Here we go again)

First things first, shame on you Politico for showing outdated projection results. The actual outcome has been published now (after big cities’ votes, including Paris, have been counted) and Far Right lost 5% (they’re now polling at 29.2%), barely ahead of the Left Alliance (28%). That’s both lower than the polls (which were giving her a whoping 37%), and their result in the last presidential elections.

Edit: source: https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/ensemble_geographique/index.html

Secondly, seat projections, right now are highly unstable due to our two turns system. RN (Far Right) might have some allies from the trad right wing parry who was utterly destroyed, but both the NFP (Left Alliance) and Macron’s Renaissance* have said their candidates need to desist when they’re third and Far Right is first to try to cumulate their votes.

*Macron’s PM Gabriel Attal has, for the moment, said there might be exceptions to that rule for the candidates of the radical left party France Unbowed which they consider to be be ‘too extreme’ for their taste so we’ll see.

(Also, slight reminder that Politico is a property of Alex Kreuger, the German equivalent of Rupert Mudrock. Don’t expect full neutrality.)

The vote finished in the night and we got the official results now. Paris voted massively NFP and Renaissance, so Far Right is now at 29.3% while NFP is just behind them at 28.0%. Honestly? Given the polls we had, RN is lower than anyone could have hoped.

Source: https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/ensemble_geographique/index.html

I’m kind of surprised this image of France having a Far Right issue is only becoming a thing now though. These results are close (if not better for non far right voters) than the last 2022 Presidentals, and Far Right already had a huge score in 2017.

34% is already lower than what they polled (and it will go down more as cities’ vote get counted). Though, you are right, the normalization of Far Right IS scary af. But it’s not a recent thing in France, it started nearly two decades ago, but surged to an extreme during the past few years esp with:

• Bolloré (our own personal Murdock) bought more and more media, fired the journalists, and put propagandist in their place.

• Macron started taking Far Right’s talking points (immigration), language (‘national preference’, which is a concept that makes no sense) and methods (just two days ago, his party made, published and propagated on social media a fake ‘NUPES’ (name of the last Left Alliance) website to calculate one’s future pension based on their ‘program’. As it turns out, the calculations were not based off their program at all and was nearly always defavorable to the person)

• Macron, when asked about the surge of Far Right, had only one response: bUt WhAt aBoUt tHe LeFt? (And goes on and on to try and sell a ‘both sides’ to try and make himself more popular. Spoilers: it didn’t work) It’s also why it’s refreshingly suprirsing to not hear him bash ‘theLleft’ tonight, and instead call on everyone to vote against Far Right.

Gee, the title sure is sensationalist. Nothing has been ‘won’ yet. The actual percentage here don’t matter, the system works using two rounds in each circonscription (subdiv of France which can elect 1 MP). What really matters now is who will call to vote for who. The NFP (Left Alliance) leaders said no vote for Far Right, and Macron (in spite of how much he shat on the left) called for a ‘grand coalition against the RN’ (RN being Far Right here).

And I’ll repeat it as many times as it takes 34% IS FAR FROM 50% (The RN is unlikely to find allies, as all the traitors of the trad right wing party have already gone to them)

Edit: forgot to mention that not all votes have been counted yet, the big cities finishing up later, which will likely drive the NFP’s score up and RN’s down.

AI may have its uses, but the easy counterpoint to your argument is to look at FTX at its peak and where it is now (bankrupt). The stock exchange is the exact opposite of rational, and is terrible at estimating the use one can get out of tech.

*some. While as much as I heavily dislike this party and their positions, I don’t think they’re all just okay with fachism. There’s been a great number of high ranking officials from that party who denounced this proposal when it was announced out of nowhere on live TV yesterday.

Basically, Les Republicains (Trad-conservative right wing) is the descendant party of De Gaulle, chief of the French Free Forces and probably the most iconic french figure in WW2. This party has an history with fighting fachism, so this twist of position (which is not that surprising from the guy that proposed it) goes against the party’s tradition and heritage (ironicly).

It’s been making headwaves here, and he does NOT have the support of his party in this endeavour. If someone were to speculate, the more likely outcomes of this decision would be a party splinter or even the death of the party itself (considering that since 2017, they’ve really lost a lot of their electorate whose moderates went to Macron and extremists to Le Pen) than an alliance with Far Right.

Though honestly? There’s been so many twists in the past two days that anything’s possible at this point.