you seem to imply these costs should be passed down to us instead
They already are.
I really think you know nothing about what you talk or how the market works, this isn't even fun.
Steam doesn't tell developers or publishers how much their games are worth. They only provide the tools for them to sell them, and they obliviously get a cut from it, but only if you sell. They don't ask for money in advance, they don't ask for any contract.
Valve is a store front, not a publisher. I'm thinking you are just confused about how they operate.
A lot of indie companies would still be around if it wasn't for this clear cut collusion
Can you tell me how has Valve affected the indie industry? In a bad way of course. Most of my steam games are indie games that I assure you I have bought thanks to Steam's shop visibility, review system, forums, easy refunds, cloud saves, and basically all the ease of use it gives. They don't buy small teams and extinguish or terminate them, they don't artificially inflate prices, they don't install rootkits in your computer...
How is the indie games industry worse because of Valve?
Stop it with the fucking yatchs already, seriously. Just look at the differences between Vale and the other companys you mention. If you can't see any, you are just a troll.
You can't say anything bad about Valve other than "they make a lot of money". It gets boring.
Steam spends a lot of money convincing everyone Gaben is just a really cool dude and not your average billionaire.
Or maybe he is a really cool dude...
people should always keep that in mind when praising him
Why?? Good for him, stop being so envious. It's thanks to Valve I started to buy games instead of pirate them anyway. Good prices and good practices.
A billionaire from a game industry is not the same as a billionaire from a real state company or a bank. Games are not a basic need.
They're still overcharging if their owner could make himself a billionaire out of it and you're here defending them while you're overpaying for games that should be much cheaper.
Games in PC began to be cheap thanks to Valve, no one offered the huge discounts like they did in the past. I pirated everything for years but I stopped thanks to valve's prices. No one became even close to what they offered, and they have become what they are right now with good practices and good services. They could slash their cut in half and still be profitable? Probably, but they are not an NGO.
and then have to spend time figuring out which device on that circuit actually has the fault.
Usually that happens just when you plug it in so...
You don't need a fuse with modern installations. Still, if needed, there are options that have it in the wall plug.
Left bar is year of release, but is has to be an old graph (apart from the "you are here")because none of the movies are newer than year 2000.
You think we're still in 2010? It's been a while since you need to unlock the bootloader first. And no, you can't do it with the device locked.
Edit: just checked. I can completely bypass all my locked down Google Pixel settings to factory reset my phone pretty easily if I press the right keys in the right order. It would be pretty easy to steal and resell my phone.
Mind to share what "Keys in the right order" are? I mean a link, of course, because in my experience you just can't do that with a locked bootloader.
Close to your non standard book measurements. I really appreciate the usefulness of ISO 216, witch is actually a standard.
They look promising, yes.
unemployment
Unemployment levels are at the lowest since 2008.
Let’s check. I grabbed four random German books from my bookshelf. If you’re right, the pages should either be roughly 30cm×21cm (A4) or 15cm×10.5cm (A5).
Book 1: 18cm × 11.5; book 2: 19cm×12.5cm; book 3: 20.5cm × 12.5cm; book 4: 24cm × 17cm. None of those conform to the standard.
A5 is not 15x10,5
If A4 is 291x210 then OBVIOUSLY the next one starts with 210: 210x148.
"Cheaper is cheaper" kind of overlooks the core issue
You said this:
I'd love to buy my games cheaper lol.
I don't know why you need them to be cheaper before the discount, but okay, I don't care.