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Joined 2Y ago
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Cake day: Jun 14, 2023

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Lemmy came through (below). Things are getting better here. I feel like we’re reaching critical mass, if only we could stop the infighting.


I haven’t played it on mobile, but it does seem made for it. And everything is turn based with absolutely no timers.


I avoided the game after hearing the addiction rumors. A friend bought it as a steam gift.

It didn’t get me as good as Slay the Spire did, but it’s pretty good.


Yeah, and fuck that. If I perform well on the job, I’m sure as hell not being there for mandated bullshit. Fire me if you want.

Guess what those policies do? They drive your good employees away, and you keep those who can’t find somewhere better.


Why do they need to work these two weekends on a project that has been ongoing for years?



https://sell.amazon.com/pricing#referral-fees

I guess, according to you, it costs more to host files than it does to ship you a physical USB.

Maybe all these apps stores need to look into physical delivery in order to bring their costs down.


Epic can only compete because they’ve few users and are willing to operate at a near loss

Bullshit. Epic’s loses are in paying for exclusives and giving away games while ruining their PR.

Steam could operate at 15% if they wanted to. But… why would they do that?


It certainly isn’t when you’re spending more than that just to get exclusives.


You’re right. Hosting files is more difficult than creating art for the game. Steam deserves a bigger cut than artists.


Game files and updates need to be distributed

You also recognize that 30% of each game sale applies to each game sale, right?

Do you really think 30% of developing a game is hosting not just the original game, but also the updates and the save files? CDNs only make it cheaper.

Steam is able to charge 30% because they effectively have a walled garden on PC games. Very few publishers are well known enough to successfully sell their game outside of Steam.

It’s not as egregious as the Apple or Google stores, but they’re basically all in this together. It’s like the old mob families where they split territory.


most are quite happy with the services they get back from that 30% cut.

I agree with most of that, but this part just isn’t true. 30% is highway robbery. It’s a scam. But PC gamers are trained that Steam is where the games are, with few exceptions. If you don’t pay steam their cut, your game doesn’t sell at all.

Consider all that goes into development of a game and compare that to the effort/infrastructure to host a download and display a webpage. Is Steam really providing 30% of the game experience?

I think Steam could be profitable at less than a 10% cut.





a very limited set of folders my user has write permissions

On Windows?

files I keep under root user

On Windows? That’s not common practice.

a game can’t break my system

Is this like how you can’t get viruses without granting root?


Yeah, I trust Riot and Valve more than I trust Sony or the developers of Lethal Company or Among Us. Even with higher privs than those other companies get.

Because if PubG is compromised, I’m just as vulnerable as I am if Riot is compromised.

I get the technical difference, but when you combine it with practicality, it doesn’t make much difference on one hand. On the other, it does remove cheaters from my games.

If I cared that much I’d have ALL my games on a separate OS anyway. Maybe I will at some point.


I don’t think you understand how code works. What are you worried about it doing, and why does it need admin permissions to do that?

“Kernel” anticheat isn’t really any more dangerous than any other executable you run on Windows. Code from untrusted devs isn’t safe whether it has admin or not. Games made by small devs are much more dangerous than anything put out directly by Riot or Valve.

There’s a lot of hullabaloo that’s seeded and encouraged by those who make money on botting and cheats. It’s kind of valid, but it’s not a larger risk than installing pubg or among us or any other small game.

If you really want to be secure, you have to separate your gaming and personal machines, at least the OS and drives.

The Windows limitation might even make it more secure in that way, if you’re willing to limit Windows to games and use Linux for personal stuff. Even then, keeping drives isolated is difficult.




30% is the standard. And it’s absurd. They all do it because they all have their own walled garden territory, and it doesn’t benefit any of them to lower prices.

You’re telling me that Steam does 30% of the effort to create and publish a game?


With Gyroscope aiming you use the stick for large, broad movements, but for small adjustments you move the controller itself. It’s new as of about 2016ish.

The explanation and video here is good.

https://www.digitec.ch/en/page/aiming-with-sticks-so-yesterday-gyro-aiming-is-the-future-24968


PC gaming is much cheaper. A desktop, while being more expensive initially, will last much longer than a console. And the games on PC are much, much cheaper.



You might be able to prevent that (single player) app from accessing the Internet at all using a firewall. Of course they probably won’t allow that, either.

I usually don’t like the cracked version for games. Pirated executables are sketchy. Even if they work, you don’t know what may have been added.


It doesn’t. You can do so much more in an isometric world than a 3D one. Modern games are more about the game engine than the game itself.

Spruce up some old school MUDs, imo. Make the original Legend of Zelda, but massively upgraded for what you can do with today’s tech. (Similar to Bastion, I suppose.) There’s a lot of room for a triple A game similar to Albion Online.


The idea is that the biggest barrier to entry for small business and entrepreneurship is healthcare.


the ability to just take a few months off and burn your savings is increasingly not viable.

Universal healthcare would help here.


I don’t think Google Podcasts required that much maintenance. However it didn’t have the ads that YouTube Music does.

AntennaPod has been a perfect, free replacement.


They did allow users to upgrade once first.


Grabbed AntennaPod from the Play Store. It’s been a perfect replacement.


Oh yeah, he deserves everything Chris Rock decides to throw at him. A mistake isn’t an excuse.


Eh, I think he’s a good person that was hit by a horribly misplaced attempt at chivalry. There’s a lot of stuff he’s done that I don’t like, but it’s mostly been in his attempts to protect and help his family.

There are worse reasons to do bad things. It’s not an excuse; I just think he’s not a terrible person.


They did what they could with 90s technology, and it was amazing at the time. If they could have done it in Studio Ghibli style, they would have.

We have more opportunities now with better technology, but we keep aiming at the wrong things. We don’t need a 3d, first person world. We don’t need more arpgs, and we don’t need pixel art.

Show 30 years of improvement in the parts that made it strong originally.

I’m absolutely a fan. I just don’t think it is the pinnacle of what can be done now.


A different, coherent story, better art (not pixel), more challenging gameplay.

Try to keep some of the same feelings. Keep it menu based. Keep it isometric.

Invest in writers and art. The gameplay doesn’t need to be complicated.


At least when it was popular, Pokemon Go was basically a reskin of an existing game, Ingress. The concept was cool, but the execution was lacking.

I was surprised they seemed to have learned nothing, like the rural/urban problem, and made basically no changes.


7 hours of cities skylines before I have up on trying to get a subway to align in what’s supposed to be a relaxing game. My fault that most of that time was afk, I suppose. Steam refused to refund.


Yes, this situation just doesn’t fit that bill. They kept the purge in place after the court order, otherwise they’d be fine.


Yes, but when a court order to retain documents comes down, the legal department of those companies knows how to do so.


“The big difference between Apple and Google is Apple didn’t write anything down,” Sweeney said