You’re kidding, right? They’re the only ones safeguarding the industry and making it so you’re not watching ads once every 3 minutes to get a few more coins in your PC games.
They provide one of the best distribution networks in the PC industry, and they constantly stand on the side of the players vs corporate interests.
Their refund policies only came about because different governments sued them. Check out either coffeezilla or People Make Games on CS:GO loot boxes, the latter of which has interviews with plenty of the victims of this system that Valve allows to continue because it’s so lucrative for them.
I was specifically refuting, “They’re the only ones safeguarding the industry,” and how they got to their refund policies matters when it comes to that statement. I was not here to throw a gauntlet down, insult Steam’s honor, and challenge anyone to a duel. I prefer to shop on GOG these days, when possible, but my Steam profile says I have 991 games in my account, and I bought most of those. Valve and Steam have done lasting, measurable good to this industry and medium, but that doesn’t mean they’re safeguarding it or that it’s all good news. As to the thing about ads, I don’t think that model would actually work with the PC gaming audience, and I think Valve prohibiting it is just so that their audience still finds quality products on Steam and spends more money. Valve’s best behaviors and worst behaviors are motivated by profit.
Valve’s best behaviors and worst behaviors are motivated by profit.
That’s where I disagree. Valve is not a publicly traded company. It is not beholden to shareholders to strive for profit above all else, and it shows in Valve’s leadership.
Just because they are private doesn’t mean Gabe doesn’t like to make a ton of money. Dude owns tons of yacths and would like to own more. I love Valve and think they are the biggest ethical company in gaming. But they’re still a massive corporate monopoly. No one is perfect, and they did do things that hurt people. No need to be publicly traded to also be evil. Trust but verify.
Striving for profit is a quality tied to being a company, not being a publicly traded company. Everything they do is in pursuit of making more money. Often times, that means making the best store out there so that we shop with them instead of their competitors, which is how it’s supposed to work.
Everything they do is in pursuit of making more money.
That’s where I’m saying you are wrong.
Publicly traded companies are beholden to their shareholders, and MUST strive to make money above all else. Privately held companies can put that profit motive behind other more important motives. Sure, does Valve want to make money? Absolutely - we’ve all got to make a living.
But is that their ONLY goal at the expense of everything else? Also, clearly not - or we’d have ads on every steam store page, we’d be paying monthly for steam, and you’ve seen all the shady, shitty things that all the other wanna-be steam competitors have done. So clearly valve does not value profit above everything.
That’s just not true. They’re seeking profit by attempting to be the best place to spend your money. Epic would love for Valve to charge users monthly for Steam, but they don’t, because it would just drive people away from Steam. They stand to make more money by doing what they’re doing. This is not a public versus private thing. Arguably the negative that comes along with public companies is that there are more short term incentives at the expense of long term profit, but they’re both doing what they do for profit.
I was talking about the people buying the microtransactions. I should have made that clear, I thought it could be deduced, given Valve aren't exactly ruining the game industry by stat tracking 1.7 million users, but I can see how it was confused.
I don’t think microtransactions are inherently bad, they are just used in the most greedy, money-grabbing ways.
There are some free-to-play games that don’t restrict your access to any gameplay at all as a free player, which can only be subsidized by microtransactions. If it’s just cosmetics, and they’re priced fairly, I wouldn’t feel any concern over it.
I say this as someone who will put 100 hours into a f2p game and maybe spend $10-20 on a skin or two. I feel that it’s fair to spend that much after reaping so many hours of play.
If it's free to play, then some cosmetic mtx are fine, the problem is how egregious they have become. They are not designed as a way to support a game, they are designed to suck as much money as they can from you. Which is why I disagree with supporting them at all anymore.
Games should be a one-off purchase, with no extra added bullshit.
I was always planning to watch it when it went to streaming/home video kind of release. I rarely go to the theatre anymore.
I’m also waiting on the same for the new Deadpool + Wolverine movie…
Considering the little I’ve heard about it so far (trying to avoid spoilers), it seems like I should skip the Borderlands movie, but I’ll probably still watch it.
Nah modern game development is fantastic. Y’all just dont remember getting 2 good titles a year and the rest being garbage. There are more great games out there than ever before.
I actually agree. If you don’t just focus on the tippy-top AAA/AAAA live service / gambling simulators / hi-fi vapid adventure, then there are some incredible games coming out all the time.
Arguably, the “triple-I” Indies and AA mid studios have taken over the culture/price-range/innovation niche vacated by the big studios climbing over each other to impress shareholders.
Name a year that only had two AAA games come out that were any good.
Now, we just have great access to a bunch of lower budget indie games that put gameplay over graphics, so they can take more risks and some of those games are fantastic. But there hasn’t been “just two” good games a year in the past 30 years.
You are totally right. We are living in a golden age of not only video games, but entertainment in general, thanks to ridiculously powerful computers and the internet. People with video game nostalgia remember how those old games made them feel, because the games were new and exciting and they were young. But video games (and board games) have done nothing but improve over the years as developers figure what works and what doesn’t.
Nowadays there is just of ton of…everything. We are spoiled for choice. There are so many excellent games at every price point, and also tons of crap, and yes, too much shovelware and too many rehashed franchise games. But here’s the thing: these things aren’t mutually exclusive. We have all of it, all at once, and reviews and advice are everywhere. If someone is tired of rehashed AAA franchise games, they can spend the rest of their lives playing clever indie games and they’ll still barely scratch the surface of what’s available.
And I mean, that’s maybe where the problems lie. This game is all jank and all generics, with no specific thing to present except “OMG LOOK AT OUR GRAPHICS!!!”.
This is exactly what AAA gaming is. Some guys in suits dictate projects to make money. There’s no passion behind them. They can’t do anything unique or interesting because it may not make money. They just make safe games, and they’re generic and boring as hell.
I haven’t played Cities: Skylines in years, this looks great but hopefully they fixed the stupid traffic AI. I hated that when you built a wider road to decrease congestion half of the cars would ignore the opened lanes and still pile up in the original ones.
You could fix it somewhat with mods, by forcing cars to take specific lanes. Didn’t solve the problem, but it helped. Can’t wait to try the new traffic AI in the sequel.
Widening roads is never a good answer in game or real life, it induces new demand and will eventually become more congested. Need to build a train line instead
It does increase the capacity of roads. Two lanes holds twice as many cars as one lane. Four lanes hold twice as many cars as two lanes.
You’re probably thinking of induced demand, but that’s related to traffic congestion and not capacity. More lanes ultimately means more cars are getting places, but any individual car will see that congestion is just as bad as it used to be.
yeah see what’s happening here is that you’re completely ignoring junctions: even in the ideal case of a completely straight road you still need junctions to get on and off the road, which will put a hard limit on throughput.
This is why traffic in america is miserable, the traffic engineers fail to recognize that you can’t just put businesses right next to roads as that will cause stupendous amounts of choking every time someone wants to pop in for some mcdonalds.
3 lanes in each direction is about the most you’ll ever need, which is what you’ll tend to see on big highways in europe. And really most of the time you’ll do just fine with 2 lanes.
I actually had a whole paragraph about junctions being a limit and then deleted it since i didn’t feel like it added to my point. I also was going to add a point about how much space the lanes take up and that even if more lanes added capacity, it didn’t necessarily mean they were the right option.
This is why traffic in america is miserable, the traffic engineers fail to recognize that you can’t just put businesses right next to roads as that will cause stupendous amounts of choking every time someone wants to pop in for some mcdonalds.
Yeah, fuckin’ Americans, putting their McDonald’s right next to roads… I mean, just look at this. What a disgrace.
there’s a difference between a road and a street, a road is meant for quick throughfare and streets are destinations.
what happens a lot especially in america is trying to do both at once, which results in a street that is incredibly stressful to try and enter/leave and is miserable to be near outside of a car, and yet doesn’t allow traffic to flow smoothly and quickly.
These are commonly referred to as “stroads”, and the solution is to decide whether you want a street or a road and design it as such. In dense areas this means you have to bite the sour apple and accept that not everything can be a dedicated throughfare, the best solution is a backbone network of throughfares with streets branching off.
In less dense areas you can have the best of both worlds by simply putting a street on the side of the road, with some greenery between them so people have somewhat of an enjoyable view, and then connect the streets to the road at either end.
This article on their website goes into detail on exactly how they’re planning on fixing the traffic issues. The AI will actually change lanes this time!
What happened man I thought I just needed a new GPU man, surely Bethesda isn’t being run by a fuck wit.
Surely the last set of games and Bethesdas trajectory is solely the fault of the devs despite being across several game universes and still somehow pumping out the same shit you’ve been playing for 20 years now LOL.
Bottom of the barrel is all that’s left, sleep tight Bethesda, you had a good run
I mean, peak on Steam is still lower than Baldurs Gate 3 daily count after over a month since release. So I don’t think it’s THAT successful, though the numbers are not bad for a single player game.
But for anybody on both game pass and steam, it’s cheaper to just play on game pass. That skews the data quite a bit. I’ll play it for “free” now and then buy it on steam in 5 years on sale if I ever get the inclination.
This seems like a marketing move. When the Parental Advisory Label was created for the music industry, some bands and labels went out of their way to make sure they got it put on their albums, sometimes even altering their content just for that purpose, because it would actually drive sales. Of course every kid listening to rock and rap wanted "the real shit."
Here again we are being promised "the real shit" by a meaningless content warning.
It also helps Konami keep its distance from Kojima, which is probably what both of them want.
Nintendo has IP lawyers. They have to, at their scale, because they will constantly be bombarded by patent trolls, licensing companies etc. trying to extract profit out of Nintendo. So, like any other large business, they hire IP lawyers to protect themselves.
Most patent disagreements are resolved by cross-licensing. That’s where one business says, in response to a law suit, “oh, but you’re actually using 6 of our patents, so maybe we can come to an agreement”. A patent is both a shield and a sword. Even against trolls they can be useful, as they can be used to argue against troll arguments, if it gets to court, or pull in other business to the defense, if helpful.
IP lawyers know this. So they extract every patent they can out of everything a company does, as a way to build up the IP bank.
So, I highly doubt “Nintendo wants to prevent others” bla bla. It’s just IP lawyers doing their job.
I’ve sat in MANY discovery sessions with IP lawyers where they push and prod at software I, or my team, have written. “So, what you’ve effectively done is written a unique data structure to connect elements in memory?!”, “no, it’s a linked list, next question please”.
while its hilarious that he is trying this again, that website not only popped a text box that opened my keyboard automatically and then did another pop up after that.
gamesradar.com
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