Very soon protesting the use of LLMs is like going to be like protesting the advent of the television. There is no stopping it. We should endeavour to ensure it is used ethically rather than becoming puritanical about its use.

It’s like they deliberately chose the most repulsive colour combinations possible. It’s so bad that it can’t have been a mistake. They took colour theory and then methodically did the exact opposite of it. Then they combined this with some of the ugliest character designs imaginable. I think the artists thought “ugly = unique and unique sells!” I can vomit a strawberry daiquiri onto a piece of paper and create a “unique” piece, but that doesn’t make it appealing and customers are certainly not going to buy it.

The most frustrating part of this for me was the overwhelming feedback before launch that they should have scrapped the designs and started again. Either they began focus testing FAR too late, or more likely, they ignored it. Either one was fatal. Then Marvel Rivals came along with attractive character designs (but arguably generic gameplay) and dominated in the market. Proving this had nothing to do with saturation. They just made a bad game and refuse to admit it.

What is the distinction for the player? Both Counter-Strike and Control were funded by Valve and Epic, respectively. Both ended up with exclusivity. To the player, what different do the intro logos make?

It sounds like you’re trying to win by technicality.

That’s obviously bad. My comment was in response to the comment above about exclusives.

Valve purchased the rights to Counter-Strike in 2000, transitioning it from a community-made mod to a retail product. Similarly, Day of Defeat, initially a third-party Half-Life modification, was acquired by Valve, leading to a standalone retail release in 2003. In the case of Dota, Valve hired the mod’s lead developer and secured the intellectual property rights, culminating in the release of Dota 2 in 2013. These games remain exclusive to Steam.

I don’t share your frustrations. Games like Control, Alan Wake 2, and Ooblets might never have been made without Epic’s funding. The Ooblets developer in particular stated that Epic’s funding was crucial for their survival. I think exclusivity is a very fair and normal thing to request when funding a game. Valve does it and people are fine with that.

I agree. Games feel like they’re designed by committee now (very much likes movies, in fact). I recall SkillUp’s criticism of Veilguard’s writing as, “every interaction feels like HR is in the room.” This nails so many design choices today. Safe and vanilla is boring. There are of course people who believe that nothing should ever be remotely challenging or offensive to anyone ever, but I just don’t think they represent the majority of gamers. Attempting to please them at the expense of the much larger player-base is clearly not working.

Howard has reportedly been championing procedurally generated content for years or perhaps decades. We saw echoes of this in Starfield. The result is quite expected: boring and vanilla. Especially when contrasted with Bethesda’s previously great storytelling with intricate characters and hand-crafted experiences. We see once again with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 how important that is. Yes, it’s time consuming and expensive, but it’s clearly loved by customers and critics.

Compounding this was Starfield’s mediocre writing. It took a clear and obvious dive from previous games. It felt incredibly safe. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it was AI generated.

I don’t think feature parity would entice anyone across. It would need to be much better than Steam to entice migration, and it’s hard to conceive how much work and money that would require.

Epic is the second largest online store by revenue, so you are objectively wrong by a wide margin. Users are spending a lot of money on the platform. Much of it goes to their flagship games like Fortnite. Similarly to how much of Steam’s revenue comes from their flagship games like Counter-Strike.

Does it? Lets envision the minimum viable product for a game store. You have a very basic web interface and you download games or installers from it. Something like itch.io, or similar to GOG. Is using Epic’s launcher better than just downloading the installers from a browser? I’d argue not, given the hastle of creating a new account, installing the launcher with all its spyware and using it, rather than the bare minimum of just downloading an installer, running it, and then running the game directly.

I support DRM free games too but I think you’re making a large assumption here that most people prefer that to one-click launcher install/updates/management.

Look at how other platforms have eaten into Steam’s control most successfully without resorting to anything too shady. Humble Bundle and Fanatical offer unique bundles with better deals. Itch.io works more closely with devs, esspecially smaller devs. GOG cut out a niche by specifically seeking out old games to licence or fix themselves, as well as by ensuring everything is DRM free.

I have seen no evidence of either Itch nor GOG eating Steam’s lunch. Quite the opposite. Steam continues to grow fast, while GOG is barely breaking even. I can’t find the financials for itch.io so I don’t know how well they’re doing.

Just to be clear, I would love for Epic to invest more into their launcher. I’m merely putting my product manager hat on and accepting that that is unlikely because the business case is bad.

And you think Epic implementing some or all of these would encourage Steam users to switch? Why would they? Steam already offers all of that.

Let’s remember they are already the second largest games store. Okay, let’s assume they try to compete with Steam on features. What do you think it would take to get users to switch?

I think the vast majority of users only use launchers to launch games. For that purpose, it does that perfectly fine. I suspect that even if Epic invested billions into bringing their store up to feature parity with Steam, users still wouldn’t switch. They’d need to be leaps and bounds better, and that’s hard to comprehend in terms of features and cost. I think they’re making the smart move sticking to their wheelhouse.

It “engaged” 1.5 million players. That includes EA Play and Game Pass, so actual sales are even lower.

It’s the most efficient card on the market in terms of watts per frame. The 4080 is close behind though.

That gives me a little hope but who hired them and allowed that writing to remain in the game? Are they fired too?

I agree. The decision to a) task said writers with the project, and b) allow said writing to make it into the game is unforgivable. Players will put up with almost anything with a Dragon Age title, but not bad writing. Any management with that level of incompetence will do it again.

I was lucky to snag a PNY 5080 but this looks like the tightest launch since the 3080. Maybe worse. Supply chain analysis suggests we’re going to see a lot more stock in the coming months so no one should feel left out.

Director and Executive Producer Jonathan Nolan was also heavily involved in Westworld, which had exactly one good season before it shit itself to death. Also this is Amazon Studios which produced both Rings of Power and Wheel of Time. Executive Producer James Altman, has one other credit: Associate Producer for Super Troopers 2. In fact most of the writers and producers have poor resumes.

I’m hopeful but not naive.

I grow so tired of culture war stupidity. Who upvoted this drivel?

I agree that the distribution should be adjusted.

Thanks man, it did suck :( We still have a strained relationship many years later.

Industry figures indicate employment in IT is still above pre-covid levels. Companies over-hired and are normalising. We’re not seeing this labour activity in most other sectors. There’s no reason to panic.

If you decide to continue to grow your wealth from there, you’re essentially not just making money for yourself, but so others can’t have it.

This is a zero-sum fallacy. The size of the economy isn’t fixed. It continues to grow each year. The hyper productive people you’re referring to are disproportionately responsible for that growth, and they are disproportionately the recipients of that growth. My father was one of those people. Working 18 hours every day for 30 years. It led to a divorce and our family falling apart, but fuck did he generate a lot of economic value for the world, his company, and himself. He didn’t steal it from you. He created it.

I think the number one rule of space exploration is “players must be able to fly wherever the fuck they want in their spaceship.” Their engine couldn’t handle that so they were hobbled from day one. All the design decisions were working back from that catastrophic mistake. They should have used Unreal or built a new engine or radically overhauled Gamebryo.

It’s been great watching the world re-learn why unions are important.