Borderlands 3 and Wonderlands demonstrated clearly that the customers show up for the games, not the store front.

This doesn’t seem to match my own experience but I would be curious to see the steam vs epic sales numbers for gearbox. I use steam because it has good features. If epic supported user reviews, a flexible refund policy, a workshop for user mods, voice chat, cloud saves between devices, achievements, profile customization, the ability to stream games to a different device, etc. I might be more inclined to try it. I waited for borderlands 3 and wonderlands to come to steam and be on sale before I purchased there was zero incentive for me to create an epic games store account unless I really wanted the game right away. Epic exclusives were a good business idea (it worked for Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo for years) but they needed to develop a good store front along with them because it just isn’t sustainable.

Here are some more to add to the list:

Running a proprietary anti-cheat at the kernel level that causes system instability and only works on Windows. Valorant and many others.

Releasing a sequel to a live service game that doesn’t port over the money / skins users have purchased in the original game over many years. Smite 2.

Paying publishers to make games exclusive to your crappy store on PC instead of making the store front better. Epic Games.

Making a single player only game with always on DRM and network requirements. A lot of games by EA, Ubisoft, and Bethesda.

That time Ubisoft tried to make NFTs in video games a thing.

EDIT: Removed Overwatch 2. It does allow skin transfers for ones the developer chose to keep in the sequel.

I don’t think this would work since most governments don’t understand technology well (just look at the Flipper Zero ban in Canada as an example). Technology has also been disruptive to existing industries (Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, etc.). I think traditional industries would just end up lobbying governments when they are challenged by new technology companies and we’d see less technology overall. That being said I can see the need for more tech regulation in a lot of areas (looking at you Apple), I just can’t see a blanket solution being the right approach.

This is my one big issue with Lemmy currently. I miss subscribing and just having a good feed. With Lemmy I find that a handful of very active communities end up pushing down the less active ones on a lot of the sorting options. I have to go directly to individual communities instead, which I guess could be considered a good thing for engagement but the UX side of my brain doesn’t like the extra clicks.