This seems really dumb. Yes, reuse your assets in the next game, but also make new ones. Then I get more variety, plus I get some of the nostalgia from the last game
That’s the thing though - bg3 isn’t praised because it’s good relative to the state of the industry. It’s a game that did everything right, not just comparatively but in general
Oh no, I totally agree with you that this is gross behavior - I just think your rule is too broad.
So we need more focused rules and mechanisms. I think disclosing anti-cheat on the store is a good mechanism, I think forcing them to provide previous releases is a good rule. That obviously doesn’t cover nearly enough, but in the current gaming environment I think it’s a good start
That’s a bit much… It’s just not possible to guarantee that as a developer
Software is a living thing, and anything useful is made up of layer after layer of ever shifting sand. We do our best, but we are all at the mercy of our dependencies. There are trade-offs, there are bugs we can do nothing about, and sometimes moving forward means dropping support for platforms that are no longer “cheap” enough to afford while also working on the game
I love this though. I also like the idea of requiring access to earlier builds.
These mitigate anti consumer practices - dropping support for a platform is more likely to be a technical trade-off or unintentional consequence though
Wozniak is probably the most famous example. He recognized the corrupting nature of money, decided he had enough, and stopped to live in comfort and occasionally work towards causes he finds important
Lots of people have done the same… But if they’re rich and still chasing after money? They’ll never stop
Good remakes are good, they must bring not only graphics, but game mechanics and balance, up to date. They must be better than the original in all aspects, or they lose out to nostalgia
Bad remakes are bad, and most remakes in this era are bad
installers for games are usually just a script that unzips the game and makes some shortcuts. Steam installs all your games in a standard way in a folder of your choice. You can straight up copy that folder to another computer. You can use another launcher and just play your games, there are already many that can read steam’s standardized format. I’ve done it multiple times to avoid redownloading my library
It depends how steam sunsets their DRM, but yes - obviously if a game has 3rd party DRM, that third party is in control. Steam could choose a user hostile way to sunset their own DRM, but they could release ways to deactivate it
DRM is bad, steam provides an easy way for developers to use steam DRM, and it’s generally less user hostile than most DRM. To me, this seems like harm reduction
Ultimately, it’s not up to steam what, if any, DRM a game uses. They manage their in house offering, but the developer doesn’t have to use it if they don’t want to
I think I read in the steam agreement itself - I could be wrong, but I generally have a source tagged to my knowledge, and the knowledge is tagged as a direct quote from the document
And yes, if a VC buys out steam I’d be horrified, but it’s structurally resistant to that. It’s largely employee owned and heavily employee managed, their handbook helped me understand the concept of how employee owned businesses could be the answer to many of society’s problems
That’s not what arbitration is. This doesn’t stop valve from reaching a settlement, it stops them from using fake privately funded bench trials
Binding arbitration means the results are legally binding, non-binding arbitration means a judge needs to approve the arbitration results before it’s final. Sometimes it’s with an off duty judge, sometimes anyone can be the arbiter
Regardless, on one side you have a repeat customer, on the other you have someone who will probably never be back - there’s a built in conflict of interest
For all we know, they’re literally just passing massive checks in a circle to one another to say “yes, it says right here in our bank records that we spent a combined $100,000,000”, meanwhile only 25% actually goes into the production, and they pocket the rest.
That would be illegal and easily discovered
But you could pay $10M to hire another company to do the sound mixing. They might spend $500k to do the work. You might also be the owner of that company, and the money ends up back in your pocket…And that’s not embezzlement or a kickback, because that’s what it’s called when poor people do it
Ideas have both quality and value, and they interconnect to make the backbone of interactive experiences
That’s it exactly. The way the ideas interconnect and the way they’re presented to the player is everything. That’s execution, that’s everything - the ideas are just what’s in your head