I still hear about them and buy from them, but I buy a lot less because:
They were bought by IGN, so they’re a for profit group now
Changed Choice to offer major AAAs more often instead of being focused on indies
They set slider for minimum percent to Humble in bundles to 15% (I used to give about 20-30% to Humble, now I do 15% as a form of minor protest)
Bundles often come with coupons for the store instead of just being bundles of games, and the $1 tier is either complete trash or non-existent
And so on. Basically, they’ve gotten more corporate, so they’re less unique vs the competition. In fact, I’ve picked up more bundles from Fanatical than Humble in the last couple years because I no longer feel a preference for Humble, and now just go where the deals are.
I’m guessing some or all of that is why the sources you follow don’t mention it as much. It’s still very much a thing though.
I don’t think I have any of them, but I’ll likely get a Zachtronics game (not sure which) and maybe Human Resource Machine. Those have been on my wishlist for a while, but I haven’t seen a lot of these so there are probably a bunch of other gems.
Maybe, but I feel like any quality gains would be minimal since people are already passionate about their roles (else why would those roles be so desired?). Then again, the Valve model really works, so it really depends on whether unions can change company culture, or if they’ll just secure better working hours and pay. The culture is the problem, and I’m not convinced a union can fix that.
Yup, Intel is struggling to enter the market, and they’ve been building similar chips for years. This just isn’t an area for someone like Valve to break into.
Maybe they could make a good cooler design or something, but they’re going to be using off the shelf chips, or maybe slightly altered custom chips like they did with the Steam Deck.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. The reason wages are low is because the games industry attracts a lot of talent, so companies can get good talent for less. So I don’t expect unionizing to help in terms of quality of work produced, but it should improve wages and working conditions.
I don’t really care about EGS, I’m more concerned about Unreal Engine. If they keep dumping money into EGS exclusives and whatnot, it could impact UE investment, which would be bad for the industry.
So they’d tell their parents to fill up at Shell instead of Chevron or whatever. It’s not like kids are going to want more fossil fuels, they’ll just want to shop at the cool brand instead of the less cool brand.
Yeah, I’m a parent and I take my kids with me to the gas pump quite often. We shop at Costco and fill up before or after. I honestly don’t see an issue at all, my kids know gas pollutes (I tell them frequently even though they’re in elementary school), and they know why I continue to buy gas (EVs are too expensive, inconvenient for longer trips, and have a fire hazard).
So no, I don’t have a problem with fossil fuels being a thing in games. I do have a problem with advertisements in games generally, and ads marketed to kids specifically. So if this was an ad for a socially acceptable business (take your pick), I’d still be opposed. Keep that nonsense away from my kids.