The thing with products like games, textbooks, movies etc is that a large part of the cost is the design. This means that while you can make the products cheap and still cover the cost of manufacturing, you won’t make back the money from the design if your margin is very low. This gives manufacturers the ability to sell the same product in differently wealthy markets while still making a profit.

If you now take the product from a cheaper market and sell it to more wealthy consumers at lower price than they usually pay, you aren’t actually selling at a better price because you are providing a better service. You are selling at a better price because you’re breaking the manufacturer’s business model.

This isn’t something that can permanently work because either A: the manufacturer doesn’t get enough money to cover the design, can lead to bankruptcy or change of business model ©, B: through regulations this is prohibited or C: The manufacturer raises the price in the regions your buying from, breaking your business model and screwing over the people who can no longer afford it there.

Of course this depends on the scale you’re acting in, but in theory preventing you from doing so would bring more equality between richer and poorer nations

Nintendo is selling them for cheaper in Southeast Asia because people there have less money. They could sell them for less in the US as well, but people are able to afford the prices there so capitalism dictates that the price is higher. What Amazon and the retailers are doing undercuts this strategy, which in theory means that Nintendo should raise their prices in Southeast Asia to make their business model work, making the games inaccessible to consumers living there. In classic liberalism this is the logical way things should be, in neoliberalism the state should intervene.

I was talking about written reviews, not just a like/dislike (star) system

Where are you getting 0.1%? According to Steam Hardware Survey Linux is over 2% of Steam Users. This puts Linux way ahead of Mac which supported by Epic

Steam is, in my opinion, way better for the user (even if it may be worse for the developer).

Epic lacks features that are important to me like reviews, the ability to view your library in a browser, warnings about DRM, Linux support, a hole bunch of features to discover games, a workshop, big picture mode.

Additionally, in my experience at least, their official launcher under Windows is a buggy mess compared to steam.

Common Valve W

Actually, some games have DRM on steam and have a DRM free version on GOG. I even saw a game that had a DRM free epic and gog edition but the steam version had DRM. Might be a edge case, but still exists

https://literature.cafe/post/15816111

Actually, the percentage of drm free games on Epic is pretty high, sometimes the same game will be drm free on epic and require drm on steam. Games that do require epics drm though can fuck off (especially since their is no offline mode). List

I’d recommend Brotato. It’s the same game style, but with a simplistic map and more complex upgrade system. Also it’s only five bucks

Don’t forget: Ability to see your library on the website

I just download the games that are drm free (which is actually quite a lot) and put a zip archive on my backup drive(s)

1 Dollar is too much for requiring a third party launcher

Nintendo is probably the most anti emulation company. They tried to make emulation completely illegal, they sued yuzu (the devs did some things that encouraged that) and made the devs pay a couple million and never develop emulators again. They are also the reason why dolphin didn’t come to steam as they wanted to sue valve if they allowed it on their platform. They also took down various tools that allowed one to rip your own switch games. I think they are for the second point