Slashdot Mirror
Steam Translation Community Slaving Away
An anonymous reader writes "Steam has decided to build a community effort to get its Steam platform and game files translated by the community, but here is the catch: Translators do not get paid. Millions could be saved by Steam by making the community work for free. The article describes basic estimates on how much is saved by Steam in translation costs."
Or people in some country are going to be wondering why everyone keeps telling Gordon Freeman that their hovercraft is full of eels.
Worse than that - according to the summary/article it's "slavery" and Valve "make" them do it.
Not like these people volunteer and do it on their own time or anything... no, Steam "knows" they are foreign and won't let them play their games until they've translated enough...
It's like saying that Counterstrike "makes" people set up servers for it, or that Minecraft "makes" you create works of art.
and you are bilingual wouldn't you want for your non bilingual Korean (or whatever) speaking buddy to be able to play the same games as you? I would think that contributors should at least get free games though.
That slashdot, which touts "free" as in "beer" software and Linux at every opportunity, has posted an incredulous article about Valve crowd-sourcing work for nothing.
Participating in free software like Linux and this are very different things.
Only by participating in free software do you realize its full potential; by translating text for free for a closed company you get no benefit at all.
Open source is Free. You pay nothing for it.
Steam is literally an advertising platform used to shove corporate DRM-ware down your throat. Hell, Steam itself IS DRM.
You may not have to pay anything to get Steam itself - but what you're installing is a DRM and advertising platform.
Compare with something useful like a web browser or a complete operating system. Yeah, I'd say the two are slightly different.
Will the translators free work be freely available? If so, then this is great. If not, then there are problems.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's like a hundred million lawyers just cackled with insane glee!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program
For the most part, this isn't that unusual. See, for instance, the "Google in your Language" project.
And it's not like the users are being scammed or anything. They weren't promised money or anything, and they're getting... exactly what they signed up for. I won't be surprised if Valve does, eventually, start giving them a few gifts, but I also don't think it's unethical. This would be like complaining that /. story submitters don't get paid for contributing content - after all, Slashdot makes several bajillion dollars every nanosecond, but it would be NOTHING without such insightful and well-researched articles provided graciously by the readers.
This is also the only way to get some translations done. Sure, finding a translator for Spanish or even two types of Chinese may be easy, but what about Bulgarian? Or Thai? Or "Pirate"? Yes, there's poor, suffering, unpaid people slaving away at "translating" games into a fake dialect.
Steam does give free games away, I got Portal for free when they offered it for free for everyone.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
You get lots of benefit if you're a Korean who wants to use Steam.
You get lots of benefit if you're a Korean who wants to use Steam.
Right. You get the benefit of Valve deciding to accept your money.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Its nothing new for people to contribute to translations of software they like in the open source community. You don't get anything in return, except for the feeling that your contributions will be appreciated by others who speak your language, and you get to enjoy your favorite applications in your native language.
What's the big deal if Valve is allowing the same for their games? For those who speak a lesser known language, this could be a godsend. Translations may never have been considered for their language if Valve went and had professional translations done.
The article does have a valid point, that Valve saves a big chunk of change not paying for translations. However, in another light, the author sounds butt-hurt that anyone would consider contributing to something they enjoy.
I thought crowdsourcing was the way of the future, what have I missed?
The "article" assumes Valve would otherwise pay to have the translations done.
This is a questionable assumption. The alternative assumption is that these translations would be uneconomic to do professionally therefore they have allowed the community to do translations instead of not having it at all. The latter assumption seems more probable given we're talking about the back catalogue.
It's difficult to judge since the "article" has no citations, not even a link for the quote cited "Steam forums". There's no basic information such as the languages being translated.
And... Oh forget it. The "article" isn't even of a standard worthy of criticising.
You are making yourself a very comfortable false dichotomy. Steam is very useful indeed. It makes it easy for me to buy, install, patch, organise and run video games. As a gamer, I think it's an excellent service.
Does Red Hat make a profit, by the way? It seems to me this article is of the form, "evil capitalists pay less than minimum wage for language translation!".
Will the translators free work be freely available? If so, then this is great. If not, then there are problems.
Indeed. Because Steam exercises considerable direction and control over their translators, they might be considered employees. AOL ran into minimum wage laws when they had forum moderators. Eventually, they had to pay them back pay.
It looks like they're about 75% done translating.
Ok, your objection here is Valve charging for games. You're obviously from that part of the world I often see labelled as "utopia" on the map.
"Millions could be saved by Steam by making the community work for free."
So when open source crowdsources development it's great, but when video game companies do it it's exploitative? And how exactly are volunteers "forced" to do anything?
If the costs of professional translation are as high as the article suggests (nearly $1 million just to translate Steam storefront pages), then this move makes sense to me. How many sales are you going to gain by having 26 different translations of a game? How many people who might use a translation wouldn't have just played the game in English in the absence of one? Even Valve's AAA titles from before this weren't in 26 languages. Half-Life 2 is only in 18. And that's for a big budget game. For smaller titles, the benefit from translating is undoubtedly not worth the cost.
Given that, I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Rather than fans of a game having to organize a team to translate it and hack up a patch, there is now a way for everyone to contribute as much as they like to a publisher-sponsored effort. You'd have to be pretty damn cynical to see this as a bad thing.
Posted by timothy...
An anonymous reader writes...
Is timothy going to split slashdot's ad revenue with anonymous?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Maybe has their children hostage? No?
So how are they "making" them do this.
Just wait until this moron finds out all the people being "made" to write linux code. Actually he has a minecraft section in his top menu, is he getting paid for that prime advertising spot? Or was he "made" to do that by the evil Mojang folk?
Participating in free software like Linux and this are very different things.
Only by participating in free software do you realize its full potential; by translating text for free for a closed company you get no benefit at all.
Different, sure. "Very" different, no.
Let's assume that Valve isn't willing to fork out the money to translate their platform to those other languages. As the article estimates, it's expensive (and I agree it's expensive... a company I worked for paid about 26k per translation of the software they developed internally, and some languages are much more expensive than others, and those are usually the ones that have fewer users). So that'd make some sense, since their market may not be as large in those areas - more so, their market of people that can't read English in those areas may not justify the cost and effort to create and maintain the translations themselves.
However, if there's still some market there, why not let that market justify itself... they provide the translation, and they get to reap the benefits (able to use Steam and view some games in their native tongue). That sure does sound like a nice benefit to me.
I am a free software proponent, and I would agree that it would be more beneficial to society if Steam itself was an open source platform. But that's not required to make this still be a good thing.
Has been doing this for a while now..
Nobody is forcing them to do it for fucks sake!
Images float through my head; the paradise of the end of scarcity, the oligarchs chanting that scarcity is what motivates the free market and so must be protected, then hiring legislators to pass laws to increase artificial scarcity, while capitalizing on the new option of non-scarcity to get free tools for advancing the market penetration of their artificially scarce goods.
It seems apparent that they would rather be kings in hell than peers in heaven.
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As to the pernicious lie that Valve has enslaved these translators: really? Are you claiming that Valve has stuck a gun to their collective heads and told them to work or face dire consequences up to and including torture or death?
This is certainly a volunteer effort to begin with, done so that the translators themselves can enjoy the games in their native languages.
Seriously, this article is a troll. Slavery, indeed.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
That's what I was hoping they meant by translation... oh well. Can't be too terribly much work to port it over from the OS X build can there?
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
his objection is to doing work for free for an entity you're giving your money to.
I take it you never volunteer for any public programs, either, since you have already paid your taxes?
But it's just so outrageous. How dare those people be allowed to translate those things?
They're not being paid in cash. They just enjoy it! Unbelievable!
Someone should stop Valve before it's too late.
Slashdot has decided to build a community effort to get its Slashdot news blog proof-read, edited and reviewed by the community, but here is the catch: commenters do not get paid. Millions could be saved by Slashdot by making the community work for free. The article describes basic estimates on how much is saved by Slashdot in editing costs.
Languages like spanish have a huge number of variations (it's pretty much different in every country, heck, even inside the same country), and we end up enduring a washed-up version of an international spanish that's usually awful. Crowdsourced translations at least let you correct the translation and add variations that feel better for a speakers of a certain variation of the language.
One good example of this type of crowdsourced effort is subtitles. See "subtitulos.es" for example. You can get a complete movie or series chapter translated in a few hours. From the basic result obtained there, several teams around the world further localize the language (for example to Argentinian spanish).
I'd say a web browser gets used much the same way as Steam does. It certainly ends up with more advertising in.
I am trolling
Red Hat makes money primarily on support and if you don't want to pay them, then you have other options, you can go without support or you can hire somebody else. With Steam, you pay for the product and support or you do without, the other option being piracy.
I'd say that makes it very different, when a corporation uses volunteer labor for a pay only product, that's fundamentally different from when a corporation makes money off a freely available product.
Under federal law volunteers must be volunteering for a public sector, religious or non-profit institution. For profit entities are barred from profiting from volunteer labor. http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp
It isn't a straw man because the parent said "his objection is to doing work for free", as if somehow they were being coerced into doing it. Well, they aren't. So apart from demonstrating yourself to be a patronising, sanctimonious arse who doesn't know what a straw-man argument is, your comment here has achieved absolutely nothing.
It's "different", in the same way that a bottle of gin is different from a can of cider. But they're both drinks, i.e. both organisations are making money on the back of what was (initially at least) the unpaid labour of others.
Nobody is forcing them to do it for fucks sake!
No, but it is an asymmetric relationship which is shifting wealth (in the economic sense; the ability to satisfy wants, not cash) from one group of people to another. Such asymmetry is ever worthy of consideration, at least for anyone who loves the free market. The free market would be most efficient if all transactions were perfectly symmetric. Any who believe that there is value in maximizing GDP would do well to always contemplate asymmetric transactions, and ponder if there is a way to influence the market to more closely approximate symmetry.
Any who believes asymmetry is a good thing is an enemy of the free market; a thief and a brigand.
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So it's win/win. If things were the other way around, I'd happily translate Spanish or Japanese into English.
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I'd say that makes it very different, when a corporation uses volunteer labor for a pay only product, that's fundamentally different from when a corporation makes money off a freely available product.
Why? If Valve is "exploiting" volunteer translators, then Red Hat is "exploiting" volunteer coders.
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Any who believes asymmetry is a good thing is an enemy of the free market; a thief and a brigand.
How efficient is a market where people want to play a game but can't for lack of a translation? Voluntary, self-interested transactions are the foundation of a free market; it has fuck all to do with "symmetry."
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Given the above, what I want to know is why you don't use reductio ad absurdum as your main form of argumentation more often.
Not directed at parent
All enterprise, employment, volunteerism, etc. is, at their base, exploitation of people's skills and the people themselves. The rewards for doing it vary but somehow each who does is motivated in their own way. Even Open source *exploits* the talents of the developers. Every user is an exploiter.
So, yeah, Red Hat is exploiting. Steam is exploiting. We are all exploiting something and someone every day. (ok, maybe not you isolated desert island dwellers, but you can't see this, as there is no service to exploit.) If you do not believe this, please look the word up. Get a feel for what it means and then try to understand that the use of money to purchase something is inherently exploiting someone somewhere. It is how the world goes around. The only way to not be part of it is to not live.
And about symmetry. It is not realistically possible. People have different valuations of the same things. Even if you could arrive at an agreement for each transaction of what symmetry for that transaction was, that valuation would still change going forward as people's perceptions of valuation change and the balance that symmetry is trying to preserver would still be lost. That being said, more balanced transactions could be arrived at, but profiteers would not be happy with that.
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
It isn't a straw man because the parent said "his objection is to doing work for free", as if somehow they were being coerced into doing it.
Again, you are misunderstanding the objection. Do you care that there may be more to the argument than you realize or are you only interested in declaring how stupid anyone with a different opinion must be?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Red Hat makes money primarily on support and if you don't want to pay them, then you have other options, you can go without support or you can hire somebody else. With Steam, you pay for the product and support or you do without, the other option being piracy.
I'd say that makes it very different, when a corporation uses volunteer labor for a pay only product, that's fundamentally different from when a corporation makes money off a freely available product.
I know people like Steam and all but it's not the only legal option. If you don't like Steam you don't use it, games can still be purchased through other channels, but if someone does like Steam enough to go above and beyond giving them their money what's wrong with that?
On the other end of the equation, what's wrong with a corporation using volunteers? If they have people lining up to work for free on a project they can make some money off why wouldn't they let them? All they offered was a fuzzy feeling and people still lined up. This seems like a case of everyone getting what they want.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
So it's win/win. If things were the other way around, I'd happily translate Spanish or Japanese into English.
Actually, you've hit on probably the best test for fairness -- asking "what if things were the other way around?"
Let's say that I took a Spanish script and translated it into English and then charged, say $20/copy for that English version. Would Valve come along and write a video game around that script and then donate it to me so that I could bundle it with each $20 copy of the translated script?
Of course not.
So yeah, there ain't nobody forcing these people into freely giving their labor to Valve. But that doesn't make Valve any less scummy for encouraging it, much less simply taking it when, if the tables were reversed, they would never do such a thing themselves.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And do you care to explain what more there is?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Some companies make money using open-source projects. Since the vast majority of people who contribute to open-source projects are unpaid volunteers you have basically made the argument that they should not volunteer at all. I thought it was solidly demonstrated through collaborative projects like open-source software that people will ply their skills for the sake of plying their skills regardless of personal gain, or lack thereof. Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.
Besides, who's to say Valve won't compensate them in some way when all is said and done? Just because they're not offering paychecks doesn't mean they will never offer some token of gratitude. Free custom/unique in-game items are not unheard of.
=Smidge=
If we want to translate the pages for free to help spread fun to those who don't speak English, I don't see why third parties should give a damn.
No one is forcing anyone to translate these pages. People not involved shouldn't get their panties in a twist. You're not looking out for us. We care more about helping those who would otherwise miss a good game find them.
And do you care to explain what more there is?
I already did in another post in this same thread.
It was written in response to someone who didn't seem so absolutely dead-set on framing the debate as being stupid vs obvious.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
An "enemy of the free market"? Is "the free market" now a holy and sacred territory that we must vow to defend with our lives, as opposed to a hypothetical and nonexistent economic construction to help explain capitalist markets?
Sometimes people do things without expecting to be paid. There are a lot of people creating mods for games, most of them for free. They work for the fun of it, not money. It's similar to open source: you use the work of others and in return you contribute something back for free. Valve has always been very good at working with the community. Unlike other companies suing modders, they encouraged it, and in fact hired and paid people of the modding community. Accusing them of exploit is stupid.
Are community translations that awful when the process consists of receiving multiple distinct translations for each entry, with the community voting on them, causing many of those that should be deleted not even being considered?
If each line requires a sufficient number of up-votes before getting preliminary approval (and even being looked at by the one person the company hired who is a fluent reader of the language) most of the crap should hopefully be filtered out.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
You might want to read the summary: "Millions could be saved by Steam by making the community work for free." Notice the word "making".
you have basically made the argument that they should not volunteer at all.
I have not.
In the context of open source, what I said implies that it would increase the GDP growth rate if companies which garner economic advantage from open source were to transfer some portion of their upside to those contributing developers who were otherwise sub-optimally compensated.
it was solidly demonstrated through collaborative projects like open-source software that people will ply their skills for the sake of plying their skills regardless of personal gain, or lack thereof.
I believe it has been solidly demonstrated that people will do some amount of open source development even without compensation.
Are you positing that the amount of open source development that happens is entirely unaffected by compensation?
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If nobody volunteers to translate Team Fortress 2 to Bulgarian, then how would they hope to play with their Bulgarian friends? I doubt Steam would spend the thousands of dollars to translate a game that might sell less than a hundred localized copies.
Welcome to the nineteenth century ! Next up: electricity.
Oh so it's about some game company never mind.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
You get the benefit of having a game in your own language.
The benefit is also that otherwise Valve would have had to pay someone to do it , and they would have charged this to the customers.
So this way , a large group of people get translation without extra costs , and a small amount of people have the joy of being able to participate in translating a game.They don't want money, they just want to be recognized for what they did.
Offcourse, that doesn't make it open-source . If valve were to publish the translations afterwards ( so other games could use ) , that would be ideal.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Let me put it differently.
Say Valve didn't put any effort in translating the game , but they would just be text files , easily translatable by the people themselves.
What do you think will happen ?
That's right , some people will take the liberty to translate the files themselves , and post them on the internet. A lot of people would join in , basically becoming on open source project.
So are you expecting Valve to pay those translators ?
The only difference here is that Valve is the one proposing it , and probably that they won't publish the translations afterwards ( i'm not even sure about this ).
That last part would indeed be unfair to the translators.
Slipping shoelaces ?
It's pretty simple. If you work as a proper, paid translator, you get a salary from Valve. You don't mind them charging for games, because you get your own tiny cut. of the profits
If you work as a volunteer translator for an open source software project, you don't get any money. But you don't mind because you become a credited contributor- a copyright owner- on the programme. The software is given to you for free, and you get the warm fuzzy feeling that you contributed "for the greater good".
If you work as a volunteer translator for Valve, you get nothing. They don't pay you a cut of the extra profits they'll make from your hard work, you don't get to be credited copyright holder, you don't get free copies of the software, even for testing purposes; you get nothing.
How many languages will be supported on Linux?
Open source development is open source-- everyone benefits.
If you don't think translating a game benefits you then don't translate it... I think this is great, that Valve builds a community of people dedicated to improved the gaming experience, just for fun.
Who knows maybe this community could in the long run get other/more responsibilities, build levels and mods, the more involved users are the better, both for the users and the publisher. I mean if the community grows strong, maybe it'll complain about DRM, lack of linux support or unfair user agreements. Who knows?
there not being an 'utopia' (yet), does not mean people should just accept working for companies which wont pay them money like morons.
get your logic straight first, and then attempt discussing.
Read radical news here
Slashdot is a commercial entity and it profits from user submitted content for which it does not pay, user comments for which it does not pay AND has its moderation done by users, who, you guess it, it doesn't pay.
Pot calling kettle!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I thought this was being translated, as in ported, to other platforms.
Like Linux.
Crap. I'm never going to get to play Portal 2 on my Fedora laptop, am I?
Darryl L. Pierce "What do you care what people think, Mr. Feynman?"
I do not see the sense in translating closed source games for free. The translation is usable only by the game company, most likely there is a clause somewhere stating the translator loses all rights to his/her work after submitting the translation to the game company.
Surely there are umpteen open source applications needing translation to any language. There the translation also becomes "free", so it can be used in other similar appliations or in other contexts.
Because they use volunteer labor to replace paid labor. Among other things, this tends to reduce the ability to the less wealthy to get jobs in that industry, regardless of talent. This is happening to a large extent in the publishing industry, with unpaid internships eating much of what used to be entry level positions. Free labor has consequences. Free labor for profit-seeking corporations is, at best, wrong-headed, and at worst, actively harmful to the economy by means of taking jobs out of the market.
Read the first paragraph. It clearly defines conditions under which people doing work are not considered employees - namely, people working for a religious, non-profit, or public institution.
Free fan translation that doesn't directly benefit (and isn't directly at the behest of) the corporation in question is pretty different than a company actively seeking and encouraging free translations and profiting from them.
Also, not everyone benefits (in a legal sense), and, given the much, much weaker quality control of most (not all, but most) free translations by amateurs, it's not a clear win in non-financial terms 100% of the time.
We expect for-profit companies to pay for work. That's been a constant since, well, at least the 19th century, and it's not a bad thing.
And, for fuck's sake, I'm tired of this "they'll have to distribute costs to the consumers" bullshit. Costs can also come out of other parts of the operating budget, out of the initial profits from expanded sales - a company expanding its market into new areas doesn't necessarily have to be funded by a price-hike, and in many cases, shouldn't - like when a retailer largely competes on price. Which Valve most assuredly does.
And are the translations only for free games? No? Then he's more right than you. Sorry, but promotional freebies (or Freemium games, such as TF2) don't make Valve magically a charity.
I was quoting the parent, but goofed my HTML. Should've previewed.
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Don't forget that this being Steam, they'll probably hand out some hats to the biggest contributors, and nothing says 'love' and 'brotherhood of man' quite like a free virtual hat.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
That's totally bullshit. You can the same satisfaction from helping contribute to something you enjoy and want to promote.
"Only by participating in free software do you realize its full potential"
Oh, horseshit. There's nothing mystical about participating in community projects. And there's no friggin' 'secret information' to be gained.
If by 'realize' you mean 'use', you are axiomatically incorrect.
If by 'realize' you mean 'can modify', you are correct, but in a minuscule pool of users.
I use OpenWriter. I have zero interest modifying it. Not even those little irritations that have been around since 2008 at least. Why? First, the developers behaved like dicks from the first contact I had with them. Second, I use it to write - I program other shit.
You're really damn close to arguing the same way union labor does.
I have the right to charge whatever I want for my labor, all the way down to $0/hr. Is it fair to you if I can do the job better and don't need the money? No. Since when is a free market about fairness and not efficiency?
Free, volunteer labor is never wrong for a for-profit company. Its just wrong to those who would rather get paid while others are willing to do it for free.
Which is a perfect reason Google Translate should be refined to automate the translation process.
"So yeah, there ain't nobody forcing these people into freely giving their labor to Valve."
End of empirical part. Although linguistically incorrect, I assume you meant "isn't anybody". "Ain't nobody" actually means someone is.
"But that doesn't make Valve any less scummy for encouraging it, much less simply taking it when, if the tables were reversed, they would never do such a thing themselves."
"Scummy" is such an evidentiary term, isn't it? Someone accepting donations is scummy how? This assumes, of course, that Valve doesn't donate things.
It is simple, yes. Simple minded. Your value system is something like: "warm fuzzy feeling contributing to the greater good" [your Marxist philosophy shining through] versus "nothing". As soon as you frame the latter as "nothing" of course, as you do by imposing your Marxist value system upon it, your argument already entails its own conclusion. That is a formal fallacy. The "nothing" of which you speak is a language translation enabling millions of people who wouldn't ordinarily be able to access the software to be able to do so. Now, please sit back down into your Duma seat.
The people who are able to do the translation could just play the game in it's native language, since they speak it anyway. They gain nothing. What this free translation does is allow Valve to profit by selling to customers it could not previously serve.
Oh hear we go. The same arguments used by British trade unions to enforce the "closed shop" in the 1970's!
I know you intend this as some sort of ultra-libertarian "gotcha," but thank you. Unions did many great things, like ending company stores and putting a stop to the horrors of gilded-age child labor.
And frankly, while perhaps you have the right to charge whatever you want, maybe, employers do not have the right to pay whatever they want for labor. The minimum wage laws exist to prevent abuse of the workforce, and ensure a decent chance at self-sufficiency for all citizens. It's nice for you if you don't need the money, but you don't actually have some sort of god-given right to fuck over other people by undercutting the minimum wage.
And frankly, while perhaps you have the right to charge whatever you want, maybe, employers do not have the right to pay whatever they want for labor. The minimum wage laws exist to prevent abuse of the workforce, and ensure a decent chance at self-sufficiency for all citizens. It's nice for you if you don't need the money, but you don't actually have some sort of god-given right to fuck over other people by undercutting the minimum wage.
Yes, yes I do. I'm pretty far to the left when it comes to politics, with regards to social safety nets, employee rights/safety, etc. But I'm also an individual with my own rights, and I have the right to work for free if I want to (and I do, since I can afford to).
The free market is a bitch, but its the only game in town. Don't whine that someone who can do the job better cheaper can and will do so. Its a losing argument, and there is *much* too much momentum behind that train for you to slow it down (i.e. the cost of labor in China, India, Brazil, etc).
The classics never go out of style.
And, to be less tongue-in-cheek, distinguishing between free and paid labor is certainly a far cry from demanding closed shops. And, frankly, free labor is, in a great variety of ways, inimical to the free market - it's the ultimate example of someone failing to price goods and services according to supply/demand. And for the company that leverages it, it is an unfair competitive advantage operating outside the market.
The free market isn't magical, and it isn't the sole model of economic interaction in any economy. It's a model; a sometimes useful model, but a limited model which doesn't take into account vast ranges of human social and economic activity. It is also startlingly open to abuses where sensible regulation isn't imposed.
Also, I'd stop claiming that you support employee rights, since you're not even behind the right to a fair wage. Or, if you do keep claiming it, do so in a bar with people who actually HAVE to work for a living, so that you might be removed from the vote pool as soon as possible.
Wow, grammar nazi for the fail.
Funny thing about being a grammar nazi - practically no actual linguists fall into that category because the people who study it professionally know that language is fluid and that colloquialisms are used and understood by just about everyone.
So unless slashdot has suddenly adopted a mandatory style guide, you can blow me.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If they really gained nothing, they wouldn't do it. It's the same kind of "warm and fuzzy" feeling that brings the world Wikipedia and fansubs.
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Because, clearly, the only place to be beaten to death by neanderthals who don't agree with your viewpoint is a bar *rolls eyes*
If you are unable to adapt to the world marketplace, you will be unable to provide for yourself. You can do everything right and still have your job taken by someone else. Neither is your fault, but it is what is going to happen. Get used to it.
Minimum wage means you're wrong. Simple as that. I'm sorry the world doesn't match your philosophy, but what you said here isn't true.
Not meant seriously, bar is the canonical location for roughhousing in the western world, and it doesn't take being neanderthal to be enraged by your jackass Randian twittery.
Outsourcing and globalization are actually separate issues from allowing people to volunteer for for-profit companies.
Also, working for nothing isn't actually obeying free market principles. No one is exploding the concept of supply and demand quite as thoroughly as someone who is doing something for no material profit. They're outside the purvey of the free market at that point - and, in fact, if they're volunteering for a for-profit company, they're a competitive advantage that warps what logically should happen in a free-market system.
Also, and just to be utterly clear, because I suspect you are not reading carefully - at no point am I saying or have I said that you can't do whatever you want with your time. What I'm saying you're not permitted to do (and what you're not permitted to do by law, right now) is to donate that time to a profit-making entity, gratis. You can do it on your own time and make the results free to anyone, or you can work for a charitable organization, or certain types of religious organization, or a non-profit, or for a public agency. But you can't decide to work for free for a for profit company and stay within the bounds of law.
As a side note, I agree with the reasoning behind that law. It's a good law, as far as I'm concerned. I think it's awesome that you can't do that. But that's immaterial to any of the previous discussion, because the fact remains, that's what the law says.
Let's assume that Valve isn't willing to fork out the money to translate their platform to those other languages. As the article estimates, it's expensive (and I agree it's expensive... a company I worked for paid about 26k per translation of the software they developed internally, and some languages are much more expensive than others, and those are usually the ones that have fewer users). So that'd make some sense, since their market may not be as large in those areas - more so, their market of people that can't read English in those areas may not justify the cost and effort to create and maintain the translations themselves.
However, if there's still some market there, why not let that market justify itself... they provide the translation, and they get to reap the benefits (able to use Steam and view some games in their native tongue). That sure does sound like a nice benefit to me.
Sorry, that's a poor justification. There isn't just a choice of "full cost up-front" and "pay nothing at all". If Valve/Steam can't afford to pay the translation costs up front, there is an alternative way of paying: commission. The translator gets a slice of the profit on all sales of their translated versions of games.
What we have here is actually in line for anti-trust investigations, because Steam are leveraging their dominance in on-line distribution to further gain competitive advantage over other software producers -- software producers who don't have a "community" to do translations for free and therefore have to pay for their translations, which will be reflected in the retail price.
But if they sign up to Steam, they'll get the translations for free. So lots of small software houses will be signing up for Steam.
But presumably the translations will only be permitted for Steam distribution. So Steam nudges out other on-line and physical distribution channels.
It's a play for monopoly, and it should be nipped in the bud.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
You know what makes me feel "warm and fuzzy?" Getting paid for my efforts, especially when my efforts make somebody else money.
Valve have spent countless time and money nurturing the Steam Community. Running forums, making changes based on the community, creating events, keeping the griefers under control; all of this requires funding. Given how much been put in to build such a strong community, they have really earnt this level of support form their community (which is obvious through the positive response by their community). Good work!