I think its probably just down to the balance of accessiblity to start but devotion required to keep playing, in combination with the very intense monitization that gets put into production and marketing. For comparison:

Something like CS is far more accessible, but has a much larger portion of casual players and has Valve’s laissez-faire development/marketing. Valorant is is like CS but even more casual. Dota breeds far more devoted players, but the game is so complex it can’t grow, and again, has neither the high production value nor the marketing because Valve. There are games like Fortnite that can compete in scale, but the nature of the game and the focus on fun content over competitve integrity mean that the tournaments are more marketing events than measures of skill.

Information is limitted as the contracts used for developers aren’t shared, but the general understanding is that this only applies to Steam keys.

The one exception is the wolfire games lawsuit, which includes one alleged instance of Valve asking a developer not to distribute the game for free on their Discord when it is a paid product on Steam. Given the lack of detail, the single anecdote for evidence, the existence of other games where they are priced lower or free off Steam (I.E. Dwarf Fortress), its certainly not a widespread problem, almost certainly not in contract, if it did happen exactly as the anecdote suggests, may have been a misstep on the part of one employee, and may not have happened at all.

Of course, if Valve does do this, nonetheless mandated it, its an issue, but given that no one else has challenged them on what would be such a blatent anti-trust case, esspecially given how everyone else in the industry has been trying to take Valve’s place for years, I think its unlikely.

From my understanding, thats only for selling Steam Keys. As long as you’re not using Steam’s infrastructure, you’re fine. You often can find better prices off Steam as it is, on platforns like Epic, GOG or esspecially Itch.io.

From my understanding, thats only for selling Steam Keys. As long as you’re not using Steam’s infrastructure, you’re fine. You often can find better prices off Steam as it is, on platforns like Epic, GOG or esspecially Itch.io.

Lower distribution costs (in exchange for less marketing and a worse product) are not lower prices though. If Epic had spent half the time and money they spent negotiating for exclusives on negotiating for lower prices, Im sure they easily could have. For example, Epic advertises a 12% fee on sales, but if they instead took 10% (maybe spent less on exclusives to account for this) and then required prices be 5% lower than MSRP on other stores, then suddenly its a lot more appealing to customers - the ones actually providing the money - while still offering a much better deal than Steam. Similarly, Epic could have just passed on the saving more directly, like I said, with a rewards program or similar. Epic had plenty of ways to actually lower prices for their customer rather than just their buisiness partners. They just chose not to.

Frankly, Epic is pretty irrelevant to this point considering how significantly they chose to burn the bridges with their customers right from the get-go anyway. Unless you’re studying how to lose consumer trust or goodwill, they’re not really a good reference.

Yep, although there are a ton of other ways to do it as well such as a good rewards points system, or a raffle system with bonus games won when purchasing, or similar. As long as you don’t spend years antagonising your customers first, I don’t expect game stores would struggle to compete offering better prices than Steam, even at the cost of features.

I have no idea how any other platform can really achieve competitor status with steam

Aside from all the (other) obvious options replicating Steam, theres always the tried and true option of offering lower prices. To my knowledge, no one has been willing to try that yet.

Because on every other platform, a title like that won’t compete with clickbait and ragebait. Its only really here (and to a lesser extent Reddit) where clickbait negatively impacts a video’s spread. Until people want to post here specifically, that won’t change.

Tldr:

This update fixed a crash when using the magnifier tool while game recording is active

I’m not sure if we’ll see Deadlock introduce the same features as Dota, but if they do, I’ve found Dota’s casual modes really great for low-stress, fun games. The difference maker in Dota compared to a lot of other games is that SBMM is still used, but less strictly and its all hidden so you (and your friends) can’t fixate on it but also don’t get stomped every game. We’ll have to see how Deadlock’s development pans out, but given that its Icefrog and Valve working on it, and they already seem to be working from lessons learned in Dota, I think theres pretty good odds.

At the same time, the goal of dark patterns to to make people spend more money. Given that revenue is very likely one of the key things Google wants (and thus promotes) out of apps, its also entirely expected that the apps people find are largely those who try and get the most money from users, which requires dark patterns.

Ahhhhh. 4 dozen.

Usually because those responsible for regulating housing are heavily invested in it, and like the fact that high immigration is pushing prices up. In the case of more blatantly malicious governments, it can also be used to encourage divisionism, or to weaken the power of the working class. At best, its just because building housing (esspecially in more extreme climates) is slow and expensive. As usual, most things lead back to corrupt governments and capitalism.

Immigration in excess and esspecially in combination with exploititive or unenforced labour laws and mismanagement of other resources and infrastructure, can decrease wages, and cause shortage of key resources. For example, if there is no new housing being built, but there is very high immigration levels, housing prices will rise, and availability will be limited.

Other than the mob vote changes, Im not really a fan. More regular, small updates feels like it makes it harder to make the large, sweeping changes many areas of the game need, as well as adding a lot of extra work for modders to keep things up to date.

I mean, he’s not asking for help rooting directly, or for people to feed him instructions on every one of these devices. His question is intentionally left open for any pointers people can give, from a “I rooted the Samsung and its pretty easy to do”, to links to other webpages (which are exactly the sort of resource someone would have bookmarked while also being a nightmare to find on Google), to -yes- full step by step instructions for those willing to provide. He’s asking for direction, not demanding someone do the work for him.

I personally found the Inscryption scratched the same itch, albient in a different way. Its a very different game, being a sort-of narrative driven, Slay the Spire inspired card game. I won’t go into too much detail, given that spoilers, mechanical or narrative, take away a lot from the game, but I found that Inscryption did a great job of juggling a bunch of different mechanics to ensure I constantly had new tools to master, while also encouraging more lateral exploration through its plethora of secrets, and drip feeding story fragments to be peiced together as I progressed.

Of course. Doesn’t mean its not nice to be able to avoid it though. Personally, it will have no real impact on my purchasing decision, but the less DRM, the better.

This seems really promising. Unfortunately, I expect they’ll still use Steam DRM, but everything I’ve heard so far is immensely promising so who know, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll skip even that.