The game is called Shoot Your Friends. It’s a death match couch game for 2-4 players who share a screen and pilot tanks around an arena.
Please be aware that it is somewhat niche, it’s only compatible with controllers and local multiplayer. But if you ever get the gang over for game night it can be a fun way to spend the evening.
I don’t use a controller, but I bought two copies for friends that do! Keep going, make more games, add features! (Like maybe keyboard controls for us dinosaurs.)
Revenue divided by time is a depressing metric for anyone who starts trying to monetize their hobby, but that’s not the point. Do your fun project because it’s fun. If you make enough to cash out on Steam, get yourselves some actual trophies. Or pizza. Trying to make money will force you to do all the depressing capitalist things the big studios do, and then it’s not fun anymore.
They should almost just make it so the blaze plan of firebase or other cloud services has a $1 non refundable pre-payment so they can just whittle away at the pennies instead of getting charged processing/transaction fees on a $0.01 transaction. Tops up to $1 if it goes to $0
I think people would pay $1 to enable the paid plans. If you’re going that far, you’re getting $1 of use out of it.
This might’ve changed but 10 years ago the small shop next to my school said they wouldn’t allow card payments of under 1 EUR because they’d be losing money. In Estonia
For context: I make indie games and have released two so far and I’m currently working on the third one which is weird as fuck. So the way that Steam works is, they don’t send you money anytime you make a sale, but they send all of it at the end of every month. Now September is almost over and I got an e-mail titled “Steam Payment Notification” and I get all hyped up. I open it and read it that the Payment Notification is actually that there is no Payment since I didn’t make $100 in sales. Way to hype me up and bring me down, Steam.
Yes, their cut is 30% which is a lot, but they are pretty much the only big platform out there. Epic games has been trying to get in the game but so far they are not close. Their cut is 15%.
I want to note that you’d need about $143 in gross sales to meet the threshold of $100 in net profit.
On the surface that sounds like a lot. But, they’re providing a service without any guarantee of any income. Epic can only compete because they’ve few users and are willing to operate at a near loss in attempt to garner market share.
This will be a difficult one for others to understand as a “good deal”. Gamers are usually correct when they pull out their pitchforks. This should not be one of those times.
While I’m no fan of Epic Games for bribing companies to keep games off of Steam for a year or more, Valve’s market dominance in PC game sales isn’t a good thing for developers or consumers.
Competition in capitalism is always better than a lack thereof. But, we’ve not busted monopolies in a significant way since Ma Bell. And, even if we were, at 75% of the global market share they’d not warrant any action yet.
There’s going to be a dominant organization because late stage capitalism sucks. And, I’d rather it be Valve than some alternative trying to fuck me over at every opportunity.
The thing is, steam’s market dominance is one of user choice rather than anticompetitive strategies or lack of alternatives. Steam doesn’t do exclusives, they don’t charge you for external sales, they don’t even prevent you from selling steam keys outside the platform, or users from launching non steam games in the client. The only real restriction is that access to steam services requires a license in the active steam account. Even valve-produced devices like the steam deck can install from other stores.
Sure, dominance is bad in an abstract theoretical way and it’d be nice if Gog, itch.io, etc were more competitive, but Steam is dominant because consumers actively choose it.
Youtube and twitch work this same way. When I was starting there were months where I didnt make any money because I didn’t meet the minimum. Hoping next month meets the requirement for you boss 🙏
It accumulates, so there is no money lost. It does kinda suck though that as you start, even though you can make money and did make a bit you don’t get to see it yet
It does make sense from a payment processing standpoint. It doesn’t make sense to spend more money on creating the transaction than is actually being sent.
Sending a simple transaction like this costs a couple cents though, which they could in theory bill to the developer as well. Setting the threshold at 100 is probably more to accrue additional interest on Steams bank accounts.
I think in the US I’ve heard ETF/ACH transaction fees are usually around $2.50? It might be possible to have that apply across a batch, though, as in if you submit 10 payments to 10 different people as a single transaction it’s still just $2.50, or 25¢ per person. I’m only getting this from hearing accountants complain at companies I’ve worked with, so I don’t understand the details. But I’ve seen it pretty common with companies doing payouts to want to see a minimum amount before they actually send the payment, otherwise it’s not worth doing.
I used to pay a particular company by purchase order for this exact reason. CC takes 2-3% of the payment, but purchase order - they’ve got to get themselves into the company system, track the PO, invoice, track the payment…at the time, a common estimate was $50 to process a PO, and if you’re only buying $100 batches, that’s a big hit. Did not like that company, but they were the only place to get whatever it was I had to buy.
I enjoyed his conversations, but I can get why people may find it annoying. He jumps in so much. And a couple of times it was right before combat too so afterwards you were flung straight into combat.
Kind of… but it’s all about automating resource collection on an alien planet. You don’t get to actually travel to space. I would love to be able to go explore the space elevator/station you build throughout the game, but you’re pretty much stuck on the planet surface. Unless that’s part of the end game that I haven’t gotten to yet. I’m still working my way through the official release. The early access was just an open world exploration game.
Performance wise I can get about 3.5 Hours out of it on Medium Settings, Refresh Rate 40hz, TDP set to 10, and clock speed at 1000.
Big wise I’ve had a few bugs, nothing too major and I suspect it was just New Vegas being New Vegas (except for one I had where VATS would crash the game. I had to repair the filesystem for that)
If you’re worried about bugs I think you should be able to get Mod Organizer 2 running on Steam Deck, and with all the various stability mods installed New Vegas runs fairly well. The Viva New Vegas mod guide is a great place to start, it should have most of what you need to get going.
Glad you found the toaster! It’s probably my favourite too, though I also loved the jukebox having an affair with the light switches. I hope you’ll enjoy Lonesome Road, it’s my personal favourite DLC I think, though objectively OWB is probably better. I just love the vibes and the levels in LR.
Two very different games in the pipeline after. Alan Wake II was my GOTY last year so hard not to recommend it here. Have you played the preceding Remedy games?
I just sped through the entirety of Old World Blues today (I’m currently stuck at home). It was a lot of fun. I ended up sparing Ulysses but sacrificed ED-E to stop the bombs (I’m trying to be as morally good as possible for this play through, and though I didn’t side with the legion, idk if the fallout from the bomb would hit innocent people).
I played the first Alan Wake about 2012 when I was still in elementary school. Ever since then it’s been one of my favorite games of all time (Though, if given the choice between it and American Nightmare idk which I would choose). I currently have a save for control and enjoy it a lot, but I can’t find it in me to stick with it past maybe a few sessions lasting a week, so it has been a very slow burn game for me. I also have Quantum Break in my library from a Humble Bundle and I picked up Max Payne with the last Steam Sale, so those are lined up somewhere too.
Alan Wake 2 is amazing, but with the interconnected Remedyverse being what it is it also sort of wants you to “do your homework” - the experience is definitely enriched by having played Max Payne and Control before (with the AWE DLC of the latter being a direct bridge to AW2). The Quantum Break overlap is much more minor as they don’t own the rights to its IP. It’s fun for those who played it, but not necessary and not important.
I played a brief while after picking it up on Epic, but dropped it because it ate through my battery and I didn’t have time to figure out performance on launch. I did spoil myself on the connection of Control too Alan Wake (I’d rather sacrifice Control’s plot for the sake of my Alan Wake II experience), so I’m aware of a lot of the stuff, or can at least draw my own conclusions and fill in gaps.
Max Payne though I can’t say I know much about except I know the character Sam Lake plays in AWII is heavily inspired by Max Payne, that Max Payne takes pain killers to heal, and something about wife and kids I think?
Alex Casey (the detective from Alan Wake’s books) is essentially Max Payne - they had to change the name when making Alan Wake 1 because Rockstar had bought the IP.
There are callbacks in AW2 in both narration, atmosphere and character design that I really enjoyed, but you won’t miss out on anything story-relevant if you haven’t played it. Watching a couple of minutes of cutscenes from Max Payne 1 on YouTube is probably enough to get most of the references.
Honestly I really enjoyed it. It had a different tone than the base game or the other DLCs and I really enjoyed the linearity of it too. The story was really good too. I liked finding out what the courier did there and then talking to Ulysses in the final confrontation. I feel like being able to talk him down using multiple checks is a good showcase of the freedom of the games.
Same. I’m glad you liked it and probably turned others onto another NV playthrough. I can’t play atm, and I feel jealous c:
The only thing you’ve missed is the super challenging instance that forms in the place of a camp you’ve chosen to destroy with leftover nukes. It adds nothing to the fallout experience, but if you want your ass beaten repeatedly, here you are. You can try to load your save and choose to nuke NCR\Legion and then travel to their base. These are small highly irradiated locations with high tier threats and LR-tier loot, nothing unique iirc. These fights feel 2x tighter than these tight fight moments in the original DLC.
Love it! The level designs are so cool in Lonesome Road, and I agree that the final battle felt very cinematic in a way that a lot of other New Vegas fights don’t.
People love or hate Ulysses but I enjoy him as a character. I think the story as it ties through all the DLCs is very cool and the climactic, desolate journey through LR to cap it off was great for me.
I was planning on picking up Lily but I can’t remember how to get her as a companion.
I think all you need to do is finish the sidequest for the doctor in Jacobstown.
I also thought the elevator ride with the tunnelers was a fun change of pace too. It felt like a fun gauntlet and the explosions only made it more cinematic.
I loved how everything connected together in the DLCs and you can draw a path of where Ulysses had been (like his own road) and see who he affected
Just a correction: the sequel was released in 1999 as Battlezone 2: Combat Commander. It was a AAA release and picked up the original alternate history storyline 30 years after the events of the first game, with all Earth-based factions now forming an official alliance and fighting a new common threat. It was insanely cool for a teenager back then.
While the sequel was technically far superior, I did miss the cold war tone of US vs Soviet conflict that was present in the first game.
I also loved the interpretation of Greek mythology through the “ancient aliens” lens (Hercules Brigade and all the other stuff, quite along the lines of what Stargate SG1 was doing at the time) that was revealed to you through briefings and pre-mission voiceovers. I think this was also more pronounced in the first game.
lemmy.world
Aktywne