I get that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a great game and I have no reason to dispute that, but its presence in any category this year leaves no chance for the rest, making the nominations pointless.
The visuals are really good but there are times when the game leaves no apparent clues as to where to go next. The path forward may be on a different floor, even if already visited and fully explored.
There’s also a point near the end when you see the door, but the interface to open it is hidden on the big location, again with no hints to where it is. In the original, the areas are comparably minimalistic, making it easier to notice.
Mirage seems to be doing a great job at being respectful to the culture but I hope for a major game that gets people to change their view of Islam as inherently militant or in any way inferior to Christianity.
Rocket League also dropped Mac support, which would be perfectly compatible with the store, so you can’t argue it was about Linux. The actual reason was the need to upgrade to DX11.
Payday 2 has no connection to Epic, but it’s common for developers to revisit and update games when releasing on a new platform. For example, the upcoming Steam port of THPS 1+2 even has a new developer behind it, and set to include achievements and potentially other perks.
There are also games like Rust that have dropped native Linux support without any ties to Epic.
Opposing it? EOS supports Linux, EAC works on the Deck, and Epic regularly invest in things like Lutris. Sure, there are no native Linux ports on the Epic store, but that’s not been the general direction of the industry either. Proton/Wine can still be used to run the games sold by Epic.
It’s very rare that those who hate Epic also hate Valve though, so it’s not about standing against a corporation. People just defend what they are used to and Epic disrupts that.
According to Wikipedia, Steam made over 3 billion in 2017, but they also earn from microtransactions primarily in Dota 2 and CS:GO, which continue to be some of the most played games on Steam.