To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.
That depends. For GOG and EGS, yeah, those stores don’t want to sell Steam keys, they want to sell keys for their own platform. But other stores like Fanatical sell Steam keys, and I’m not exactly sure how those work.
My point is that devs can sell keys on their own and take 100% profit if they want, they just can’t undercut Steam. And that’s pretty common in retail, if you see a product in store, it’ll be a very similar price to buy direct. It turns out, retail stores don’t like providing marketing just to get undercut on your website or a competitor store.
Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform
Neither does EGS just because they take a lower cut and give away free games.
AFAIK, Steam isn’t doing anything differently than other retail stores. If EGS were in Valve’s position, you can bet they’d be way worse.
That’s a choice those devs made, not an exclusivity deal.
As for Borderlands 2, it looks like it was available on most consoles as well. It was released in 2012, which was before Steam even came to Linux, before the original GOG Galaxy, and way before EGS. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, The Witcher 1&2 were “exclusive” to Steam until ~2012 when GOG relaunched their website, so CD Project Red didn’t even bother selling their own games on their website. If they don’t, why would other devs?
I get it, I’m sad we don’t have good alternatives to Steam, but it’s not because of anything nefarious Valve is doing, it’s because their platform and policies are just better. I didn’t even have a Steam account until 2012 or so when they came to Linux, it just wasn’t necessary because everything I wanted to play was available elsewhere (e.g. direct from devs). These days I use Steam almost exclusively because they make playing on Linux so easy, not because I don’t have other options (I also play EGS and GOG games through Heroic, a community solution to support those stores on Linux because the stores themselves haven’t bothered).
The only exclusives AFAIK are Valve games (understandable) and games that don’t bother listing elsewhere. I also think Valve’s “no undercutting” policy is reasonable. They give you free keys to sell elsewhere if you choose, and you can have sales happen elsewhwre at a different time (or the same) vs Steam, the only requirement is that you don’t undercut Steam.
That’s very far from monopolistic behavior. Adding to that, Valve also invests heavily in their own platform, providing features like Steam Input, Proton/Steam OS, etc.
Epic, on the other hand, bribes users to come via free games, bribes devs via paid exclusivity, and hasn’t meaningfully invested in their platform, they’re still lightyears away from Steam, and even GOG is way better from a features standpoint.
Which is showing more monopolistic behavior? Epic, and it’s not even close. The only “monopolistic” behavior from Valve is being really popular, and I think they’ve earned that.
Should be feasible, many of my bills allow it. If there’s an issue w/ lag, they could always allow it only for wallet top-ups and people could use that.
But I think the issue is that if they accept these payment processors at all, they need to comply w/ their policies. Completely cutting them off could significantly hurt sales.
I thought it was great. Yeah, it doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s a solid Harry Potter-universe adventure game. It gets bonus points for being developed by a studio near where I live. My kids love HP and we enjoyed playing through it together, in fact, one of my kids made their own account and beat it before me.
The main opposition I see to it is being affiliated w/ JK Rowling, nothing bad about the game itself, other than features they wish it had.
credit - visa, MasterCard, discover, American Express (all ubiquitous)
debit - mostly mastercard, some are visa
Prepaid cards - mostly MasterCard and Visa, amex has one too
mobile Payments (Samsung, Apple, Google) - you pay using credit or debit; I’ll include PayPal here too
cash - doesn’t work online obviously, and some places don’t accept it or at least discourage it (e.g. many self checkouts, food trucks, smaller restaurants)
checks - like cash, but many stores don’t accept them at all
Some online places accept bank transfers, but that’s mostly for paying regular bills, not anonymous checkout.
There are some fringe ones like money orders (basically cash), cryptocurrencies (very rarely accepted), and Venmo (mostly just food trucks, fairs, and small restaurants).
Amex and Discover are ubiquitous too, at least in the US. I honestly don’t remember the last time I went somewhere that they weren’t accepted, but there was a couple weeks when Visa wasn’t accepted at a grocery store because I guess they were renegotiating their deal or something (local Kroger chain).
My Discover card has foreign transaction fees, so I don’t check when I leave the country, and I mostly use my Visa since it does waive those fees.
I’m guessing there’s legal pressure from some countries, and to stay in their good graces (i.e. ward off alternatives), they’re making these policies global.
Taler isn’t a general payment solution, it’s designed so that separate entities can have their own way to handle small transactions. For example, you attend a conference and deposit some cash into the event, and then you go and use those tokens to exhange for various stuff at the event, and the event organizers settle up with merchants after the event.
Rolling this out on a more global scale mea a you’d need some major institution, like a bank, to back the currency and handle settling up. AFAIK, this hasn’t happened anywhere and isn’t likely to happen because banks already have a system that works that requires far less effort: credit and debit cards.
We already have a solution here that has some market presence, and it’s cryptocurrency. Get some Monero and you can go buy stuff today without those transactions being public. The fees are minimal, transactions are fast, and merchants exist. The main issue is the negative public perception of cryptocurrencies, which is mostly due to speculation and bad actors running scams, but there are solid, proven currencies that can be useful as a cash alternative.
All those games you listed are violence centric, so I imagine the non-violent route isn’t as satisfying. I tried to finish Dishonored (not really an RPG) without violence, but most of abilities involve violence and getting caught just meant waiting for them to kill me instead of fighting back. The gameplay just isn’t optimized for it like something like Thief is.
There are games designed for non-violence where violence simply isn’t an option, such as Disco Elysium or WanderHome. Searching specifically for games without violence is probably a better option than finding games where nonviolence is an option, unless you’re specifically looking to find clever ways to play games non-traditionally.
Most games require killing the end boss to finish the game, how exactly would you play around that? Or do you mean don’t kill anyone who doesn’t try to kill you?
ve been to some, never spoken though… also, not DEFCON though.
Yeah, I’ve spoken at local JS and Go confs with several hundred to a couple thousand attendees (my sessions were small, like 30 people), and attended a couple others.
DEFCON is much larger, but looking at the schedule, it seems pretty similar, a mix of relatively entry level stuff and more advanced topics. So someone attending doesn’t say much other than that they’re interested in cyber security.
Its like getting a 2 year nursing assistant degrer and then acting as if you can safely perform a brain surgery.
Interesting. I haven’t watched enough of his stuff to know what claims he’s made.
various developers have been digging into his code
This just feels like bandwagoning. I’m a dev with tons of years of experience and I’m sure I could get some views of I jump on the train and pull up some sloppy code. But sloppy code doesn’t make something unreleasable, in fact, the browser or app you’re using to read this is guaranteed to have a ton of sloppy code.
I think the main explanation is that he’s not working on it actively. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not the one writing the code. Maybe he is, idk.
I’m merely pointing to the huge influx of reviews since the drama started on a game that claims to have been launched 7 years ago on Steam. My understanding is that the game has been stalled for years, so why would it get so many reviews now if it’s not review bombing?
I’m guessing that’s where the “review bombing” claim is coming from, not from games published by the publisher he was working with.
He said they had been review bombed, in the affirmative
He has a history of exaggerating and not doing proper research. I’m looking to understand why he said what he did, and my explanation makes sense to me. He probably saw a bunch on his game and a few on the publisher’s other games and jumped to conclusions, which is exactly what happened with SKG.
it’s getting really weird
Then I’ll clarify my motivations here. I hate the internet culture of jumping down someone’s throat the moment they make an unpopular statement. They go through their history and dig up random dirt, much of which is exaggerated or even blatant lies, just to smear them to ruin their reputation.
I absolutely hate that, and it contributes to the misinformation problems we have today. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard and embrace the concept of “innocent until proven guilty.”
So in cases like this where there are a lot of emotions, it’s especially important to look for innocent explanations before assuming guilt. YouTubers and streamers will absolutely jump on the bandwagon to get views, assuming one of the extremes because that gets views. We, as viewers, have the obligation to take a step back and look for motivations to suss out what is true from what’s likely sensationalized.
I’m providing an alternate perspective to hopefully encourage others to take that step back and consider that there may be more to the story. It costs me nothing other than some time (which I’m usually spending on the toilet, let’s be honest), and hopefully it helps preserve a little of what I love about the internet: open discourse where facts rule the day. That seems to be dying, so I do what I can to preserve it.
admittedly based on ignorance
Well yeah, I’m not going to claim something is true unless I can back it up, and when I can, I usually link that evidence. I want others to follow suit and actually back up their claims instead of regurgitating what someone else said just because it aligns with their opinions. Facts should rule the day, not feels, and that’s what I’m challenging here.
I don’t have a strong opinion WRT Pirate Software. I don’t watch his content, I don’t buy his games, and I don’t care what orgs he is involved with. I do care a lot about misinformation and brigading, and that seems to be happening in this case.
If you provide sources, I’m happy to review them so better informed. I’ve done that with other commenters, and I think that process has been helpful for everyone.