I think this is very likely the reason yea.

I’m also now finding out that they had to censor the coverart of the switch 2 edition a few weeks ago as well which I was unaware of. If it turns out they knew for awhile that it would be censored, and just chose not to tell anyone that is going to permanently damper my opinion of their studio. Like it’s one thing to be like “This was forced upon us last minute so we threw a solution together” it’s a whole different situation of knowing that it was going to happen, then refusing to tell the consumers about it since you knew it would lower sales.

Along with that, we asked for comment from AdHoc concerning the decision to censor Dispatch’s Deluxe Edition artwork on the Nintendo eShop as compared to the PC/PS5 release, and if that indicated any censorship in the game itself. We were told that “unfortunately, the studio cannot comment on the topic at this time.” Along with that, it was said that if AdHoc is able to discuss the matter down the road, their comment would be shared with us.

It sounds to me like they knew this change was going to be required at that point, but didn’t want to publicly announce that, which puts a pretty bad taste in my mouth about the intent of the studio.

This is likely it.

There is also the rumor that this wasn’t a choice by Nintendo, but a choice of the dev’s so they didn’t have to have two separate editions to be able to sell in Japan(like they already do for the playstation edition). If that’s the case this makes it even worse IMO since it wasn’t like a last minute “BTW this is a thing” they had plenty of time to tell buyers that the product was altered

The fact that they allow Resident Evil Village of all games on the Switch but don’t allow this animated nudity scene is insane to me. RE Village was one of the most graphic games I have ever seen.

edit: I Just realized Cyberpunk 2077 was released on it no censorship. How did dispatch get censored but that was allowed through lmao

Off the top of my head, the biggest one I can think of that had potential was Rumbleverse, which was an epic exclusive and got shut down. That one had a lot of potential just lacked visibility. just they didn’t get the player base.

But doing a quick google search also gave me quite a few more, such as Gigantic, which was a third-person hero shooter that used its own exclusive launcher along with the Windows Store.

There’s the Darwin Project, which launched as an Xbox Game Pass and did eventually go to Steam. However, by the time it hit Steam, the damage was done. They had lost all momentum.

There is Rocket Arena, which was an Origin Epics game title that eventually went free to play and then closed down later.

There was quite a few MMO-style live service games, but those have tentative life spans anyway, So I don’t think that it would be fully fair to list those.

There was Knockout City, which was exclusive to Origin and consoles and also had a lot of streamer support, and did eventually come to Steam(albeit mostly for their cdn system as stated by one of the devs of it)

Those are just a handful of games from a Google search, the reoccurring trait across all of them which was they were decent games that people enjoyed playing. They just lacked the user base. And by the time they made it to Steam(if they made it to Steam), it was already too late and they had already lost momentum.

It’s likely that if those games had just been released day one on Steam that they would have had the momentum required to continue going. But instead they intentionally excluded the Steam user base usually due to some form of exclusivity deal.

yea the only way I can see confidence being stored as a string would be if the key was meant for a GUI management interface that didn’t hardcode possible values(think for private investors or untrained engineers for sugar/cosmetic reasons). In an actual system this would almost always be a number or boolean not a string.

Being said, its entierly possible that it’s also using an LLM for processing the result, which would mean they could have something like “if its rated X or higher” do Y type deal, where the LLM would then process the string and then respond whether it is or not, but that would be so inefficient. I would hope that they wouldn’t layer like that.

yea looking into it, the steamworks policy doesn’t mention price parity outside of product keys via steam being sold on other storefronts, being said it does look like steam has submitted to the courts evidence of them communicating via email threatening studios that if they actually went through with it, that steam would just choose not to sell their game at all, this was uncovered during deposition during the Wolfire & Dark Catt’s U.S. antitrust lawsuit against Valve. They went on record admitting to the email and explaining that the steam key page was meant to be for all products as a whole. It sounds like it’s a situation where on paper they have it one way, but in practice it’s meant to be the other.

That would cause compliance issues on steam though publisher wise. They would need the title to be off steam since one of steams publisher terms is that the sale price of an item must be at least equal to the lowest price available on other platforms. Meaning that if you have a deal like described there, steam would be the higher price and it would violate their publisher terms.

edit: looking into this it looks like it might only be for steam keys, so actually they may be in the clear here.

I’ve said this in the past but I think it’s worth restating. I’m amazed that EGS is willing to even front the cost of these free games. Like I would expect some form of arbitrary restriction like requiring periodic actual money purchase to be eligible. They have posted income reports that state the free program just isn’t working. Sure it’s increasing numbers, but that isn’t very helpful when your revenue is still decreasing ontop of the cost of the program. I mean it does help that its a flat cost and not a cost per install for them, but still.

for perspective: my last purchase was void train in super early stages of the game (2021 I think?) and prior to that was satisfactory somewhere around 2018 or 19. Meanwhile I have collected a lot of decent games from the program. And I’m one of the better cases. I have /tons/ of friends who have zero intention of ever actually buying anything on the shop, they only use it as a log in, claim the weekly freebie, log out or play the freebie game. Heck, there are programs that are dedicated exclusivley to log in as you, and claim the weekly freebies so you never even have to log onto the storefront. It isn’t a sustainable model.

I feel like they would be better off forcing an annual payment history check on the platform, something stupid small like “if total paid is > 5$” or something cheap, or even like how steam does it where once you purchase something once everything unlocks. From a financial/business mindset, I don’t get their intent on the current program. It only encourages people to grab games and never actually spend money on the sinkhole.

Even if this does end up being a good thing, it’s too far too late. Considering that they’ve been without a maintainer for over two years now, I jumped ship.

Same TBF, I don’t really care if AI was used as long as it is an enjoyable game and the usage of it doesn’t contrast from the game itself.

Being said, most the time when generative AI is used, it comes out sloppy and unenjoyable so if there is the genAI flag on the store page I will definitely give it a more thorough once over.

Procedural or structural AI though I don’t even bat an eye on. It’s whatever at that point we have used tools like that for years anyway and it’s never been a problem.

I had this happen with the switch originally. Pre-ordered the lets go pikachu&eevee switch, they ended up receiving far less than the company expected. Employees were the first on the chopping block since they worked there. Absolute bullshit.

They did end up getting me one, I had first pick from the next shipment, but it made my blood boil.

It didn’t really mean much to have a confirmed next shipment, as I worked in the department selling them, and fully intended to go on an early lunch to buy one that shipment anyway since they can’t dictate what I did off the clock.

yea fair, although some countries get super iffy about it. That was a big reason Overwatch ended up swapping to a rolling store with OW2 instead of keeping the loot box system, and that was a first party MTX system.

I definitely see your concept as plausible. However I think that amount they raise it by would need to be pretty substantial for it to be worth the risk of the studio/developer bailing on steam as a whole.

finetuning the lemonade stand analogy, both stands would need to be the same price, as the busy street has a sale price restriction for alternative stands. The lemonade vendor would need to decide whether it was worth losing the busy street as a whole in order to use the dark alley in order to keep the lower 1$ price

Developers and studios would need to be willing to leave steam (whos market share is estimated to be 75-80% of the PC third party gaming market) and either make their own(costs money + no userbase) or go to the next big thing which would likely be epic (who is at an appoximate 15% game share despite having a 12% cut vs 30 and releasing weekly free games)

My money is on the devs just raising their price to match steams new price and also allowing both markets to exist.

note: The percentages I gave are actually on the lower end by the way from the numbers I found. I saw some sites quoting steam to be in the 90’s for market share in third party PC gaming.

Without a doubt yes. They already do for the most part. Steam sales are the goal of the industry, thats why epic is having to go to the lengths that it is to try (and fail) to get customers.

steam already:

• restricts sale prices off platform
• limits what a publisher/dev can have as a discount price
• limits when a publisher/dev can change their price
• restricts access to free keys for games
• dictates the standard for revenue sharing
• forces steam to always be at least equal to the cheapest price around
• restricts putting an item on sale outside of the platform unless there is a planned sale on the steam page in the near future

Like I can say for certainty yes, due to even a handful of these restrictions, if steam decided to unilaterally apply an additional base fee of x% of the game cost (which they can do), devs would be forced to either abandon steam (again the largest PC gaming market out there) or raise every other storefront price.

There will be other options yes, but it would be like opening a lemonade stand in a dark alley vs at a busy crosswalk. Steam would need to raise the price significantly in order to convince a studio is who trying to make a profit to jump ship.

A literal monopoly is defined as that yea, but the definition used in legal would be a company with significant and durable market power and has the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

In the cases that were being used as an example, they were already a monopoly going into the case due to their market standing, however at the end of the case it was also determined they were in violation of anti-trust laws as well.

those two things are unrelated. In the US you can be a monopoly without being the only source. You only violate anti-trust when you use that position for your own gain via anti-competitive practices. I.E the company could still be a monopoly without violating any laws, like how steam does.

it depends on your definition of monopoly. For example the US FTC classifies a monopoly as a company with significant and durable market power with the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

Steam would definitely meet that criteria, if you aren’t on steam your game is very unlikely to go anywhere. Can it? for sure but it’s significantly less likely to be successful, and steam basically sets the standard for what should be on a storefront and pricing for deals.

Being said, the act of being a monopoly in the eyes of the FTC isn’t a bad thing either, as long as the position isn’t being abused, which Steam currently is not.

I’m surprised that fortnite was willing to front the liability of allowing third party micro-transactions. Especially gatcha or gambling mechanics based ones. That could get fortnite as a whole banned in a few countries.

Fortnites rating is Teen and their target demographic is mostly minors. Some countries have pretty big laws on allowing gambling mechanics with minors.

I would love this as well. I think we should start with must be able to self host servers or use p2p servers though. You can have server software without it being open sourced, and I think that licensing wise it will be easier to pass a p2p requirement than a full open source requirement.

I’ll be interested as well, but I don’t think that it is a bad thing so to speak. Both CD PROJEKT and Michal have high values when it comes to DRM-Free and open gaming. Gog is mostly supported by it’s backers and game revenue, I don’t think that will change. I don’t see the co-founder who created both the studio and the storefront performing a pump and dump on GoG. If anything we may end up seeing a more heavy push into DRM free areas now that it’s detached from the game studio. Additionally CD Projekt’s reason seems fully valid. It makes sense they would rather focus more on making games than distributing. Distributing games is no easy task, let alone maintaining an entire storefront that most of the corporate world dislikes due to the core principles of the storefront (I.E the push towards support and DRM-Free).

It could be bad but, I’m not going to be super concerned until actual evidence ends up on the ground for it.

do you preorder games?

Nowadays? Not a chance. Preorders nowadays seem to be more of a incentive to allow a studio to just not have a decent final product because people have already bought in.

What about Early Access Games?

If I really like the concept, yes.

Do you feel differently about Early Access vs traditional preordering?

Early access is not pre-ordering, and as such is treated extremely differently. Preordering tells me that the product will be finished on release, EA means that it’s going to need a lot of work for a finished product.

If you are open to the idea in specific circumstances, what are those?

I am extremly open to EA as it helps studios develop a product that otherwise may not be able to be created. Actual preordering is a strict closed door, there is very little reason in the digital world we live in to preorder a game.

How do you decide if a game qualifies?

I more likely will buy an early access game if I can open the page and not see:

• Major blockers:
  • Lack of Linux support or compatibility
  • Reviews talking about the game being dead
  • Reviews talking about how the developer ignores the community
  • Update history either showing no changes or minor changes stretching back for a few months(the longer the gap the less likely I am to support the studio)
  • Opening the developer page and seeing they are actively working on a different game. (this is an instant deal breaker)
• Minor Blockers
  • Developer responses in community pages saying “for support go to external site” usually discord. If you don’t want to support your game on the storefront, don’t use the storefront.
  • Update logs saying that they are actively working on DLC for their early access game. (free DLC gets a partial pass… but paid DLC for an Early Access game is a huge red flag for me)
  • No developer interactions in the community forums or an un-moderated community forum.
  • Toxic community in discussion forums or support channels (I understand this is out of the devs control at times but it still dissuades me from wanting to spend money on the games)

You are 1000% correct. I’ve been yelled at or have witnessed a few times people making a huge stink but clearly can’t differentiate between the types of “ai” to even know what they are complaining about.

They just know “AI = Bad” so they get their pitchforks out.

ah shoot yea thats true, I forgot about the BS that is “salary exempt”

Where the heck is black ops 7 on this. Like yea it sold but holy cow the amount of complaints on it.

I just played it, it was super cool concept! I died due to cold but, the enviroment felt really good. I spent most of the time just aimlessly wandering. My only complaint was that the game bogged itself down when toggling the lantern on and off but thats probally an issue on my end! Tell them well done for me 😸

Honestly, the only one I’m really looking at is Ranch 7 because it’s down to like 2.50, none of the other ones really look all that attractive, to be honest.

Kicking myself for buying Icarus when it was $20 because it’s now 3.50

I wonder why companies do this? does it actually make it get done faster? Last I knew most workers were only efficient at their job for like the first 5 or 6 hours if that, spending an extra 8 ontop of it sounds like a waste of salary.

Silk Song had x33 beat by almost triple the max player count. the fact that it didn’t get the inde title and they gave it to X33 is criminal. Silk Song beat it on price and player count and arguably story.

as an ammendum to this comment edit, catfriend edited the post linked and added this to the end

Edit: Regarding @nel0x , they did not have any history with the Syncthing (Android) project nor an expressive public profile when they applied to take over the Google Play Store entry in Feb 2025. I accepted this and transferred - believing in good will and we agreed on their task to be publishing what was on my repository to Google Play after their review. If they now desire to make their own app, there is, unfortunately no way to clean up the confusion caused if it is called the same other than kindly asking them to rename it.

Firmly agree, I think their primary issue is it’s hard to find a game that they refuse that would be a decent game to back that type of cause. This is just due to the nature of the games that get rejected on Steam. They’re the controversial leaning style games.

This one in particular for sure isn’t a good choice, because of the underage controversy but, all of these style games are also going to have a pretty vocal and not so small group against this type of effort.

I have to disagree to be honest. Not because I think that they should allow a naked guy with a young girl(gross), but because in the time that it took for steam to review the game and give a verdict, they had already changed it on their own to be a different model.

For them to refuse re-submission of the game is pretty dumb, considering that the offending content(if that is what it was) had already been fixed in the release build and steam was operating under old information.

If they haden’t already changed it for the release candidate I would be fully on board, but clearly they saw wrong in it as well which was why they had changed it prior to steams decision.

Steam forced an early release build of the game way earlier than they normally asked for, which meant it was exactly that, a pre-release build, meaning it had not gone through the proper channels for vetting or checking to make sure that what they wanted to publish was a final product. Then when requested for a review of the actual final build, steam refused. This combined with the fact that the only storefront that blocked the release was steam, I definitely think steam is the bad guy here.

BEING SAID, this might not be the reason anyway, reading the struggles of this games development process, steam had already posted concern about the live action portions of the game, so I’m expecting it might have been a combination of the nudity aspect of the game (even if not intended to arouse) and the live action portions. I assume steam was already looking for a reason to block this release, and when they were given one they just went with it.

omg yes, I loved when games gave a replay stories or replay core concepts section of the menu, it’s not that hard to add but it lets you recap as well!

unpausable cutscenes. Nothing bugs me more than getting interrupted in the middle of a cutscene and not being able to press escape to pause the cutscene. You’re forced to try to split your attention between what interrupted you and the cutscene or restart and see the cutscene from the beginning again.

Extra annoyance points if escape immediately skips the cutscene without any indication it’s going to.

I saw a lot of Silksong and peak; BF6, blue prince, nightrein and there was a passing glance at split fiction I also had 1 creator I follow play death stranding 2 and KD2 one just started e33 last week so I been watching that. The rest fell out of my circle of 40 or 50 streamers.

Note: I technically saw at least 4 people playing silent hill F but didn’t count it as I never saw anyone stream it that wasn’t sponsored so I didn’t feel it was a good representation if it

I decided to go through and mark what I didn’t see

• Dk bomanza (surprisingly as many were Nintendo fans)
• .Indiana jones
• ghost of yotai (surprising because I watch a few souls streamers)
• hades 2
• ninja gaiden 4
• sinobi art of vengence
• Lego voyagers
• sonic racing
• all the fighter category
• all the vr category
• abaolum
• all the mobile games (makes sense)
• ff14 dawntrail
• avowed
• f1 25
• tempest rising
• ff tactics (probally cause port)
• two point museum
• all the impact category

So looking back, I guess I did see a few of them more than I thought I had, but there was still a good chunk that just never appeared on the creators I followed.

ooo thats a cool website. Just for the funnies I just threw the top 35 (as shown by fediverse observer) into it.

the nominations for most things this year was fairly disappointing. I hadent heard of any of the events, and the content creator one I didn’t watch and only knew of one by name,

I pegged myself as a fairly casual gamer and I do a lot of stream watching but, a good chunk of the games nominated I had never seen or never saw anyone streaming, many I had never heard of. It was surprising since most of my entertainment is via watching people play games or by gaming myself.

My only thing with this is the claim is a glass cannon if its true. If no company resources were given out in this ordeal, if I was one of the 40 employees involved I would be leaking the forum messages publicly to show how there wasn’t any inside information involved. Make the entire case fall apart because if it’s shown no public info was involved, the claim it wasn’t over unionization becomes harder to fight. But I guess that is a better situation for in a court scenario.

Personally, I don’t think either comparison is valid. These two items are nowhere near comparable to the original comment. With tennis if you don’t move, you can’t play. With the examples I gave above most of the game would remain available to the player, just in a single player or PvE environment. Survival RPG’s can easily be made either SP or PvE only, Dune actually came super close, they just decided to heavily limit the end game PvE compatible areas and locked the passage via a PvP area which is why I decided to just not get it.

BUT ignoring the false equivalence fallacy, if the player is willing to spend money on the game in the first place, it shouldn’t matter. Even more-so when the game is basically Ark Survival on Scorched Earth with a dune skin on it and a few additional mechanics added on. There was no decent reason that the game could not allow for a PvE only mode or at least the ability to self host your servers. They said they couldn’t do either under the excuse that they wanted the game to be an MMO(which arguably they failed to deliver on as well)

As for New World? As a person who played it from beta(which I do regret because its not my style game, I just really wanted to like it), New Worlds downfall wasn’t the dev’s trying to cater to everyone, it was the lack of a story/ambition to want to play. It was the same gameplay loop over and over with no drive to want to continue the story. This combined with the failure to have a decent “end game” (story line wise) at launch killed it’s userbase. They promoted a very heavily PvP based cooperative system and then massively fell through on the promises. This combined with the inconsistent servers and the boring game-play elements, made player retention extremely difficult. That’s not appealing to masses, that’s failing to deliver on promises and making a shit game.

And that’s completely fine. But by the developers choosing to go that route, they just outcast the people like me that will not buy that type of game.

Being said though, I find it difficult to understand why a studio would want to go that way. Like, I am the player. If I want to make the game easier on myself, then I should be able to. If I’m willing to spend money on your game, It doesn’t really matter how hard it is.

I get that if a game has an endgame that is heavily PvP based, that it might affect PvP by allowing a PvE only mode. But, to me, I don’t really care because, regardless of their decision, I wouldn’t be in that PvP area anyway. It’s just one outcome is I spend money on their game, and one outcome is I don’t.

Many games I can see them going this route on, such as Overwatch 2 or Dota, but survival RPG games, I don’t see the point of having that type of system for, And I definitely think they’re losing money by going that route.