The relative costs of computers, consoles and games themselves is significantly lower today than in the eighties.

Add Homeworld to “game successfully enshitified” ever growing list.

What if I do not have PlayStation account (I do not have PlayStation and never had)

How could they remove it loudly?

I stand corrected, while android dominates the world, in US iPhone share is indeed just above the half (55%). It is still not enough to call it monopoly, but it might have chance.

Any TBS game with save function (which is very common)

For one to use anti monopoly law, being monopoly is kind of important. If you are trying to lock in vendor while NOT being a (near) monopoly - it is not illegal per that law. There might be other regulations, that makes it illegal though, I am not a layer to know this fully. I am just conveying somebody else’s analysis who is a lawyer.

Not gonna happen. There is enough competition on the market for Apple to prove that they are not a monopoly. Most of the smartphones sold in US are not iPhones. It is like accusing BMW, that they sell their cars only with their part and their software.

Well, strategy games with large monitors with fine resolution is something I want to be able to play at at least 60FPS or higher.

That’s why I am buying only Nintendo consoles (and good PCs)

Most games appear on STEAM as well, some time (like 1 year) later. And they appear in much better shape with all patching and all.

Did he say it should be STEAM exclusive?

Yes, but absolutely no grind.

Not to be confused with John Conway’s the game of life. That one is fine, a classic.

I just wish we could dig in Factorio, maybe on different planets…

That’s user reviews, game news provided by game making companies. The storefront is a platform where those are posted. Storefront is a place where you search for product and having them in the storefront is very convenient and is something users want. But you are right, they should not be controlled and manipulated by storefront. And they are not in case of STEAM, for example. Storefronts should compete how good they can give this ecosystem to user, not how much games they can lock out from other stores. That, and the cost of games.

I spend noticeable amount of time choosing games, reading reviews, participating in forums, plus having convenient library is important too. Reading news, plans about games, updates… yes all of that is important to me and how well it is implemented matters.

Yes, and the game’s publisher has an exclusivity deal in place and the devs can’t turn around and decide to give their game to another publisher

This is not the exclusivity that I am talking about. Publishers as a rule still publish games through multiple channels. I am talking about exclusivity of the storefront. Not publishers’.

Imagine if all storefronts had only exclusive games. Then they would have nearly zero incentives to have a good storefronts that users like and instead just hunt for the best games. The users would not have a choice which storefront they like - the market is totally broken and not working in this case.

All other “exclusives” are simply companies selling games by themselves. Your example of Mojang (creator of Minecraft) only confirms that since Microsoft purchased Mojang. There is no exclusivity of Microsoft with … Microsoft.

Again, I do not understand your argument about devs paying rent, etc. Majority of games are not exclusives on Epic (or any other store, except if they sell it themselves). Thus, there must be a way to do so without being exclusives. And if you are talking about support in terms of investments and advancements - publishers do that. They did it forever for PC games, nothing was broken to fix it by exclusivity.

I do not understand this point. If market can not support the game, then there should be no such game. There are many publishers and venture capitalists that invest into game making and only like one of them (Epic) requires exclusivity on PC space.

OK, your choice is different than mine. You see how good to have a choice?

My biggest problem with Epic store is their push for exclusives. I understand exclusives on platforms (PS vs XBox) - those are physically different hardware and are closed platforms. But we are talking about PC games, it is the same platform. I want to chose the best product (best delivery system - STEAM or Epic Store, or whatever), and not being forced by the power of monopoly to use a particular launcher.

No, it was on sale.

It is like fishing, and catching fish are different things.

You do not pay, but Google does collect money one way or another. Regardless, it is their product, which is different from iPhone being a product.

Selling point is not the same as sales.

I also would point out that Google and Apple sells very different things. Apple does not sell iOS. It sells hardware to customers and the right to access users through this hardware to third parties (game makers). Google’s product to begin with is software (Operating System) on multiple phone platforms. Different laws and rules may apply there.

erases a canon lesbian relationship by changing one character into a man

Well, they did not say or admit that it was not them who leaked it.

/c/unexpectedFuturama

I give you case in counter-point: Xitter.

So this huge game with ton’s in game stuff you ignore because there is also a store where you can buy if you want to few armor pieces, which are not even necessarily better, just different?

Why? Why so much love for this game in particular?

Stardock games were like this.

Yes, flying into rotating station was hard!
This is another oldie which I warmly remember: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathtrack. For some reason I remember it as D-Track not as DeathTrack.

You would think that software companies could switch really easy.

Why would Covid delay game by that much after Covid?

Thank you for answering. But you can’t imaging how wild it sounds from pc gamer point of view, and double wild that this is called pro-consumer.

Do you still have to pay monthly fee on XBox to play any online game?

So, this system runs it fine? Good to know. I was worried that my computer would not be able to run it smoothly, but now no worries at all.

The only reason I have windows home computer is gaming. Otherwise I would prefer Mac. Things just work there. Windows in last few years improved significantly, but still is not there. In all years I was using Mac, I had zero problems. But even with windows 11 I sometimes have to fight things like “why my computer does not go to automatic sleep”