There’s a reason for the early rise in popularity of independent gaming reviewers and it isn’t the hard-hitting, honest quality of mainstream entertainment journalism at the time. With the advent of influencers though, it feels like everyone is just regurgitating the same pre-approved, publisher-friendly nonsense. I’m sure there are exceptions, but it feels more difficult today to find an honest review when every random internet personality is signing sponsorship contracts that require them to praise the game every 20 minutes.
Cloud saves work fine between Linux PCs, but the devs seem to have misconfigured the save path for Steam cloud saves integration on Windows. That’s why it doesn’t work. That’s on the devs, not the Steam client. Apparently they were working on a fix since about half a year ago, maybe they finally released that fix now?
I don’t doubt that Steam being first to market is the biggest reason for their success, but you make it sound as if there’s some alternative store that is better for the consumer in some way. What’s the alternative? I have yet to see any other store/launcher come close to Steam in terms of features, even more so when it comes to Linux support, which Valve have turned into a viable gaming OS pretty much by themselves. In the end, even exclusivity and drastically lower fees for publishers didn’t make EGS the success that Tim Sweeney wishes it was and I think at that point being first to market can’t be the only explanation. They have to be doing something right.
Honestly, I have not. That might be because I haven’t clicked on that notifications button since I bought the thing. I’d be way more worried about a smartphone.