I would love for some other store to give me a reason to shop with them instead. GOG is closest, and they still can't be bothered to give me a Galaxy client on Linux.
I feel now is like a mistake buying from other places. I bought cyberpunk from gog, I wish now I didn’t. For Christmas I got gifted lots of games from my steam wishlist. I couldn’t add phantom liberty coz I didn’t bought the base game from steam.
Sadly for every other company, Steam = more features and stability.
Exactly why I don't want to use GOG. There are third party clients, but I refuse to build an entire catalog if the company does not provide something official.
Im still deciding if I want to do another playthrough before 2.0 though. Maybe I’ll actually play SE through past the first rocket launches and that should give at least another 800 hours.
I’ve done Factorio from vanilla, vanilla plus qol mods, to angels and bobs mods. Something is so satisfying once you get a train network set up, bots doing their thing (think it’s improved but used to be a performance killer with too many) and watching everything just work. I think I was at 400 hours before I even bothered launching a rocket which is where they say you beat the game. Anyone looking for YouTubers check out KatherineOfSky, think she still does them for factorio and is quite nice to watch and learn from. I actually haven’t played in a few years now but have 600ish hours (maybe left it on a few nights running by accident but mostly true hours), great game to figure out logistics, timings and such. Also personally usually played without the biters since I just wanted to build (glad they took out the requirement to kill biters for science) but watching other people build up defenses seems interesting but too stressful for my play.
Factorio dev blogs are such a treat to read. I love they way they explain their decisions and the problems they encountered. This dlc is going to be so cool
This article didn’t research the VR bits…Gabe has said multiple times, even recently, that they are working steadily on VR and it’s hardware. Their next headset even has a codename, Deckard.
Also, I don’t think most people realize Valve doesn’t have much of an internal structure. It more resembles a community of people working together because they want to.
Epic bought rocket league and promptly tanked it in favor of their stupid fortniteverse. Maybe steam keeps winning because they’re not actively screwing over their customers.
Or Pheonix Point, where Epic bought an kickstarter game that was funded under the promise of releasing on Steam, GOG and potentially other stores and promptly made it exclusive - and this was in the early days when their launcher/store was in a much worse state too.
I know everyone loves Valve, but it feels super weird to be celebrating a monopoly so much and so ferociously. (I know Steam isn’t a technical monopoly. We don’t need to have that discussion)
Gaben is old, and he’s gonna retire. It’ll likely be a lot sooner than anyone here is comfortable with. When Valve gets sold, or even when gaben isn’t in total control anymore, things are going to start changing, and there isn’t going to be a healthy, diverse marketplace to soften that.
There is a very good chance that the PC platform will be a really horrible place because of the lack of consumer choice in which they can purchase and play games.
Steams biggest competition isn’t another launcher, it’s piracy. Gabe is wise enough to know that, if the next guy to take over is a chode they’ll learn the hard way.
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
Why is it so hard for companies to build a game launcher that doesn’t suck? Is it just a lowest bidder situation?
I think it’s just priorities, those other companies weren’t interested in making a launcher, they were interested in tying their customers into their eco system.
Steam started out like that in appearance at least, nobody really wanted it and it was kind of forced on you if you wanted to play HL2 but since Valve seemed to understand the value in a platform like steam and actually work at making it good it became pretty good.
At this point it’s actually kind of hard to fully appreciate how much work has gone into steam. Not just the basic stuff like chat and forums and a store with a functioning search, or the banal stuff like inventories and trading cards and points I still don’t understand, but also the stuff most people don’t see like all the stuff for developers launching a game on steam and managing sales and keys and betas. Not to mention all the experiments they’ve done along the way to try and figure out what the best way forward is.
Steam is kind of a huge undertaking and unless a company is really invested in competing with it they’re simply not going to be able to.
IMO my favorite launcher to use out of all is probably Battle.net, even over Steam. This is probably mostly because Steam is terrible unresponsive and its startup is still kinda ass (I just tested the start and noticed its 3 fucking loading screens: Verifying installtion, Logging in and finally loading the page. All as separate windows).
If your goal was only to make a good launcher, it would be easy. If your goal is a lot of DRM shenanigans as if we were still in 1998, it’s really hard.
As always with the Crown Prosecution service in the UK they love to bully and make an example of Autistic people. Only added by corporation running the court system, The CPS' Prosecution barristers are known to enjoy a life of luxury and gifts from them but you cant touch any of it.
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