To address your first point. Yes it applies to other software, this initiative applies to games because the “buyer purchases a license to allow the seller to remove your purchase at some indefinite time later” practices have been most prevalent in gaming.
Extending the scope too far will bring in more opponents than allies and muddy the discussion. Getting a decisive answer here will inform laws on how other industries should be regulated in separate but parallel legislative processes.
Parliament will have 7 days after it closes before their planned summer recess. You think they will work that quickly to churn out a boilerplate debate?
Main reason for me is that I have bought humble bundles, donated to gamejams, and gotten keys off of legit and grey-market sites in the past in conjunction with buying directly from Steam. Those aren’t included in the Steam spend category.
Regarding your confusion and surprise, the person you replied to merely gave their reason why they bought it and supported a transphobe, and it was because this person’s sister requested that game specifically.
I know the question posed was mostly rhetorical in nature. But I’m not sure why you are questioning why someone is answering the question, and I’m not sure what kind of satisfactory answer you could get from anyone who had purchased the game (and supported a transphobe, yes, which I haven’t).
The rest of your comment is a legit response, but I’m only pushing back on the first sentence of your reply. Or even moving that sentence to the back of your comment to make it less charged. If someone’s going to answer a loaded question, let them, but get to the point about how misguided they are with their justification before you question the answer. That would likely make for a more constructive discussion. Unless you think that these answers are unhelpful in the first place, that we’re better off not hearing why people have done transphobic things with different intentions, and we should refuse to give them space to reflect, learn, then own up to their transgressions if they don’t come right out of the gate to apologize. Then sure, ignore what I said.
I think a lot of people are waiting for the first Civ7 expansion pack to be released, whenever that may be.
Civ 6 without R+F, GS feels like a completely different game. As an example, in vanilla you can expand anywhere right up to someone’s borders whereas with the expansion straying too far from your territory you could just lose it to influential pressure from neighbouring cities.
As the name suggests, a mod is “modifying” the game, in ways that the original creators never intended to support. That’s why out of very few exceptions (such as Paradox and Steam mods), there is not a centralized hub maintained by the creator to organize and apply mods. But since there are some similarities between certain games (such as the game engine they run on), sometimes there is a third party mod launcher/installer which simplifies things. Thunderstore is an example.
The process tends to be different for every game because every game is made differently. To boil the concept down, basically if there’s no official interface for custom functionality (such as a plugin system), then modders will usually “hack” this in themselves. Installing the mod often means replacing a game file with one that hooks into the game, to be able to load custom code and custom game resources.
Hey you bring up a good point. I consider it innovative because they are trying to develop a non-Microsoft owned IP story/lore behind the Stormgate characters, even if in terms of game mechanics they are trying to achieve “Starcraft 2 with a new coat of paint and business model”.
Beyond All Reason (open source with FOSS engine), Stormgate (proprietary but made by ex-SC2 devs) are separate attempts at what I would call innovating the RTS genre.
AoE2 DE by Microsoft is tried, true and super popular still but many aspects are still from the original game 20 years ago. AoE 4 seems to kind of be the attempt at improving the formula, seems okay.
The Starcraft 2 engine is amazing but now under Microsoft ownership, I was hopeful initially but it looks as though it will continue to be left to rot. If only they could give it a Halo makeover using the same engine that would be awesome.
Look, you will have a sizable contingent of people shelling out an additional $20 to $80 just to play a game a few days early, with little to no other benefits. Their impatience is capitalized on.