They’re partially owned by Tencent, a big Chinese company. And as Chinese companies are, the government has direct influence over them. And while Tencent is not a majority owner, Tim Sweeney happily took Chinese money and now pays his co-owner a portion of the profits which then go to pay for Chinese gulags.
There are many things, especially hardware, where it’s impossible to avoid Chinese companies but simply buying games somewhere else is super easy. It’s obviously not a perfect system because even on GOG there are games using UE, but just buying games somewhere else is such a low barrier, it’s not an inconvenience at all.
That said, claiming the free games doesn’t help them. It helps the developers making those games because Epic has to pay them and won’t get anything in return if that doesn’t result in users leaving money in EGS for other things.
My parents asked me to bring the VR kit like I did last year. It’s an old HTC Vive I lucked into for cheap from a friend who didn’t have space to really use it once he’d moved. I run things through SteamVR.
Had to bring the whole desktop but it was worth while - my brother and mum get a kick out of Beatsaber, my dad and cousin were all about The Lab’s archery game, Longbow. Nothing else was played on it, but those two are enough. Kinda like a little side-room arcade.
Of course you can’t really play with each other, not with my one headset and PC but someone playing draws a small crowd so it’s entertaining for all.
I wouldn’t really recommend anyone to get VR at this point unless they’re super into that kinda thing as the ecosystem of games is pretty weak for the price and setup, and it doesn’t seem to be developing very fast.
However, it was a real joy to have at Christmas. Even my very aged grandpa shot a few arrows and had a marvel at it.
Otherwise, I’ll always play a game or two of FIFA on the Xbox with my brother for old times sake!
Do you mount the lightboxes when you bring it with you? Mine has been languishing in a corner for a year because I have high ceilings in my current apartment and don’t feel like going through the trouble to mount them
I don’t. I don’t at home either. I’m sure it’s terrible practice and I’m courting disaster but just standing them there on the shelves honestly does the trick. They’re quite forgiving with the view angle it seems.
Never heard of it. Is it a story heavy game? My Steam account says it’s similar to Hollow Knight and Ace Attorney, which seems like two completely different games.
I suppose you could say it’s story heavy since what you’re doing is piecing together what happened on the ship. The story is that you’re a insurance investigator and have to find out what happened to every person that was on the Obra Dinn. It’s a great game. If it matters, it’s a Lucas Pope game, the guy who made Papers Please.
I picked up En Garde recently because I absolutely adore the tone, setting and swashbuckling duelist vibe.
It’s a little flat for me, I don’t feel like it has achieved the character fantasy of being a swashbuckler in the mechanics, instead I’m basically kicking boxes into people and stabbing them again and again.
For less than $5 CAD, I picked up Maiden & Spell, an excessively cute sidescrolling shooter a la R-Type, except it’s a levelless boss rush with Story and Versus modes. It’s got a very Touhou aesthetic (i.e. rather than spaceships or dragons or something, everyone is cute girls).
Story mode is basically a Touhou boss rush, where your character fights 4 monster girls and 2 out of the other 3 human girls, with no level in-between, it’s just bosses. There’s a threadbare but acceptable story linking them, with each playable character giving a different perspective on the same story, and then there being an epilogue chapter and a bonus extra boss. Story mode has 4 difficulties, the easiest of which is called Cute Mode and is basically unloseable, so even if you’ve never played a game like this, you can give it a go.
Versus mode is basically a 1v1 fighting game. You and one friend each pick one of the 8 girls and do bullet hells at each other until you see who wins. It’s not complex, but it is kind of tactically deep.
The same author is currently working on a sequel, Rabbit & Steel, a very similar game except rather than a versus battler, it’s a coop roguelike inspired by MMO raid mechanics. A sneak-peek demo with online multiplayer is available, and it’s really fun!
I have three games on the go at the moment. Gotta enjoy those few weeks off from university, when I actually have some time.
Empyrion: playing this with my partner. This really feels like a game that could be amazing if the devs gave it a bit of polish, cleaned up the bugs, and updated the in-game information with the current game mechanics. There’s something deeply frustrating about not knowing how to do something, and every post on Steam community and Reddit has a different answer, and very few of those answers are correct in the current version of the game. It’s a shame, because I’m really loving the actual gameplay. I spent most of today rebuilding my ship: suffice to say, the NPC faction that blasted holes in the previous version of the ship are going to rue the day they blasted holes in my ship. I have shields and a lot more guns. 😈
Earthlock: still enjoying this. Delightful RPG in the style of 90s Final Fantasy games. The storyline isn’t wowing me. It’s fine, very standard fantasy, but it doesn’t stand out as anything really amazing. But it’s a nice, easy-playing game with a lot of nice elements. It’s cute, the gameplay mechanics are interesting, and the puzzles are just the right balance between too easy and too hard. And I can plant trees that, for some reason, spawn frogs around them. I have no idea why, but I’m not complaining. 🐸
Maneater: I really had no idea how much I needed this game in my life until I started playing it. It’s been a rough couple of months, and something about being a shark on a quest for vengeance is incredibly cathartic. Those people in that fancy yacht totally had it coming. My glee definitely did escalate once I moved into an area with lots of rich people. More golf courses should have electric sharks sliding through them, chomping on the golfers. 🦈
The issue with Epic isn’t as bad as people imply, but it’s very real. They produced an incredibly shoddy launcher and store, frequently engage in anticompetitive practices like exclusives, and are happy to frequently update their launcher with new unhelpful bullshit without addressing its core problems.
Me, I’m not upset that Epic exists, even as a Steam user I would not like to deal with them as a true monopoly. But, they give me zero reason to use the store.
The multi-billionaire owner with the backing of the Chinese government is claiming that he’s the underdog against a popular company/piece of software/GabeN. He’s made some poor choices interacting with the community.
Yes, it’s probably nice for a publisher to have a guaranteed income, which is why they sell exclusivity. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth, so I choose not to support it.
The rest about the launcher being bad sounds unhinged to me, but some people are really into that.
They bought Rocket League and actively made it worse.
The multi-billionaire owner with the backing of the Chinese government
Who cares about the backing if it has no effect on anything? I’m more concerned about Valve having a separate Steam client for China, censoring their games specifically for China and even reportedly banning for bringing up Winnie the Pooh.
Most investments aren’t to gain influence but to profit. At this time, there is no sign of Epic doing anything that could be explained by the alleged influence of the Chinese government, and as the majority owner, Tim Sweeney has the final say anyway.
I never said it was not for profit. I said you invest to gain influence, which is true by fact, not an opinion. If I buy a significant number of shares in a company, I do so because I want more than money; I want influence on decision-making. I do not think the Chinese government is only interested in monetary gains; do you think that’s their only goal?
And again, do you believe a country/government able to indoctrinate any business that wants a share of their market, like the Steam example, is only invested for monetary gains and nothing else?
Tim Sweeney can do and decide many things, but opposing the Chinese government is certainly not one. And I don’t know how you imagine influence, but having 40% of a company is something I call influence, wouldn’t you? Even if they can’t tell him how to run the business, he sure as hell will do nothing that could worsen the relationship between him and his biggest investor, aka Tencent. And who is behind Tencent? The Chinese government.
It’s all in the realm of “what if”. Sure, it could attempt this or that, but it hasn’t, nor is there any guarantee that it would fly. That just brings me back to the original point of when a company that is not partially owned by the Chinese actively works to please the Chinese government to further their business interest but I don’t see much of that with Epic. If you look at some of the other companies in which Tencent has a large stake, like Dontnod, there’s absolutely no sign of the Chinese agenda in the games either.
Yes, and you are entitled to your own opinion, but that does not change the facts. No, the influence is not “what if it is there” – it is there, plain and simple. That’s not up for discussion. It’s public knowledge that Tencent owns 40%, and Tencent is a government-controlled entity. It does not matter if they “abuse/use” it actively or not. It sounds like, in your mind, influence is only relevant when you use it actively, which is not true.
They’re also just plain unethical. There’s never been a government as insidious as the CCP in exploiting vulnerable foreign nations like South Africa or South East Asia thru incentives that are basically just a debt trap.
I don’t disagree with everything you said here but come on, Steam is basically a privately owned PC games store monopoly that has now been going on for 25 years. Since it’s not public we can’t really know for sure but there’s a very real possibility that Epic is the underdog here
Epic doesn’t make nearly as much money from Fortnite’s players as steam makes from their users though. Same for UE royalties. I don’t think there’s a single UE license that has a 30% rev share (which is what you get on steam if you don’t have big AAA sales). Hell, I don’t even think there’s one at 10%.
Steam doesn’t have anti competitive behavior yet. Gabe has made some bad decisions in the past (may I remind you that he greenlit Bethesda’s paid mods idea ?) but he does seem to generally put the users first. But what happens after him ? Imo the company will go public at some point, and it’s pretty much downhill from here
Horse armor was a dlc, not a mod (well, there were also joke mods), and it was for oblivion. They tested the paid mods on Skyrim back in 2015 (Bethesda is apparently having another try right now, although it looks like valve is out of the picture this time). Officially implemented on the steam workshop and all, and obviously valve was supposed to get a cut out of every sale which is probably why they were A-OK with it
Steam somehow prevents publishers from selling games at a cheaper price in competitors’ stores, even if their cut from the store is lower. That is extremely anti-competitive and has to be illegal.
If you sign up to use Steam to distribute your game then one of the things you agree to is to make it available on Steam at the same price you offer anywhere else. This protects Steam’s business and ensures that Steam customers aren’t disadvantaged.
However, it also applies even if the alternative channels don’t make use of Steam directly (e.g selling on Epic). This is where the Wolfire Games lawsuit comes in. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
It always seemed like “Baby’s first GTA” to me, but I think the Spyro the Dragon series might scratch that same itch. Especially the second and third games on the PS1.
I personally don’t give a shit about whichever store I use for gaming because I have no loyalty to Steam like a lot of the people in this thread. It’s just a store and launcher. I wish people would get a grip.
I buy games where it’s cheapest, whether that’s GoG, Steam or Epic or anywhere else. I use the wishlist functions to make sure I can price compare on sales etc.
After finishing The Last Of Us 2, I spent a lot of energy being sad about all the people in my life who don’t play games. They’ll never have that experience, and I found that somewhat upsetting. There’s no other way to live that story, and I wish l could give it to just everyone, and have them actually play and enjoy it.
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